beccablog, teacher-librarian » blog

Ethical Use of Information

beccablog — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:11:45 +0000

Last week, I was instructing a class for the book trailer project. Students read a book of their choice and then create a book trailer noting the characters, tone, mood, theme, and other literary elements that would fit the assignment.

For multimedia/digital assignments, we discuss the ethical use of information and how to correctly create a project using public domain images and music. Not only do we discuss the “how”, but also “why”. The “why can’t we use a song from my iPod” or “why can’t I grab any image off of a Google image search” seem to stump many students. Even after I show the students the many sites and Creative Commons searching, they seem to still think these laws are crazy.

So, I was flipping through Entertainment Weekly at lunch that day and saw that the Ellen DeGeneres Show is being sued for playing songs in their show’s intro without permission (September 25, 2009 issue). I began telling the students about this and light bulb! They began to understand that these rules have implications and it is not just “them” that has to follow such rules.

Image from Will Lion, Creative Commons

I Heart 21st Century Skills Contest

beccablog — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:59:54 +0000

Amanda and I created a short video for the I Heart 21st Century Skills Contest sponsored by AASL. The top three videos are posted on the following site along with a link to vote. If Youtube is blocked at your school (like mine), see our video below. Don’t forget to vote!!

A Library Provides an Opportunity

Top Ten Tools

beccablog — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:32:09 +0000

1. iGoogle: A great place for all my feeds. For students, they can easily customize the page for their needs AND place our widgets on the page.
2. Twitter: I receive so much information from Twitter. New ways to get information into the hands of students by posting on our website too. twitter/bvwlibrary      twitter/beccamunson
3. Google Reader: Makes my life easier. Would like students to use it more – but we are getting there.
4. Audacity: Great for student projects. Free. Easy to use.
5. Edublogs: We have several blogs – for students and staff. BVWest Reads, BVW Productions, BeccaBlog, Jag Stacks
6. Delicious:  Keeps me sane as I organize my finds and research what other people are doing. Next year, we are moving all our links for the library projects to delicious.
7. Voicethread:  A tool our teachers have really embraced especially our social studies teachers.
8. Widgetbox: Love this site to create widgets and apps for iGoogle and Facebook. However, it is now fee-based.
9. Slideshare: Collaborative. Takes a powerpoint inside the walls of the school and makes it available to anyone, anywhere. I think students get that…
10. Wikispaces: Way to publish projects, easily collaborate with others.

Others to add: Animoto, Toondoo, Wordle, iMovie, Voki, Ning

Click here for the real Top 10 List of Learning Professionals.

Voicethread

beccablog — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:34:17 +0000

I am teaching voicethread class this afternoon to teachers in our district. For the class, I created a resource wiki (http://bvvoicethread.wikispaces.com/), so we can post new ideas and access resources that I found to help beginners.

We recently purchased the education license of Voicethread. It makes it easier to manage for the most part. Recently, they added a feature that will be very nice for massive import of students.

Import – you can import a csv file (excel) of student’s names. To add the students to a “class” or group as they call it, you have to individually select a student to join the group. However, this can be quite cumbersome, so they made it where students can join a group by inputting a teacher code. This will drop the students name into the group.

Now, as we are beginning to use voicethread more often, I try to find good examples. Often, I find basically reports of sorts without the discussion. I believe the exciting thing about voicethread is the collaboration aspect – where students, teachers, parents, city, and global citizens can access and comment to create a good discussion.

How do we connect through voicethread? Should we just do a search and locate a voicethread we want to comment?

How do we provide a “global” aspect with students – so other people around the world can comment on their voicethread?

I have a teacher wanting to connect her U.S. History students with another U.S. History class in a different part of the country. How do we go about it?

Plagiarism Example

beccablog — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:54:41 +0000

I am always looking for real world examples when discussing plagiarism with students. Often, it seems that taking something from another site is not a big deal. I found this recent company blog article discussing how another company used their words. Although to me, the offense is very slight, it does a good job of showing how important it is to be an ethical user of information. AND it shows that we don’t make up these rules!

(Note: their top image is actually copied from another site as well.)

Meme: Passion Quilt

beccablog — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:03:56 +0000

I saw this on Joyce Valenza’s blog & had to contribute – I love to see what others are passionate about in our profession. I have to say – I couldn’t just use one picture – so I combined a few. AND of course, it took me forever to think of the “one thing” I am most passionate about student learning. So, here goes my quilt….

Here are the directions…
*Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
*Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
*Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

New site

beccablog — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:13:28 +0000

In the next couple of days, we will be posting a new library home page. I struggle so much with changing the current one – if something works, don’t fix it – right?

However, we have had the same site for six years.

Of note, the Johnson County Public Library just changed their web site. It looks wonderful and a great example of “cleaning up” a busy page. It is giving me courage as I think of changing the West library page.

Things I love:

*Novelist widget put in the Find a Book page

*Clean front page

*Did I mean a clean page?

*Federated searching options

*RSS Feeds

They also posted an analysis of web site redesign results. I found it helpful when thinking of changing our site.

Wiki & RSS

beccablog — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:00:08 +0000

Two videos explaining Wiki & RSS. Possible great way to help others begin using these things.

Wiki in Plain English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLYttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

RSS in Plain English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

BV West Reads

beccablog — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:51:29 +0000

The blog site is going! Students from CA II classes created audio and video (I am going to add to iTunes too) promoting great books.

http://bvwestreads.edublogs.org

Testing, testing…

beccablog — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:47:10 +0000

Students created audio/video book trailers. I am testing putting it in a blog – so here are a couple of examples… Let’s see if I can get it to work…

Download Schindler’s List