Resources for Online Portfolios

This week, I am re-posting my 2010 Drive-thru favorites. I selected this one from June, because it shows the power of networking.  The experience led to the first college recommendation  I have ever written for a student that did not focus on academic work done in my class.

 I was approached for help recently by an art student who wished to publish an online gallery of her senior portfolio. She wondered what sites might best display her work. I really enjoy researching little projects like this and decided to post my recommendations to her and her fine art teacher, @idrawandpaint

One of my top recommendations, wix.com, came by way of my one of my AP American Government students. Her cbl project group produced an online voting demo called Operation iVote which had a stunning look. When I asked the web designer of iVote, about her experience, she said that wix.com is "the easiest thing ever to use and would be perfect for something artsy like a portfolio." wix.com is a flash based web design creation site. I inspected some of the free templates and samples at the site and they were very impressive. (I did not explore the pay options or features).

I also asked for input from ADE listserv and received a number of suggestions. Matt Cauthron of the Digital Arts Academy invited me to visit a treasure trove of galleries. His students use http://flavors.me/. Take a look at his students' portfolios in progress! An online stroll through these galleries and a peek at the flavors.me directory assured me at once that flavors.me offers the tools for creating an avant-garde portfolio.

Incidentally, the young art student who intends to build this online site also wishes to include electronica music. She is hoping to secure permissions for this and wondered if I had any suggestions. My attempt to help her led to a solution that has since become available to our entire student body.

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Screenshot of Michael V. Manalo's curriculum vitae created with wix.com

Team Work

Our third professional cluster group focused on the theme of "Team Work".  After I put in a plug for Downplayer, we discussed the Creative Commons.  I pointed to two rich sources of media that are licensed to the Commons:

1) Magnatune - we are not evil, a generous source of CC music if it is used for educational purposes.  Our school now has a subscription and I am urging all teachers plumb its 10,000 songs.

2) Flickr CC photo searches.  The Yahoo Advanced Image search in order to find cool images for use with attribution.  It is my go-to source of content for images in s;ide presentations, photo/movies and blog art (like the photo featured on this post).

The "team work" portion of the PCG involved a discussion of classroom group activities.  My memories of "group work" as a student were pretty negative, so I prefer to have my students work in "teams." 

The discussions were interesting, because the five cluster groups took their conversations in very different directions.  Teachers were generally eager to share positive group experiences.  Also common concerns were raised about free-loaders, group chemistry, and fair assessment.  I tried to be a good listener , so that I could address some of the concerns, later.  After all, since we share the challenge of "design[ing] a challenge based learning project which develops [Tony Wagner's Seven] "Survival Skills" for at least 15% of [our] students we need to arrive at a sound comfort level with team work.

Coincidentally, for the "CBL Group Think" at Apple tomorrow, I've been asked to give a ten minute presentation on The importance of reflections and why we need to measure more than just the solution and implementation (learning is bigger than a grade).  I think that this is one area where both the Apple and Mercy High School educators share considerable common ground.

Here are the slides from PCG #3 (licensed to Creative Commons of course).

Team Work Slides

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Flickr Creative Commons photo by Paul Williams

Flickr Creative Commons Rocks!

This summer I put considerable effort and energy into creating some tools for teachers interested in trying Challenge Based Learning. For example, I created one called "CBL Media Management Do's". Recently, I completed a companion piece about the "don'ts" of media management. But there is a different twist,. On the first one I primarily used screen shots for my demonstration. But for this one, I relied heavily on Flickr Creative Commons photos. Though these pictures were not taken with CBL in mind, I still think that they help illustrate the points I tried to make in the narrative. Do you agree?


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The movie was created with GarageBand, Yahoo Advanced Image Search, Photo to Movie, Voila, Keynote, and Preview

Music that's Licensed for Student Projects

In my last post I described research I did for an art student who was looking for a web site to host her online portfolio. (She has since chosen wix.com).

The student was also concerned about finding the right electronica music for her edgy site. Therefore, I enjoyed putting 33 tracks of Creative Commons music on a flash drive, knowing that I could offer them to her without copyright infringement.

Each of my tracks came from my own go-to source, Magnatune. By subscribing to their "Free Song of the day" email list I had gradually acquired the electronica music. All of these songs are licensed as free-use with attribution for non-commercial video blogs, podcasts, and anything a student makes for academic purposes while attending school. For the past several months I have used their music for instructional slide presentations, videos, and podcasts. (You many be listening to it on this site right now as you read). Magnatune selects its artists with care, and the quality of the recordings and doonloads is excellent.

