Creative Commons and Schools

Thanks to Karen in her blog K-12 Open Ed I found a post about Creative Commons. I am making a library page for our staff and students about using Creative Commons in a classroom context. Karen often reflects on issues related to open education and many can relate to those of us in education anywhere in the world. She reported that The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) has published a new report that includes a chapter called “Creative Commons and Open Content: What K-12 Schools Need to Know.” It is an interesting and concise discussion of the relevant issues. It is worth a look if you are involved in education and use web content.

Promoting reading to teens

I really like this promotion video that I came across in a library blog set up for teenagers about a summer reading program. I don’t know how many signed up for the “Metamorphosis Summer Reading Club for teens ages 13 and up” but it was certainly catchy. TeenPoints.org is also a great site for advertising books/reading and other library “stuff” to teenagers.

Cuil – a search engine to rival Google?

Ok, it’s very early days but it’s interesting that, after I thought that Google had conquered the world, new search engines are coming into being and they offer good/interesting alternatives. I have discussed, in this blog, some of the visual alternatives and today I found out about Cuil, not visual but with some good features.

Launched today, Cuil is a new search engine, created by a team of people, some of whom once worked for Google, with the goal of searching the entire Internet in a way that gets the most relevant results.

Copyright – YouTube and TeacherTube

Here I go again, trying to explain about copyright responsibilities to teachers. Always, when I mention copyright to teachers, a glazed look comes into their eyes. Although I try to put copyright as simply as I can, many answer “but it’s for teaching” when they want to make a copy of something that is under copyright regulations. Recently the AISV has sent schools some guidelines (Smartcopying site – NEALS) on copyright and YouTube and TeacherTube use in schools.

100 Unbelievably Useful Reference sites

Having a break from the “big” picture questions, I have been searching on the web for various pieces of information and I stumbled across this site. There are so many reference sites, do we need any more? Probably not but I discovered this fascinating site. I found myself scrolling through 100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of from Teaching tips.com.

This site offers us an eclectic collection of dictionaries, professional teaching and library resources, fun sites, databases, sites about health, “homework help”, search engines, consumer research, etc. So when you are “investigating” some of these sites, and some of those I looked at were quite absorbing, remember you are doing research, not “just playing” or, heaven forbid, having fun!

To quote the authors, “we’ve compiled just 100 of our favorites, for teachers, students, hypochondriacs, procrastinators, bookworms, sports nuts and more.”