Copyright knowledge

As educators we have a much greater responsibility to fully understand copyright laws and resources.  Misuse of copyrighted materials can result in a lawsuit.  There are many things in a teacher’s daily life that can be affected by copyright issues.  This can affect things as simple as handouts shared online or distributed in class, to movies and videos being played.  Using the fair use checklist will help an educator to determine if they are covered under fair use.  The fair use checklist considers purpose, nature, amount and effect of the use.  Roughly speaking copying 1/10th of the work is covered.  Another key issue to consider is will the use affect the revenue stream?  In other words, is the author losing out on any money because of the usage.

When looking for free images look for Creative Commons licenses or visit http://www.flickr.com/commons, but ensure to include a reference to the author.  Google images has an advanced search option that allows specification of the usage rights of the images returned in the search.  The TEACH Act is another important resource to consider as well.  Another valuable resource is http://creativecommons.org/.  This has an excellent resource for licensing your own work.  Blackboard has an agreement that allows linking to YouTube, Flickr, and Slideshare without gaining additional permission, but this may not be the case in your classroom, so be sure to check.  The “Copyright Dos and Don’ts” .pdf file in the library guide for ETEC 3310 has an excellent list of resources, most of which were previously mentioned. There are more links in my notes from this session as well.

Batman and the Robin Wannabe

I have never created my own movie before, so this project was a great learning experience for me.  There are a lot of cool features built into Windows Movie Maker that I didn't expect from a free program.  I was surprised at how easy it was to trim and compile all of the scenes into one movie.  The transitions that are built into the program were really neat too.  I was also surprised at how easy it was to complete the audio with Audacity.  It was just as easy to trim the audio as it was the video.  Once I figured out how to isolate the audio from my movie in .wmv format (using Windows Media Encoder...tutorial here), then convert it to .wav format on the site media.io, it was just a matter of breaking the one long file into appropriate length sections and inserting them where they belonged in the movie.  Getting the audio to sync with the video took a little bit of tweaking, but it wasn't difficult to do at all.  The music selection on freeplaymusic.com was impressive.  I didn't expect anywhere near as thorough of a selection to choose from.  Also the way the site was organized made it very easy to navigate.

I can definitely see using these technologies in the classroom.  I plan on teaching elementary special education, so I may not be able to have the students create a movie independently, but we can certainly make one together as a class.  This is something I would have loved to have done when I was in school, and I am sure students today feel the same.  This kind of technological incorporation is exactly what today's students need to keep them interested in the learning process.  I can also create my own videos to add into any lesson, which will be a great benefit working in a special education classroom.  I can also imagine using Audacity to create audio files that the students can play back as they need them.  This could be used for books at a station, or even alone as a tool to help students retain key information.  This was a great session, and the information I gained made all the time and effort well worth it.