Creative Commons – teaching teachers

  by  steren.giannini 

I sometimes forget that the terms/language I use may not be understood by other teachers. I have been talking to students for quite  a few years but did not really stop to think, or ask, whether or not the teachers were really listening as well. We have a page explaining CC and listing place to find CC resources on our website (and a copy on a wiki). The CC site and the  CC Australia site is are good resources. We show students how to find CC images even when using Google as well and the CC search page.  The last blog post I wrote about CC was last year after I talked about a tool  that you can use when choosing a license for work that you have created.

Today I was asked to explain what “Creative Commons” means by a colleague. After I explained it I thought that I had better put up a few more visuals to assist everyone in trying to understand the concept.

I have a few posters but I like this one as a starting point. It is very simple and so a good place to start.

What is Creative Commons? infographic by adityadipankar.

Useful links

  by  shareski 

• A Visual Guide To Every Single Learning Theory | Edudemic Infographic containing a detailed analysis and chart of every single learning theory. Zoom in to study or print a PDF.

• 7 Characteristics Of Future Learning A post that explains the concepts in Steve Wheeler’s video “Digital Learning Futures”. It explains the ideas about some of the changes occurring in learning and teaching in the digital age. The differences between knowledge, wisdom, and critical awareness are examined in the video as a way was an excellent way to frame the presentation.

• 13 Reasons Your Brain Craves Infographics | Edudemic Why are infographics so powerful?

• Teens, Social Media, and Privacy | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Youth are sharing more personal information on their profiles than in the past. They choose private settings for Facebook, but share with large networks of friends with little regard for any consequences.

• Lecturimatges: la lectura en imatges Tumblr site full of great images about books and reading.

• Ribbet! Online Photo Editing Made Fun and Easy Ribbet is a great online app you can use if you need – or want – to make a collage of some of your photos

• A Student’s Guide To Effectively Using Pinterest – Edudemic It is easy to see that Pinterest can act as a showcase and portfolio for graphic design students and artists of course but it can be useful for many other students as well

• The Teacher’s Quick Guide To Pinterest | Edudemic

• How To Use Pinterest With Bloom’s Taxonomy | Edudemic Some interesting ideas for integrating Pinterest into the classroom with a focus on Bloom’s Taxonomy.

GeoGuessr and GeoSettr

This week I have been playing around with the addictive puzzle game GeoGuessr and then the related GeoSettr. It is simple to use , free and tests your knowledge of geography and your powers of observation.

To explain it very simply, you go to the site and try to guess your location using Google Maps and Street View technologies. The closer your guess is to the actual location, the more points you score.

GeoGuessr uses Google Maps so when you enter the site, you find are (virtually) placed in different locations from somewhere in the world. You can look around and then put a pin on the world map to guess where you are.

• Click and drag to look around you. Click the arrows to move forward or back, zoom in and out and move around just like you would normally in Google maps street view, in order to get a better idea what you’re looking at. So “walk” left or  right or turn around or look up and down to fully explore the surroundings you find yourself.
• Once you think you know where you are, use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in on the map in the upper-right corner to place your position on a world map
• Click on the map to place your pin.
• Finally click  ”make guess” to lock in your location.
• You then get the actual location identified and you are told how close your guess was (along with the points you scored). You then click onto the next location.

You can take your time as your score is determined by how far away from the actual location your guess was with no time limit.

Students can explore the world in a very engaging way. It would be a good tool for group activities within a class, with members of the group working together and negotiating to find the locations.

It is a great tool to use with students in this form but you can now customize your own version using GeoSettr.

I created one of my own using 5 places in Victoria.

Once I got the the end it gave me the URL I can use to find it again. The whole address needs to be copied and then pasted into the address field. It does not seem to work when you insert it as a link behind a word or image.

We are going to use GeoGuessr with the Geography students at the end of term as an extension activity. They will then use GeoSettr to create their own geo-quizzes and share them with the rest of their class.

It is certainly an addictive pastime.

