Digital Images in the Language Arts Classroom

Bull, Glen L., and Lynne Bell (eds.) Teaching with Digital Images ISTE, 2005

Chapter 7: Digital Images in the Language Arts Classroom

With the recent discussion in class about copyright and fair use in an educational setting, my mind has been constantly thinking of activities and lessons that could encompass the fair use in the educational setting. How can this be practical on an elementary level? What kind of material is transformationative? Therefore, my gaze went to the Teaching with Digital Images book. Inside there were a variety of chapters on how digital images can be used in science, language arts, social studies, and math. All are just as equally important in the classroom and all can be components that incorporate technology and the issue of copyrighted material. 

I chose the chapter on language arts especially because I love reading and love to teach language arts so it would a useful subject to be able to incorporate digital images. The chapter starts off with a story of a girl in a 7th grade class during a discussion Of Mice and Men who did not participate. She would have rather drawn out images of what the books means and questions about the book. She wanted to see it visually to record her construction of meaning. The chapter goes on to list several reasons how images can help in learning language arts. One is that the digital images can help readers envision text. There is always the debate over which is better the book or the movie but it's true, we love to envision text. Digital images can also offer a unique bridge to writing. Reading an writing go hand in hand and can play off of each other very well in different types of writings. Digital Images also allow students to communicate meaning visually which is where the transformational use of copyright can come into play. 

The rest of the chapter shows potential instructional uses of digital images in a language arts classroom. One was to visualize with a mental movie. This involves strategies such as envisioning the textual world, making and testing predictions, monitoring understanding, asking questions, and making connection. It all goes back to the higher order of thinking of Bloom's Taxonomy. 

Already in my student teaching, I have used digital images to teach in with language arts. For a vocabulary lesson, I had the students decide on how to act out their vocabulary word so I could capture it on camera. The students were very excited about this assignment. But this book also got me thinking to what other ways could I use to incorporate digital images into my teaching. How can I use them to help the students analyze and create and evaluate? Maybe it requires showing a picture as a hook to a lesson that connects with what we are going to learn. Maybe it's giving the students a variety of pictures and they have to come up with the analysis themselves. Never the less, I'm excited to see education in the new eyes of transformation and fair use.

Audio: Podcasts, MP3's, and E-Books

Fitzgibbon, Kathleen Teaching with Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts & More Teaching Resoiurces, 2010

Chapter 6: Audio 

I have always been intrigued by Podcasts and MP3 recording in schools. I have looked at websites like WillowWeb's podcasts and marvel at their podcasting abilties at their school and the professionalism involved with it. The book I picked for this blog post was Teaching with Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts & More.  More than anything, if I were to incorporate a web 2.0 into my classroom, it would be in a podcast. Listening to audio's such as a podcast can be a good way for students to increase their listening skills and could be used as homework for students. Audio files only require speakers, or earphones which is a fairly easy tool with compared to others such as using texting or a social networking site or blog site.

When thinking about podcasts, I believe it would be a really easy and creative way to be transformationative in compared to copyright. As the chapter states, when creating a podcast, a script must be written out. In this script students or the teacher can write material that is a critique or changes the material in a creative way so that it brings out a new emphasis on the material. Yes, putting in audio straight into the podcast or using background music will be against copyright. So the script is very important to making sure that the material is creative and transformationative.

E-Books are another that this chapter mentions. I don't especially like reading books online or on the computer but it is a new way or reading and students may prefer this way better than tangible books. Using E-books with MP3 would be a really good tool with students with learning disabilities or reading difficulties and they can follow along with the audio. Copyright would not necessarily be an issue with simply listening to MP3's or reading E-books since they generally are free. But probably printing E-Books out and reusing those in not a creative transformational way, would infringe on copyright.

It's very interesting now to look through the various web 2.0 strategies with new eyes on copyright. I hope I can become a teacher that looks to the transformational method and is actively encouraging my students on in the creative way.

Privacy and Security

Bissonette, Aimee Cyber Law Corwin, 2009

Chapter 4: Privacy and Security

Since starting my student-teaching, I have gotten to see up and close what schools do in respect to privacy and security of students. This chapter in the book enlightened me on the different laws in place for student's security and privacy in and out of the schools. The most important is the FERPA which requires parental notice and consent before schools can post and disclose private student information. FERPA also affects a schools storage and retention of student records by making sure both the school has a system in place for storing records and permission for parents to review the records. Failure in either of these parts results in litigation.