I hadn't visited the Magnatue site for a while. But my research spurred me to revisit. I discovered that Magnatune has adopted a subscription service. After an exchange of emails, I learned to my delight, that with one $15/month subscription, the students at our school may access the site for student classroom projects. Their are only obligated by the CC license to include attribution.

As you must know or suspect, many students (and sometimes their teachers!) are inclined to use music without permissions. It's much easier to discourage this illegal practice when one can offer a quality, legal substitute. My art teacher friend snapped one up a subscription at once and our associate principal was glad to pay for it.

I recommend that you check them Magnatune. They have a very fair business model for their artists, not to mention interesting listening options. Given their generous disposition toward our students, I hope they thrive.

P.S. Starting next week, the Drive-thru will publish on Mondays and Thursdays until September.
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Screen shot of Magnatune home page.

Resources for Online Art Portfolios

I was approached recently by an art student about publishing an online gallery of her portfolio. She wondered what sites might best display her work. I really enjoy researching little projects like this and thought that I would share my recommendations to her and her fine art teacher, @idrawandpaint

One of my top recommendations, wix.com, came by way of my one of my AP American Government students. Her cbl project group produced an online voting demo called Operation iVote which had a stunning look. When I asked the web designer of iVote, about her experience, she said that wix.com is "the easiest thing ever to use and would be perfect for something artsy like a portfolio." wix.com is a flash based web design creation site. I inspected some of the free templates and samples at the site and they were very impressive. (I did not explore the pay options or features).

I also asked for input from ADE listserv and received a number of suggestions. Matt Cauthron of the Digital Arts Academy invited me to visit a treasure trove of galleries. His students use http://flavors.me/. Take a look at his students' portfolios in progress! An online stroll through these galleries and a peek at the flavors.me directory assured me at once that flavors.me offers the tools for creating an avant-garde portfolio.

Incidentally, the young art student who intends to build this online site also wishes to include electronica music. She is hoping to secure permissions for this and wondered if I had any suggestions. My attempt to help her led to a solution that has since become available to our entire student body (a sample may be playing for your now). I'll discuss Magnatune in my next post.

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Screenshot of Michael V. Manalo's curriculum vitae created with wix.com

MHS In Service Materials

Planning the MHS In-Service was a career highlight. I loved pulling together the different elements and working with all those who pitched in. Other highlights from the experience would include :

* Launching so many folks on Twitter and reading through our hashtags after the event

*The energy level during the group collaboration session. The majority groups were really buzzing.

*The good humor that greeted me at the beginning. Most folks had logged Sunday work hours at Open House the day before, but were troopers at 8:30 A.M on Monday.

*There were some great questions through the day and also some impressive problem solving.

I had no major regrets but I was sorry that I frustrated many by going so fast through the social media. Perhaps adding Diigo put us on overload. I assumed more familiarity with the wiki. I also was surprised by the few I encountered who are really dug into an "I can't" position on tech. (This is certainly a self-fulfilling prophecy). I also was surprised that some folks took the group collaboration as an assignment rather than an opportunity. This was my fault to a degree not explaining the process more clearly. I also apologize if I used jargon or made references casually techie things that were not common knowledge. That is annoying.

Overall, a very cool experience for me. (And kind of glad I do not have a big presentation scheduled until March). It reminded me how very much I like the problem solving involved with using social media to meet teaching or communication goals.


I am happy to make the various presentation elements available by link for thirty days. All the original work is licensed with Creative Commons, non-commercial attribution.

Social Media (PLN, part 1)

Building a Network (PLN, part 2)

Collaborating with Collections (PLN, part 3)

An Old Dog Learning. . . .New Tricks

A "Chapter" of Baker's Digital Anthology

ITunes U Sampler

Apple Learning Interchange

Digital Anthology Movie

The Networked Student

Music Playlists

Web Warriors

Diigo Tour Videos

Free Apple Resources (including Apps).

I hope you feel free to add your own comments about the In Service or the materials.

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In Service slide created by Cheryl Corte

No Hidden Agendas

80% of my teaching assignment this year will entail American Government. One of the principles that I often emphasize is how essential transparency is to a democracy. It's the reason for the free speech and a free press. It's the reason the Supreme Court has offered special protection to political speech. Elections mean nothing without an informed electorate.

