HELPING STUDENTS UNDERSTAND CREATIVE COMMONS AND COPYRIGHT

Student’s in my program (LEEP) are expected to be the ICT leaders and mentors in their grades by offering some guidance to their peers in ICT matters, such as finding images that are not copyright protected.

Last year in LEEP we used the Creative Commons site to search for images but we found that this did not guarantee a creative commons image. It clearly states this on their home page.

This year I have started to direct my students to Wikimedia Commons. Their understanding of the subject is now much clearer and the lessons have been very successful for at least two reasons.

• Firstly the images are all Creative Commons and there is a wide range of images, sounds and videos (over 12 580 544 according to the welcome page).
• Secondly the site clearly shows the copying license so this makes it easy to explain what the students’ obligations are for example with attributing the work to the author

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My students referenced the WikiMedia Commons site on their own blogs so that they will be able to remember it later on. Hopefully this is a real opportunity for them to be Leaders in ICT through modelling the correct behaviours and also by being able to offer practical solutions to finding Creative Commons Media.

CONTEXT

Our school has a partnership with the local community radio station, partly due to sponsorship, where we are allocated a weekly hour in the program for the students to write and perform their own show. Students in Grade 5 and 6 (Level 4) each get a turn to work with their peers to write a script, record interviews, choose music and perform.

All grade 5 and 6 students are rostered throughout the year to. A block of weeks is equally shared amongst each grade in the Level 4 team so the whole grade can be working on Radio Show at the same time. The students usually perform in a group with 3 or 4 other students from their home group depending on how many weeks they have been allocated. Typically they will only have one turn in grade 5 and one turn in grade 6.

Our school has its own radio studio with the all the equipment necessary to broadcast, and record interviews, live or on the phone, and to record the weekly show. All it takes each week is the flick of a switch at the Community Radio Station for the broadcast to be sent from our school.

Students in our Radio Studio behind the panel.

OUR JOURNEY

1. Originally we traveled, with the 4 students, to the Local Radio Station in Cranbourne. Two or three volunteer teachers from the grade 5 and 6 team took turns each week to drive the students and do the panel work at the studio while someone looked after the rest of their class for the afternoon.
2. Once we had our own studio the teachers started to take responsibility for the panel work for their own class though they found this stressful and they required a lot of support. They felt that a five or six week stint each year was not enough to cement their learning and there were usually new teachers in the team each year. This meant it was staff intensive as it often required 2 staff members in the studio and another one to supervise the remainder of the class.
3. Now we have students run the panel and the class teacher supports the performing students. The students who provide technical support need a little bit of help to get started but once the show has begun they very capable of switching between microphone, music or advertisements. There is additional teacher support for the group to practise their show and to supervise the class while the show is on which equates to 2 hours.

We’ve come a long way in terms of trusting the students to do most of the work. It has paid off and puts the teachers on the right side of the desk- supporting the performing students. Every year we have a number of students who are waiting for their turn to learn how to panel. They work in pairs and teach each other. It has made the most improvement in students valuing and helping each other and having the studio used more often.

You can watch most of the presentations on the Wiki

1. Evernote a Teacher’s Perspective on Prezi by Beck Spink http://prezi.com/xizyhpryd3sw/evernote-a-teachers-perspective/
2. Damiano Lo Nigro – Literacy Through Animation – Primary focus  good for lower reading groups, Goanimate -Free service one account for whole class- Xtranormal – one account
3. Heather Bailie – ScoopIt
   Topics to follow collect resources for students scoops to follow
   Students gather info together for own scoop
   Scoop it for curating
   Use tags to create search
   Email,
   Collect resources for students
   Professional reading
   Screen grab of the page
4. Zaid Baroudi -Students as creators of technology
   Scratch and others that give students an opportunity to program.
   The importance of programming as a means of improving thinking skills and problem solving.
5. Kylie Taig – Teaching with the tools kids want to use
   1. Stopwatch
   2. Taggalaxy base for story writing
   3. NewsMap http// marumushi.com.projects.newsmap News map visual representation of days news
   4. Save the words Http://savethewords.org Hover mouse over words and they scream out to be used, new words sent each day
   5. Storybird. Images are supplied
   6. Story maker
   7. Microsoft auto collage – creates an awesome collage from a folder of pictures
   8. Iconsrabble put in a word gives image for letters which are linkable
   9. Photosynth.net 3d view of a 360 degree place
   10. Howsecureismypassword shows how quickly a hacker can get into your password
6. NATHAN JONES -iPad Apps of Interest
   Ar Dino park (Augmented Reality App)
   Book creator
   Rutabaga – games for preps free
   Teach pal – classroom assessment
   Pic collage
   I motion hd free
   Showme interactive free ( students email links to their work)
7. Brendan O Keefe
   Passion quest
   aris games .org
   Creating mobile games. Free open source location based game maker
   7 scenes .com
   Mobile storytelling platform
   Uses
   • Tours geocaching
   • Quests
   • Scavenger hunt
   • Augmented learning
   • Role playing

   Mission
   Citizen scientist, journalism,
   90187340 Bendanokeefe.com

Since starting my own photo blog as part of the 365  – photo blog project (a photo each day over the year) I have learnt so much. When I joined the project I was not expecting it to be a great learning exercise but I thought I would enjoy it. I decided that my theme would be “A Year in the Garden” so I’ve taken photographs of my mother’s beautiful garden and my “developing” garden throughout the seasons with a view to making a photo book at the end of the year. Taking the photos is usually done in batches but posted over the week that they were taken.

As I’ve done this I couldn’t help but think about using photography with students to help them learn.

• When I’ve posted my photos I always feel that I have to do a little bit of research and provide accurate information for my audience.
• When I’ve read the blogs of other people and looked at their photos I’ve discovered different ideas for content or new things to try with my camera – such as the macro setting
• When I’ve gone out looking for my next photo for the blog I’ve found interesting things in my garden that I never would have noticed before, which I’ve had to research and again I’ve had a lot of unexpected learning

And this is just about content to say nothing of the technical aspects of blogging, photo-editing or creating interesting presentations.

If students were to keep a photo-blog for their learning whether the subject was maths, science, art, literature or any other area surely all these things would come into play for them too…authentic audience, learning from each other and discovering new things.

Photography is quick, creative and enjoyable and worth considering as a way to personalise student learning.

I was interested in this blog post by Fixel Pix, Six Applications of Photography in Education, that has a similar idea to mine and supports my theory and experience that students would find using photography interesting and engaging if used in the curriculum.

This is another great post about why you should or could use photography in education 7 Reasons to Incorporate Digital Photography in Your Course

Do you have any great examples of students using photography and photo-blogs?