Thing 10

Picture taken by Felix Idan.

I like Flickr, but for a math teacher I really don't see that many uses. I checked out the Fascinating Flickr Assignment to Teach Math blog, but I really didn't see much of a use for it in math unless it is being used for geometry. We haven't done many projects this year in my class, because we have been so testing-oriented. Once testing is over, I think I might use Flickr for a project on Geometry and to introduce Creative Commons and posting attributions. I could probably have students create a slide show or a presentation showing difference 2D and 3D shapes. Then the could lable the parts of each shape on the picture.

On a personal note, I love the idea of saving all of our family photos on Flickr. This could be used to educate my children about their family history. Plus, there are things in photos, other than people, that can help students learn how to use the context clues in the photos to help date them.

When it comes to math, I can't think of many uses, but for other subjects I can. When studying other countries, students can find pictures of other countries. Language Arts teachers could post a picture and that could be their students writing prompt. Each student could have a blog, be required to post the picture (with its atribute) and then thier journal entry. In Life Science, students could have pictures of bones and use those to create a slide show to describe a part of the body or a system from a body. The ideas could go on...I just wish I had more math ideas.

Thing 9

Probably the only reason why I have noticed the creative commons symbol on websites this year is because I took a class that Caroline taught at the beginning of this year, where she briefly explained what it was. If it were not for that class, I would have never noticed it. I don't think students would notice it, nor do I think they would care once they found out what it meant. I think the new CC rules would definitely effect students more if they were following the old rules. Plagiarism is a big deal, but it is not treated as such. Language Arts teachers teach a lesson on plagiarism every year. When we write papers in my math class, we discuss plagiarism and references. Still, every year we have students that plagiarize in some form or fashion. I have had students "borrow" paragraphs from five different papers and combine them to be their own paper. I have had students print out pictures and paragraphs from the internet and glue them to a poster board and turn it in for a project. I've even had a parent tell a student to glue those pictures and paragraphs to the poster. Students just don't seem to care and I feel it is because there are no consequences and they just don't understand the point.

Though all this complaining, I have come up with an assignment that I think might help students "get it" when it comes to plagiarism. Have students walk around the school with a purpose of taking pictures for a specific "fake" project. The fake project is to help them understand why we have copy write. Have all students take a specific number of pictures, but tell a trusted few students to only take one or two. For this to work, your "trusted students" can't be your high-achievers who always put forth 110%. The trusted students need to be students who you can tell to only take one or two pictures and won't tell the other students that you told them to do it. Download all of the pictures to the same folder and then tell the students to find the pictures to do their assignments. Most students will use their own, but then tell the students who only took one or two to use any pictures and as many as they want. When the projects are turned in, let the students display them, and lead a discussion about what is the same what's different. Ask "How many pictures did you take?" and "Is it fair to use the other students pictures?" To me this would open the door.

I do use digital images, videos, etc. from the web in my classroom. Eventually, I want to lean how to tap my lessons, or a short overview of the lesson, and post that on my wiki for students to view. That's about as far as I would feel comfortable sharing on the web. I'm fine with sharing academic material on the web, but not personal pictures and such. The materials I create I own and I won't care if other teachers edited what I had created. When it comes to personal pictures, I wouldn't want to share those and give people license to edit those. If I can't have the final say over what gets published, then I can't control how those pictures are changed. In fact, even with a copyright, I can't control what happens to that pictures. There will always be rules and laws and there will always be rule breakers and law breakers. Once something is out on the web, I don't think you can ever really delete it. You can't un-ring a bell.

Creative Confusion

At least that is what CC stands for right now. Now that I have gone back and re-searched all of the pictures I had on my blog and added links, all I really need to do is get unconfused.

Don't get me wrong. I love all of the videos that are on the wiki. Trust me, I've watched them all numerous times to get better understanding of creative commons. Yet, I'm still left with confusion. I don't know if my confusion over the actual "fair use" rules or over my feelings over the fair use rules. The Obama case study was quite interesting, and I'll be adding my thoughts to that once I make sure I'm being directed to the right place. Along with the interest in the Obama case study comes some confusion. We're discussing creative commons and fair use within the educational realm, but I didn't think that photo/poster would come under that heading. Am I the only one?

A Sharing Habbit

I have definitely created a reading habit, but I have also created a sharing habit. Whenever my reader helps me find a gem of an idea to use or that one of my colleagues can use, I share it. I probably email at least one person a day from my reader to share with them a blog or a website or an idea that the reader has found for me. I get a lot of thank yous for doing this, but what I would really like is for someone to actually use one of the things I send them and then let me see the results. A lot of the items I email are the types of sites and programs that as a math teacher I will never get a chance to use. For instance, I sent a student teacher at our school who is teaching about mythology a web version of a Myth and Legend Story Maker. It sounded like she liked the idea, but I haven't heard anything since. I sent our Scope teacher, who I knew was doing some project which involved picture taking and collages a link to Photovisi. Again, found by the reader. I haven't received any negative feedback, but a little more positive feedback would be nice.

Thing 8

I played around in the sandbox and created my page. I have also enjoyed looking at the "Burning Questions" Sections. I really enjoy that the "Burning Questions" portion was not specifically defined. For the people who have created their wiki page, we have really come up with a variety of "Burning Questions." Some are probably unanswerable questions, and some are related to current events. I just enjoy the variety.

I've mentioned before that I already have created a wikispace for my class. Recently, I have made it more user-friendly. As I am inviting you to check it out, I'm actually wondering if you can even see it without a password. I didn't make it public due to my students using it and my apprehension of if they would handle using the wiki in a mature fashion. Let me know if you can't see it and I'll find out from Caroline how to change that.

A Personal Note That Makes Me Giddy With Energy!!!

The New Target
has a
Starbucks!!!

Thing 7

I'm finding Wikis to be a little more of a challenge in which to really get interested, but I know why. It's the organization. I am a visual learner. I like pictures and not many of the wikis I visited had them as part of their main mode for navigating the wiki. I was not fond of the organization in the following wikis:

• Dr. Reich's Chemistry Wiki - Everything was well organized, but my interest was not perked because there were no pictures. If you want kids, and me, to use it regularly you have to have pictures.
• FHS Wolves Den - I loved the idea of scribe notes, but it seemed that everything was just a list of stuff. Maybe an outline would be helpful.
• 1001 Flat World Tales Project - I love the whole collaborative idea behind this one, but it was hard to follow the path or the process. Visually I found it busy.

With all of these wikis, I love the ideas of how to use them in the class, but I struggled with the visual appeal and the ease of finding things. Some of the wikis even made it difficult to see the purpose of the wiki.

I've made a classroom wiki for my math class this year (Tipton's Math Wiki), but I will be the first to admit it has not turned out the way I had wanted. I have a few students still using it to study and to play math games, so that is wonderful. The fault falls on me alone for it not being what I want it to be. I guess the next step for my wiki experiences is for me to sit down and make a list of the items I want on my wiki and then put them into categories to have better organization myself. Then, I need to make it visually enticing and maintain the organization.

Things I would love to use in a wiki included:

• scribe of notes from the day's lesson
• video of the day's lesson
• homework question area
• games
• online projects - the issue here is assigning a project for a grade and a student not having a computer or internet.

Back to the age-old issue of benefits and detriments to everything.