Useful links

  by  gcouros 

• Kids Who Read Beat Summer Slide – First Book BlogFirst Book Blog Graph supporting argument is useful for reading promotion. “Studies show that kids from low-income families who have access to books over the summer not only beat the summer slide, but make even greater gains than kids from wealthy and middle-class families.”

• Mobile Devices for Learning: What You Need to Know | Edutopia Learn how cellphones, e-book readers, and tablets are getting kids engaged with learning, focused on working smarter, and ready for the future. Download PDF

• Listly List – Surprisingly Educational Apps The free apps listed can be used for educational purposes in the classroom – across content areas and year levels. Each app is featured in a “Surprisingly Educational” episode with integration ideas.

• Kim Garst: 4 Reasons Why Social Media Should be Taught in Our School Systems Succinct arguments. Teaching social media is preparing our children for the future. Employers today have been surveyed and the result is that most planned on using social media to recruit and hire new employees. Schools are supposed to be places where we teach our children the knowledge and the skills they will need to compete and succeed in their adult lives. The good use of social media IS one of those skills.

• “Teens and the Future of Libraries: Sharing Best Practices” Webinar Archives and My Questions for Thinking | The Unquiet Librarian ”The roles of librarians are being remixed and re-interpreted by these challenges, issues, and lines of questions; in addition, the work we do will be more organic and strategic if we have the humility to truly listen to those we serve and engage in conversations.”

• Network Learning: Working Smarter | Harold Jarche Harold Jarche highlights the potential acceleration of learning with emerging social media tools. Informal learning is nothing new but in the digitally-connected workplace it is becoming more important. Social network learning provides an unprecedented platform for personal knowledge management through a continuous process of seeking, sensing and sharing. Making sense of information in a timely manner is becoming a key part of work. Harold discusses the workplace evolution and reflects that more attention needs to be paid to how we can support and encourage informal learning in the workplace. Good use of some graphics also help explain his arguments. It dovetails quite well into curation discussions.

• Is Content Curation in Your Skill Set? It Should Be. by David Kelly : Learning Solutions Magazine A good piece by the curation guru, David Kelly. The term curation has become a hot topic in many online discussions but this does not mean that it is clearly understood. David Kelly tries to explain in simple terms what “curation” is, how it can be useful in the workplace and what can be done to improve competency. There are many aspects very valid to the educational world.

• Content Curation for Social Media | Social Media Today Written from a business point of view but interesting take on content curation with  a few curation tools discussed that are different from the ones discussed in my education learning networks.

Talking about content curation

The phrases “content curation” and “digital curation” are some THE keywords in the online world, especially in my library networks. The tools that are spoken about as curation tools are many and varied. I have been trying to  focus my thoughts on what I believe curation means specifically to me. Why is it important to my learning and how do/can I use it with colleagues and also with students and why should I?

I will run a session, or more if needed, for teachers at my school about digital curation tools. The approach I will be taking is explaining why it is a useful thing for teachers to do. When properly used these tools will assist our teachers with their professional learning as well as helping them collaborate with professional colleagues.

The AITSL Professional Standards for Teachers includes a section on Professional Engagement. The first paragraph under this is: Teachers model effective learning. They identify their own learning needs and analyse, evaluate and expand their professional learning, both collegially and individually. One of the ways to demonstrate such learning is through professional reading. It is easy to keeping a record of professional reading and evidence of learning and sharing if you become a good content curator. Content curation also covers the collegial aspect.

Content or Digital Curation is not simply collecting links or a lot of links. Many teacher librarians, myself included, have been collecting links (for example: school topics, research) for years. So:

1. It not really a creating process as such but rather a process of sorting, arranging and then further publishing about information that already exists in the on-line or digital world.
2. It is a process of first finding digital content that might be useful then sorting the results for the best/most relevant ones, value adding with annotations and then sharing them in meaningful (organized) ways.

Good curators identify and define their topics or subjects at the outset. They then select what to keep whilst providing some context and annotation. Good curators make sure they correctly credit the sources as they offer their networks appropriate and easy access to their curated sources.