The chapter goes on to talk about the sharing of information among staff. Staff do not have the right to share records and grades of students among teachers. I'm guessing this goes for elementary grades as well. If so, then my school I interned at does not do a good job because many teachers talked about their students in the lunch room or in the hallways and disclosed information between them. I also as an intern was able to go in and look at a student's cumulative record. I guess that's ok since I'm an intern at the school yet at the same time, I was leery because these are personal records of the students. 


The chapter closes out with discussing the school's role in the privacy and security of students. The chapter mentions policies which Adam Hotchkiss talked about, as well as making sure to hand out parent permission slips for information or even taking pictures of students. The chapter also mentions to educate the teachers and staff about FERPA and other piracy legislation so that no laws are broken and children can be protected. Students also need to be educated with online safety so that they do nothing to compromise their identity including copyright and fair use. Ignorance is not bliss and so it is not fair for people that are not properly educated on matters of high importance such has privacy and security. We need to make an effort to educate everyone of these issues. 

Cyber Law: Copyright Law in the Classroom

Bissonette, Aimee Cyber Law Corwin, 2009

Chapter 6: Copyright Law in the Classroom

I picked up this book and this chapter with the intent on comparing it to Hobb's Copyright Clarity book. The opening parts were almost the same with some exceptions. The chapter discussed what copyright law was but kept bringing up the topic of infringement. It made me feel like this author is much more scared of copyright than Hobb is. The chapter also talked about fair use. For the question of "Isn't fair use available as a defense to infringement with copyright?" Her answer, "It depends." I hope that she continues to bring out her point instead of leaving me confused. The four factors for fair use are mentioned just like Copyright Clarity.The author of this book believes that though fair use can be used in an educational setting, school should still provide plenty of listened resources so that the teachers don't have to go out of their way to find material that may result in infringement. This again shows me that though the author understands, she still stays on the safe side of copyright instead of living on the edge.


To reduce the risk of copyright infringement the author blatantly makes the statement that educations need to know the law and the need to contact the copyright owners to negotiate usage. This shocked me when I read it because how does the author expect every educator to contact every owner before using a copyrighted material? That would be impossible! The author goes on to talk about licensing material and greatly encourages schools to get licenses for using materials. I agree with licensing, especially if the copyright material is strict and does not fall under fair use. 


This book discussed a term or materials that I had never heard about before: OpenCourseWare. It seemed really interesting from reading it. It is a website or a number of websites that host content of free classes and material for students and teachers. This could be a good tool that I will have to look into further. I also did not know about Learning object repositories. Both are good tools for people who don't quite fully understand  copyright and don't want to get into trouble from the fear of the unknown. I would say every one needs to be educated but in the process, know your resources. 


This book was an example of those books that Hobbs talks about in her book, where teachers are scared more than anything about anything copyright. They don't learn the full potential of copyright and fair use and what that means to the classroom. Books like these can still be good tools, yet a person should always be striving for new and deeper understanding of issues related to education.

Teaching with digital images

Bull, Glen L., and Lynne Bell (eds.) Teaching with Digital Images ISTE, 2005

Chapter 4: Digital Images and Copyright

The biggest question that comes to copyright in my mind is with images. Once a week at the least, because of some project or assignment, I go on google images to search for an image to use. I often wonder if that is breaking copyright or not. Especially in an educational setting, I don't want to do something that will be illegal in front of the students. This chapter from the book Teaching with Digital Images helps clear up that issue a little. The chapter discusses fair use in the classroom with the four points that were mentioned in Copyright Clarity including the four factors or purpose, nature, amount, and effect on a market, which need to be considered before using from the web. I don't know how I feel about using this as a test before using material. Wouldn't everything be biased? Wouldn't people have different opinions on what is fair use with the four factors? I guess I like cut and dry rules instead of something which it is up to individual people to decide for themselves.

The article also talks about the Creative Commons. I came in contact with this a little this summer during a summer class. I really liked the idea. The chapter mentions that Creative Commons sees and protects the rights of the creators but at the same time allows it to be used for educational purposes. The chapter goes on  to discuss public domain, permission, and attribution. Public domain is another issue which is not clear to what is in public domain and when it becomes public domain. I personally do not remember finding anything online which was public domain, but I also wasn't looking for it or simply didn't see it.