I don't get on my soap box often in class, but one position I do advocate is remedying the problem of lobbying by "special interests" by bringing full transparency to the process. Besides documenting campaign donations, the amount of time our representatives meet with registered lobbyists should be a matter of public record as well. If Senator Snort has been is having his ear bent by this group or that, I'd like to know before I cast my vote.

Now, here comes the segue: I advocate transparency in the classroom, as well.

Students
Besides offering them complete syllabi and instructions, I try to explain to them why we spend time with our resources and activities. But I do not only talk to them about their goals. I come clean with mine as well. Today. I will tell them why we are engaging in Challenge Based Learning and what I hope they gain. from it. I will also let them know that I will be evaluate the process and share the results with other teachers. their education makes them the major stakeholders, but I'm deeply invested, too.

Parents
As I hope my online course descriptions show, I try to be up front with the parents as well. I tell them about myself and the course, but I share assignments and methods. As, I recenlty mentioned in my Parent Night post, I wish to give every impression that I am passionate about teaching, and that there is method to the madness of my innovations. Hopefully, this will encourage them to buy-in.

Colleagues
I've dropped the password protection on my Moodle courses and licensed any materials I've authored in the Creative Commons. This means colleagues can visit my resources and borrow freely with attribution.

Now that I have begun to give professional development presentations, I always try to share my motivations, both altruistic and selfish. For example, I have been telling audiences that I want to continue giving presentations. Of course the only way this is likely to happen is if I give good ones! In school, I've openly stated that I would like comp time to develop curriculum and help groups of teachers problem solve with technology. I don't see any harm to laying out such an agenda.

In both democracy and education I have little patience with hidden agendas.
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"Green Opaque Flaws" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Fubar843

Paging All Waivers!

This year I was prepared.

But last time around I introduced WikiSpaces and Google Docs to my students mid-term. My adventures were not without setbacks (see Larry's Adventures in Wikiland), but some of the groups and individuals produced remarkable podcasts, videos, web sites and wikis. So then I decided that I wanted to share, blog about, or just show off their work. Consequently, I was generating ad hoc notifications and permission slips throughout the year.

This summer I whipped up three notification / waivers for my three courses. Check out the one I prepared for American Government (Click for pdf).

The document was made with iWork '09. I used a brochure template and found the banner with a public domain search. The Pages application allowed me to easily match the colors of the banner throughout the document. I thought the coolest feature was my ability to drop the public domain photo of the capitol dome into the background of the document. (A one minute Atomic Learning tutorial taught me this trick). Even a clod like me could produce a slick looking document and publish it as a pdf.

My students' first assignment of the semester was to download this document, get it signed and return it to class.

100% of them have done so, and only one parent declined any of the permissions. Pretty cool.

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Photo is a screen capture of Lit into Film course waiver.

Apps & Sites Worth Revisiting

I would like to revisit some web sites and applications that I now lean on even more heavily than when I first recommended them:

Magnatune In Transcending Words (and copyright!) I recommended Magnatune as a source of Creative Commons music-- pieces by professional musicians that you are free to use so long as you give attribution. Each day I get a "Free Song of the Day"in my inbox. These have added up to a wonderful collection of music from which to draw for my projects. I now go to this playlist regularly for my movies and slide shows. A majority of freebies are classical and ambient, but I have found some wonderful electronic and blues music too. Excellent stuff.

Garageband I only use one little piece of GarageBand-- its podcasting feature-- but I have lbecome so hooked that I will enthusiastically present a break out session on this feature at MAPSA. It is so elegant, yet so simple. Now I can mix and edit my own mp3 productions with ease. Adding a Logitech USB Desktop Microphone, has even further upgraded my podcasts.

PhototoMovie These days, I often I produce an GarageBand narraton and then drop it right into PhototoMovie. This is the best $50 I spent these summer. Another simple application (Do you see a pattern, here?), PhototoMovie allows the user to add jpegs to narration or music and quickly piece together a movie that can be shared on YouTube. I have now produced several, like the Werner Herzog Filmography (play a few seconds of it in order to listen for the Magnatunes theme music by Lawrence Cresswell).

iTunesU Go to the iTunes store and visit iTunesU with its plethora of free video and audio podcasts from Duke, Stanford, Yale, NY Public Library, Library of Congress, New York Metropolitan Museum, Holocaust Museum etc. Using PhototoMusic I produced this little iTunes Preview to insert into a Keynote presentation I will make in October to Mame36.

