Blog #3

I think we actually did a pretty good job on our video. In a perfect world, we would have had more time to polish things and upload it in HD (like we filmed it in). But, considering the time constraints, I think we put forth a good effort.

One thing that helped was meeting up on our off week to plan out and actually film our footage. Without that planning, I don't think our final product would have been as smooth as it was and we probably would've had to re-film or film additional footage.

This sounds very isolationist, but I don't care for group projects. I enjoy working with others (the social aspect) but I am kind of a control freak/perfectionist when it comes to projects. I may not be the best student in the world, but I like having my projects be 100% mine and they usually turn out better if they are. So, that would be my main gripe. Otherwise I wouldn't change anything that I didn't already mention. (time mostly)

TEAC 259 Blog #2

With the advent of the internet, it's become easier and easier to collaborate and share ideas worldwide. But with that ease comes new sets of rules and laws concerning what data can be put where. Copyright laws have been around a long time, but fairly recently had to be added to to cover the internet. Just like you can't copy someones book and claim it as your own work, you can't copy a video or movie and legally post it as your own. All the time on YouTube you see videos being taken down due to copyright claims by Viacom, TWC, and other music and media groups. This is because whoever made the video may have used copyrighted content from one of those companies in their video. That's a no-no.

Which brings me to fair use. Fair use states that small clips or portions of media may be used verbatim if it's being used to criticize, teach, or research without having to give credit or payment to the original source. I watched a video recently where this professor did a whole lecture on Inception and used clips from the movie to add to his lecture. Under fair use, this is legal because he was using those copyrighted clips to teach. Fair use definitely has limits, but it's a good thing for the general public.

Creative commons is a form of copyright that helps foster creative and collaborative work. For example, if I were to make a short film, I could pre-authorize it for creative commons use so that others in the population could change or improve upon it. The original author still retains some rights, but not "all rights reserved" like with normal copyright.

The way I can use these three things in my classroom is #1, not infringing on someone's copyright and #2, teaching my kids that it's not okay to use someone else's work without properly mentioning who's work it was originally. I'm sure as the internet continues to evolve, these laws will evolve with it.

Blog #1 1/16/12

Question: How might you facilitate collaborative learning in your future classroom setting? Use your reflection on Johnson's video and your notes on the reading from Davis to inform and support your ideas.

As a future educator, collaborative learning should be a big part of my classroom. In one of my other classes, we were discussing the question of whether or not cheating was ever acceptable. When it was my turn to voice my opinion, I said that there were many forms of cheating, and not all of them were unacceptable. All throughout primary schooling, we were told that comparing answers with others or "copying" was cheating and a bad thing. Well, in the real world that is called collaboration. Sure, straight up copying someones work is cheating, but in the long run it usually ends up just hurting the copier. As educators, I think we need to facilitate collaborative learning by reinforcing students about working together with their peers. It also needs to be taught that thinking for yourself is very important to your success as a student. The negative stigma surrounding collaboration (often times called cheating) needs to be remove so that students learn early that working together is a good thing. In Johnson's video, he tells us that a lot of great ideas come from groups of people, not an individual. While individuals may have great ideas, allowing them to grow further in a group makes them even better. While a lot of people think that the internet is decaying our children's minds, it also can be used for good. More than ever, ideas are being shared around the globe. Research, technology, and a plethora of other things are growing and changing faster than ever before. If we as future educators can harness the power of things like the internet, our children will be fascinated with learning and sharing new ideas.

Which brings me to a whole different topic about getting children interested in learning...but that's for another post.