Permission and attribution, I believe, are good behavior to teach students, as the chapter suggests. Attribution requires a simple training of your brain to copy a link from where the material came from or simply listing the name of the person used. This act will help students as they become good digital citizens. Permission is one aspect of copyright I have not been involved in. I have seem where it says contact the author or creator before using but I have never done that. To my it just seems like extra time to do and what's the use. I know that is a wrong philosophy. But it will be interesting to see what Hobbs says about the fact with the transformational usage of such material.

Adam Hotchkiss - Technology Coordinator CAK

Once more I was amazed at a story where a person went in and build up a technology department from what seems like ground zero within a school. You can see the time and hard work that went into the policies and budgeting that he has created for his job. I just love to see someone who works hard genuinely out of pure advancement for the school and the students. He also doesn't stop at being satisfied at what he has. He is always looking towards new and innovative technologies, even if it costs lots of money. Even still, he is realistic though it all.

It was also good when Dr. Krug asked about the relationship between tech coordinators and classroom teachers. The relationship is so important to build up a good schools based on technology. I could see how many schools could fail in technology uses just because there is not a good relationship between the tech coordinators and the classroom teachers.

I also hadn't understood what policies were until Adam had talked about it. I really enjoy how he passed around the policy for CAK so that we could see a real life one. I see now that it is very important to have policies especially with technology because technology is such a big thing. I have trouble wrapping my head around it and one can easily get lost with in it. With those policies and boundaries, funny business is less likely to happen and learning can be done in a good and safe environment.

Guest Speaker: Polly Brake

Right off the bat, I was very amazed at Polly Brake. From being in the marines, to homeschooling her kids, to working part time, and in the end, developing her own technology proposal to implement at her school. What determination and what result from that determination! I admire that from her so much. So also went on to talk about how preparation, dedication, and time are important to be a technology coordinator. It's so remarkable to see a personal who had a dream and followed through with it by making a plan and getting it approved. I also like what she talked about the webinar's for professional development, because that would be a tangible way, especially if it were free to get more knowledge on certain technological features. The $25 walmart gift card?? That was so neat! Who knew there was such a thing! You know she's smart when she uses her resources around her and get's what she needs in a cheap but ethical way.

She ended by talking about how innovation excited parents. It also excited the students too. While my mind is still trying see how exactly entertain and engaging is different, this was another step in developing these ideas in my brain. No, not everything has to be innovative, there are traditional means that would fulfill a teaching responsibility, yet at the same time, we are in a innovative world, where everyday, something new and creative is being introduced into our society. If more teachers like her grabbed a hold of innovation and ran with it, I bet our classrooms and schools will be changed and ready for the future to come.

Upgrading the Curriculum: Assessment

Jacobs, Heidi Hayes (ed.) Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World ASCD, 2010 

Chapter 2: Upgrading the Curriculum

The first thing that hit me while reading this chapter was the fact that the author believes that instead of "integrate technology in the curriculum" which is what we have heard all our classes in technology, the author believes the wording should be replace instead of integrate. Integrate technology seems to be a term that teachers do in staff development and where teachers are lost at how to do and seems like extra work. Instead by using the word replace it incorporates something concrete as a replacement. 


The author starts with how assessment can be upgraded and replace in the curriculum.  There are several steps that a school can take to replace their assessment and upgrade it to technology. Step 1 involves developing a pool of assessment replacements Step 2 is to identify the types of technology that do exist currently. The author suggests stretching teachers to use one new told per semester or school year. Step 3 involves students commit to replacing one assessment type per semester. Step 4 involves sharing the assessment upgrades with colleagues and students. This step encourages collaboration and brainstorming. Step 5 involves incepting ongoing sessions for skill and assessment upgrades throughout the year. When students are stretched and measured with new assessment processes, it will help them become students ready for the years 2015 and 2020.


I really like how this book gave practical and very measurable ways to upgrading and replacing technology into the curriculum. We have staff developments that try to talk about incorporating technology into the classroom where the whole school tries to change but it really depend on each individual teacher and their desire to incorporate the technology little bits at a time. Even if it is just one technological element that replaces a traditional assessment while used in the semester and the teacher works at it, I think they will find that that helps them considerably instead of trying to incorporate technology all at once. 


I still don't know what I feel about this author's view on replacing instead of integrating. I have been so conditioned into the saying "integrate technology in the curriculum" that it blows up everything I've thought previously. It is definitely a new way at looking at technology and maybe it is better way at looking at technology. We want our students to be students with a technological mindset in the 21st century and so that may require us as teachers to completely revolutionize the way to teach with our curriculum, assessment, and technology. When you start to think of technology as replacing the traditional ways, it is a complete paradigm shift and ready or not, it is the 21st century. 

