Classroom 2.0

On Saturday I joined the webcast Classroom 2.0 with Joyce Valenza and Buffy Hamilton. The topic of the show was 'Copyrights, Creative Commons, and Databases'. Something I think I know very little about so this was perfect. They began the show by asking two poll questions. Have your students used databases to support their research projects? 22% said no and 52% said yes. Are you familiar with 'transformativeness' as a standard for distributing digital works? 60% said no and 12% said yes, I was not familiar with this term either. It was explained that copyrighting is meant 'to promote creativity, innovation and the spread of knowledge'. (US Constitution) Some problems with copyright interpretation are due to the confusing nature of education use guidelines, also these guidelines are not law.

Joyce Valenza introduced some YouTube videos, such as 'Copyright? What is Copyright?', they were informative tools that can be used in the classroom. The website Teachingcopyright.org has examples of transformativeness for the classroom. In Flickrstorm.com teachers can collect various images in a new URL and then give it to students to use. Other similar websites are Beholdcc, Shahi Visual Dictionary, Openphoto, Burning Well, Compfight.com. 'These qualities are merely illusory and consequently the guidelines have a seriously detrimental effect. They interfere with an actual understanding of the law and erode confidence in the law as created by congress and the courts'. (Kenneth Crews 2001)

Buffy Hamilton's segment of the show was very interesting and informative. She explained how to use Delicious to connect to Wiki pages and then create different Widgets. This seems like such a great resource for teaches and students. I also thought her point of embedding students in these webpages by using different bookmarks is an constructive idea. She pointed out that 'getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant'. (Mitchell Kapor) Great visual!