Twitter "Enough already about Twitter," you may say. After all, I sang its praises in Why Twitter? But I use it more heavily than FaceBook or any other social media. Since the summer institute, many fellow ADEs have joined. Furthermore, some of the savvier sports journalists in town have jumped in as well. I find myself checking for filtered tweets half a dozen times a day. An addiction? No way. The majority of my professional, sports and political reading now comes from blogs that are linked by Twitter or my Google Reader.

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"Summer Revisited for Hope" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Madmoiselle Lavender

Web Sites from Summer Camp

In my conversations with others at the ADE Summer Institute I learned about some interesting web sites.

*For those of you uncomfortable with YouTube for educational purposes, check out TeacherTube , One of my project teammates, David, is very active in developing video curriculum in Arizona. He heartily endorsed it. The goal of TeacherTube is to to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos in an educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners.

*Kutiman produces the most amazing YouTube music videos that I have ever seen. They are intricate mashups of other videos...usually very amateur artists. The results are utterly fascinating. You can also check out his project at thru-you.com

*Animoto turns still photos into movies quickly and creates beautiful results. Lots of options, even at the free, basic level. Robert, an innovative elementary teacher showed me this one. It's amazing and could be of interest to anyone k-12 for classroom or personal purposes.

*My roommate, Joe is involved with the American Film Institute's Screen Nation, which features the best films and videos from young filmmakers on the web as well video tips and contests. 11-19 years olds can to screennation@afi.com Screen Nation. The site is of great interest to film teachers and students, and Best Buy has been sponsoring a cool 64 page download on basic film techniques.

*Brain Honey was another tip from elementary teachers. It creates curriculum mapping customized to state standards. Most interesting to me was the way that it could allow for individualized learning and intervention. A simple, free site for those consumed with making progress toward state objectives.

Just Ask!

In past blog posts I have argued strongly for steering students to Creative Commons and public domain sites. And as you have may have noticed, the educational materials that I create are similarly licensed.

Nevertheless, their are often times that we really need to, or at least want to, use copyrighted material. Some of this may well be covered by “Fair Use” for educators. But if I really want to lean on a copyright protected source, I’m guided by the principle of “Just ask!”

Photos
Back in January, I reflected on the the pleasure I had communicating with Flickr photographers about my memory book project for my dad. The Creative Commons could not satisfy the scope of my efforts, so I requested permissions. I would guess that 90% of the photographers (including professionals) responded, and all responses were affirmative. Often the permissions were accompanied by notes wishing me well with my book.

I have had 100% success getting permissions for jpeg use in classroom. For that matter, no one has ever refused a request for a photo to use with this blog. Usually, they are flattered, and often they read the blog after I’ve included the jpeg upload.

Teaching Materials
Teachers are rather notorious for poaching from each other. I am willing to share, but I would like attribution. After all, my ability to make such materials is part of my professional “brand.” Feeling strongly about this as I do, I avoid from lifting other teachers’ material. Not long ago, however, I came across some study questions that were just too good to pass up. I was researching Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho when I came across some discussion questions authored by Michael Dembert of Portland Community College. When I asked permission to use them, he graciously agreed. Similarly, Professor Troy Ellis Smith of BYU, Hawaii, helped me out with some excellent writing topics on Federalist 51 for my AP Government class. In both cases, I gave well deserved attribution.

Essays & Reviews
This summer I have been making movie resources for my Literature into Film class. Naturally, when I make an eight minute film on a film director, I need to do considerable research. In the case of Akira Kurosawa, I was fortunate to find a couple of terrific essays licensed to Creative Commons. But when I was researching Werner Herzog, I came across the perfect copyrighted essay in an Australian online magazine called Senses of Cinema. After a bit of digging I successfully contacted the author, David Church (currently a PhD student and instructor at Indiana University), and he graciously gave me permission to use his piece as the backbone of my movie narration. Similarly, Professor Patrick Crogan (University of the West of England, Bristol ) and James Berardinelli (Reelviews.net) are allowing me to use their essays for current productions. Patrick expressed the wish to see my finished Seven Samurai movie when I put it on YouTube. James said I was free to use any or all of his review of Citizen Kane on the overview I am preparing on that film.