Engage me or Enrage me

Prensky, M. (2005) Engage Me or Enrage Me. http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0553.pdf Prensky_Engage.pdf

Marc Prensky write a very entertaining and thought provoking article on the student in our schools and asking the question, "are we engaging them in schools on levels they are used to at home and play?" The article starts off with three types of learner, the motivated, the going through the motions, or the tuned out students. I certainly already see all three types of students in my 4th grade class for my student teaching. The article then goes back in time. The author mentions how in the 1960's, yes their were all three types of students yet at the same time, these students were not expected to be engaged by anything they did. But now, every student expects something to engage their attention and something to push their creativity. Just like the common video games have captions such as "explore..." "challenging..." "build..." the author points out how we don't have these captions for school much anymore. School has become boring to students and they can't wait to go home and engage their brain the way they prefer. So what are we to do? The author believes that the students of our age are sending us a message, that these students want to be engaged in the same level at school and so incorporate these things into the curriculum. 


Yes, I agree that students should be engaged in school and I try to do that every time I teach, yet at the same time, I have this belief in the back of my head where students should not have to always entertained, they are students, this is their responsibility to be in school so they should listen and behave because that is what we expect of them. When I think about this reasoning in my head, I think it comes from an old philosophy of teaching. This was a different age when children were not allowed to talk up to adults, school is where students were sent to everyday to learn. But our society is different now. I don't know if it is child rearing or simply our rapid expansion technological world but we can't treat students the same way we used to. These old tactics are not working. Children need to be engaged, they need to be entertained in all their senses, they need challenging and exciting work for them because now this is what they expect out of life. So teachers need to wake up to the fact, even if they don't like it, that their are other ways of engaging students, even if it may be through gaming. 


This will take what we read about today in our Chapter 3 of Williamson. How to incorporate technology into the curriculum. Our student live off of technology. Therefore, in some way, technology needs to be incorporated so that the students are engaged and are pushed and stretched into young men and women who are ready to become the leaders of our 21st century. 

So, as the author ends his article, student are asking us, are you going to enrage me today or enrage me? The choice is yours. 

Social Networking and Equity

National School Boards Association (NSBA) (2007) Creating and connecting: Research and guidelines on online social and educational networking. Fromhttp://www.nsba.org/site/view.asp?CID=63&DID=41340 or Creatingandconnecting.pdf

This article was a very interesting article illustrating a study done by Microsoft, News Corporation, and Verizon. Social Networking in our age among students is so rampant now that it has even come ahead of Television in the amount of time teens spend on activities. But when educators try to connect social networking ot schools, many times it is shut down and heavily barred down. This study showed that a vast majority of students use their social networking for school work as well as for posting, creating, videos and pictures showing the potential for social networking to be used in the classroom for educational purposes. This article also brings up an interesting note about nonconformists. They are adolescents who, “step outside of online safety and behavior rules.” They are heavy users of media and are highly advanced technologically but they may be average or below average academically.    

This article’s main point is why don’t’ we connect the school to the home, get parents and schools involved in the technology of our students by creatively incorporating social networking into our schools and into our children’s lives in a academic way. This article does touch on technological equity in how incorporating more social networking could work for if students don’t have a computer. The do not give a solution to the problem but they do say that it is up to the school to ensure the equity is reached. They also say that in our ever age, more and more homework is requiring the internet and so students are finding ways to be connected to the internet even if they don’t have resources at home.

The interesting thing about this article was with the nonconformist. This sounds exactly like what was discussed in class today that will come up in our book Copyright Clarity. I haven’t read the book yet, but if it is like what I understood today, then there are students out there who are creating and experimenting and shaking the technology world because they can and because that is how they display themselves.

This article gave me more hope for using social networking in the classroom. I used to feel like social networking shouldn’t be used in the classroom but now, with these good arguments the article brought up, I could see myself using some of these sometime. Yes, we do not want to loose the traditional way of handwriting or face-to-face communication, but since our world is quickly turning towards a more online and high speed world, it is important to bring our students up to date and engaged in our culture as it is. At West Hills where I just finished my first module for student teaching, there were two computer labs but students rarely accessed them and can’t even type in 4^th grade. I would like to, when I return there in January, start to incorporate more technology and social networking either through emails or blog correspondence so even if students don’t have access at home, I am still getting them used to these issues that will be a part of their life in middle and high school.