As I have implied these experiences have left me with a clear conscience and a real sense of collaboration. So, when you run into copyright, don’t steal or don’t run. Just ask!
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"Just Ask! Hat and shirt" Flickr Creative Commons Photo by STANDANDLOU

My New Recipe for Making Slideshow Movies

I found a sweet recipe for whipping up delectable slide show movies for my Film and American Government courses. This is simple and quick. Recently, I cooked up an American Political Party treat for the coming school year. Here's the recipe I used:

1) I recorded an mp3 with GarageBand. (Sometimes I just edit a "leftover") .

2) I searched for jpegs free of copyright restrictions. Some came via Advanced Image Search of Yahoo! in order to dig for Creative Commons photos. But the Library of Congress was a virtual treasure trove. The key to my search in their digital collection was to add the phrase no known restrictions on publication to any search. After a few hours, I had over a hundred public domain photos for my movie.

3) I created my title pages and other text files with Pages. It has wonderful templates for adding "spice" to my presentation, and it is easy to export the finished product as a jpeg.

4) I mixed my concoction together in PhototoMovie (recently praised in Summer Play with jpegs ). The mixing of mp3 and jpegs was simple: I simply dragged them into this easy-to-use application. The title pages and a few other slides were given specific placement, but for this movie I was not particularly concerned about matching the photos with the narration, so I set the presentation "Fit Photos to Title".

5) I exported this mix as a QuickTime movie.

6) I uploaded it to YouTube.

Viola! Sample my recipe and let me know what you think:

American Political Parties

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"Ingredients" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Frenkieb

If It's not Broke .... FIX IT! (The Digital Anthology)

I have finished my digital anthology, but of course this is just a manner of speaking, since one of the advantages of going digital is that, unlike a printed text, it will never be "finished." It is always updatable, which means I may very well add content before I actually start drawing from my new resource.

As you may recall (see A Digital Anthology. . . .), I decided to replace the $50 reader for my AP American Government & Politics class with a free, multi-media resource which could be entirely up-to-date.

I have now found material that corresponds to each chapter in our text (an ebook, by the way). Granted, I have far less material than the traditional readers , but this is not really an issue since I only used about half the reader, anyway.

Please, be my guest and take a peek at a sample of my D.A.

You'll notice that I have tapped a variety of sources for this sample. In addition to text, I have edited a podcast from iTunes U and linked to some excellent PBS videos. I have found the Stanford University podcasts* to be particularly useful for political science, but they are quite long, and I have reviewed fewer of them than I thought I might (I usually listen to them in the car). Additionally, I have also found some outstanding outstanding video for my anthology at New York Times Video, Academic Earth, and The Museum of the Moving Image.

Unsurprisingly, my anthology is still dominated by text sources. Most of these I come across in my daily reading (though family members have forwarded a couple of gems). I have also researched some subjects. For this, I have primarily used our Media Center's subscription to Gale Student Resource Center . Since all my students are licensed to use this resource, it is fairly easy to share articles.

You may wonder why I have only given you a slice of my anthology. Well, it will be sliced off to students in small portions as well. There is no reason to assign from it weeks ahead. After all, something more interesting and pertinent may appear on the scene in the mean time. The anthology fits perfectly into my scheme of the Tinker Toy Curriculum of modules that can be connected then reassembled from semester to semester.

As I've mentioned in this space before, I think anthologies like these could be constructed with ease by members of academic departments, or interdepartmentally for that matter. I would enjoy your reactions to my sample, and welcome links that I might put into my "book."

I'll be making a presentation on the Digital Anthology to the Michigan Association for Media in Education at Grand Traverse Resort on October 23.

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*visit this link and download 30 free songs from iTunes!

Weekend Take-out from the Drive-thru

Recommended Toys and Tools:

* "The Flat Classroom Project is a global collaborative project that joins together middle and senior high school students. . . . .The Project uses Web 2.0 tools to make communication and interaction between students and teachers from all participating classrooms easier. The topics studied and discussed are real-world scenarios based on 'The World is Flat' by Thomas Friedman."

*"Ning offers an innovative and easy-to-use technology platform for people to join and create new social networks for their interests and passions and meet new people around the things they care about most about in their life."

*"Advanced Image Search allows users to filter search results by Creative Commons (CC) license. For now, this search only includes CC-licensed images from Flickr, Yahoo's own photo sharing service. The Yahoo Image Search interface actually turns out to be a very nice gateway to the CC-licensed image collection on Flickr, especially because the previews update immediately after you change a filter setting." (Written by Frederic Lardinois).

"bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier. bit.ly can be accessed through our website, bookmarklets and a robust and open API. bit.ly is also integrated into several popular third-party tools such as Tweetdeck."

Scott McLeod offers 20 TED Talks podcasts for busy principals . . . . "These are the TED presentations that I think are most likely to interest, educate, and entertain administrators as well as make them think!"

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"Take Out" with generous permission of americanvirus

Transcending Words (and copyright!)

Teachers' Lounge Series, part 3 of 4

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language. - Herbie Hancock

I'm sure our great art teacher, Susan, wonders how she got dragged into this blog. But if she had not asked a question about copyright and music she would not have launched my adventure into the realm of Creative Commons music. This has been one of those fun Web 2.0 experiences where I learned to use cool tools while searching for content (see Geometrically Progressing. . . .).

Well, I basically ducked Susan's question which concerned student use of "all rights reserved" copyright music. By staying within the Creative Commons we all are quite welcome to take, use, mix, mash music files; usually with the mere stipulation that we credit the artist. Over the past few weeks I have acquired a collection of interesting CC music. This is very easy to do with iTunes. On the info tab of a music file, I always enter "Creative Commons" as my Grouping. This way with a couple of clicks, I can create a "Smart Playlist, locating the style that I might want to legally use for a project.

Presently, I am adding to my music library through Magnatune. This site presents music by commercial artists. For example, I recently downloaded a piece by Barry Phillips, whose cello music appears in Ken Burns projects. This piece is called, Polska fran Glava, and one can easily imagine how a student might use it for a slide show or movie. Magnatune customizes licenses for commercial use, but maintains a generous policy towards downloading music for non-commercial and student use. I subscribe to a daily download that's emailed each day. If I like it, I add it to my library. These tracks end with a narrative clip describing the piece, but this is easy to clip with Audacity or GarageBand. Magnatune is search-friendly and provides detailed information about the artists.

PodsafeAudio has music by independent musicians which is royalty free. I found a nice guitar piece by Lawrence Creswell that I have used as a thematic intro for some of my podcasts. Called Water Bug Dance, it has an NPR kind of sound. I found it more difficult to search for and find quality music on this site, but it's all free and copyright safe.

If students are looking for copyright-free sound effects, Free-Loops.com is a fun site. Again, all of the sound loops are licensed under Creative Commons. After downloading the WAV files, they can be dragged into Audacity or GarageBand and then added to a student's creations. Here's an example called, Chime Clock Sound. There is a terrific selection of loops for a person seeking to create his or her own music mix. While I am more than satisfied by the huge set that comes with GarageBand, I still like poking around Free-Loops. I strung together recurrent loops of Red Bass and started dancing around the kitchen until my wife made me stop.

If you or your students are into sampling, remixing and mash-ups, ccMixter "is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want." Sample packs and a capellas are available for free download and the quality is consistently good. Podcasters and movie makers can browse among some interesting remixes. I suggest starting with with Editors' Picks, where I found, Short Fuses Burn Long Bridges, by William Berry, who creates a very original sound. Many of the selections take a capella vocals and surround them with trance or club music.

I'm looking forward to dabbling with this stuff and sharing my new interest with some of my students. Unlike me, they might actually be able to come up with something artistic!

On Friday, Part 4 of this series-- Building Virtual Audiences for Students
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"Narumi [HPP] by me" Flickr photo with kind permission of p o m

Watching that Old School of Red Herrings Swim By

The tech naysayers are once again in season, so it's time grant some Red Herring fishing licenses. Let's hook three more "issues" that are supposed to stop change in its tracks:

"How Can We Be Sure Students Won't Violate Copyright?" This one cracks me up, because I find that some of my teaching colleagues have developed selective sensitivity to copyright. I have a friend who adamantly opposes music sharing ("I buy CDs to support the artist"), yet she photocopies vast volumes of copyrighted academic articles. Since they are for her students, that's ok by her code of copyright. Another friend was fussing to me about possible copyright violations as his students posted media to their wikis. When I questioned him about his own classroom practices, he assured me that the VHS movies he recorded over the years (and still loves dearly to use in class) are OK because they are used for educational purposes. Hmn.

One way to avoid this issue altogether is to urge students to select from the millions and millions of photos, slides, audio files and videos licensed under Creative Commons. You might also encourage them to license their own creations as such. If you are unfamiliar with Creative Commons, click this video link for a brief overview. (I'll be blogging about some great CC sites for audio, next week). Copyright law lags far behind the realities digital technology. In the mean time, the CC provides a convenient way to avoid cognitive dissonance over copyright.

"We still must teach [fill in the blank] because the students will need it in college." This objection is always raised whenever I rail against the traditional "research paper" (see Hyperlink Heaven). But college prep cannot be played as a universal trump card against innovation. Consider a comment posted to my last blog. The author is a senior at the University of Michigan, and recently completed an internship with the New York Times:

At Michigan, the computer labs are constantly being upgraded with the latest software. I'm not saying the technology environment here is perfect, but other students and I have really benefited from professors forcing us to use these tools in projects. In one of my classes, for instance, my professor makes us blog. It's a good exercise for students looking to write for the new web.The fact that we can use a lot of expensive software programs for free (i.e. Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, etc.) also lets students experiment with these new tools.

We would be remiss if we failed to give students training in traditional conventions of academia, but we can't focus solely on showing students the old tricks that please tenured professors (who may be among the last hold outs against change). I think we have to give basic web literacy a much higher priority.

"Students Need to Learn the Basics" When I hear any variation on this assertion, I think, "Well, yeah, your point?" I can grant this point but still insist that we recognize that methods for accessing information and generating communication have changed so convulsively in recent years that a new set of basics is called for in addition to the traditional tool set. The curriculum needs to make way for these skills. What exactly they are is an important question. Fellow ADE, Tom Woodard, offers a very insightful reflection on this very issue in "....Old Skills, New Applications....".

After reading the above, one might reasonably ask where we can find the time to teach the new stuff. This question leads us logically to a greater point: It's time to rethink how school time is structured. Certainly, how and where people work has changed significantly by technology. Correspondingly, how and where we are all learning is shifting at a terrific rate. Yet we somehow assume that tradition schedules and subjects will accommodate this shift. If we wish to create optimal learning experiences for our students we have to reimagine the school day. I'm ready when you are.

Whew! It felt good to get these last two blogs out of my system. I'm looking forward to going in a different direction with my four part "Faculty Lounge" series, starting Thursday.

As always, your comments are valued.

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There are now over 100 millions Creative Commons photos on Flickr. The "Red Herring" photo on this page was licensed under CC and chosen from 'No Matter" Project.

A Vast Tinker Toy Playland

I have shifted my perspective on curriculum in two major ways. I now think of my courses as Tinker Toys which I construct and then reassemble each time I take out the course and play with it. This is a major conceptual change for me. Previously, I thought of courses as made up of units -- blocks of instruction about the Supreme Court or Hamlet. I strove to construct the perfect combination of activities, assignments, minutes, and days for each unit. A "new prep" meant trying to compile materials for the creation of a product that would serve my students well, semester after semester. This view guided me as I developed my online course in American Government. I set about replacing the prepackaged units of the book with comparable online materials. If you had clicked into Moodle last year, you would have seen giant chunks of postings under broad topics like "The Constitution." But as I recently commented at QRS Gateway, I just finished deconstructing those giant blocks of Moodle, and my curriculum is now far more accessible and dynamic. I can update instantly thanks to the publishing features of iCal and Google Docs which integrate seamlessly with Moodle. More significantly, the hyperlink options of iWork and Google Apps allow for interconnecting the pieces of instruction beyond my wildest Tinker-Toy-on-steroids dreams. I can remix my course with the same delight as creating a new playlist from iTunes.

Secondly, I have fully embraced the idea of the Creative Commons. Instead of seeing my lessons as private treasures, I have literally unlocked everything I have posted to Moodle (no more enrollment key), and I am linking my newest projects to the in-service resources I freely provide to my peers. I have also begun to publish best practices to networks like ALI and CUE. No longer do I see my teaching materials as paper to be filed in the physical world of folders and locked cabinets. My digital curriculum is unbounded by classroom walls and scheduled periods. And the social media I have injected into class projects have enlisted students as co-authors of the lessons. My reason for sharing is not based on arrogant presumption or simple altruism. It is driven by my confidence that I possess a unique combination of knowledge and skills that make my teaching special, not the materials. I am changing and learning. As I do, I feel more alive and essential than ever.