Capstone Things 8-14

Capstone Things 8-14

Creative Commons

In my own practice as a Media Specialist Thing 8 offers an opportunity to reflect on my own practices.  Creative Commons is a tool I was only vaguely familiar with prior to this course. In accessing materials online I was always careful about plagiarism and giving attribution in all concerns except for images.  I am not proud to say that quite frequently I would use images without permission for my own use and sometimes for academic pursuits. 

Like most Media Specialists I function as the de facto copyright awareness officer.  I would always carefully explain to my staff the ramifications of copying videos or of showing videos without public display license etc. etc.   I didn’t do a good job however on instructing them on their copyright over materials they created.  Mostly out of indifference and lack of opportunity.  I plan to use Creative Commons for myself and to teach my staff to use it. 

Digital Images

The availability of digital images suitable for curricular applications has exploded in recent years.  There are plenty of resources that offer them for use.  There are still other resources allow the either the adult or student user to be an originator of content. The online sharing and storage capabilities of sites like Picassa  have created huge educational image creation usage and retrieval opportunities.  As a teacher the resources present themselves as good curricular assists.  Visual learners benefit from teachers having access to such rich resources.  Hands on learners benefit from the opportunity to be content providers and sharers.   Non- linguistic representations of curricular content offers a direct boost to student achievement and mastery of material. 

The end user of digital images goes from passive to dynamic with the use of digital story telling.  Obviously the teacher as a digital image story teller has many curricular applications from original to remedial.  For the student the digital image story telling possible through the use of something like Photostory 3 or Animoto gives them a chance to express their learning in a non-written format

A plan for the future – applying digital story telling

Digital story telling holds a great deal of interest to me as a Media Specialist.  In working with staff and students a very common issue is timeliness of instruction and the need for 24/7 education flexibility.  So much of what is done in the high school is teacher centric and tied to seat time.  Curriculum is delivered in set pieces to a captive audience.  Learning, however, takes place in many non- traditional settings and at all hours.  I am not a classroom teacher so it would be difficult to attempt this solo.  I will team up with teachers who are looking to expand their instruction outside the walls of the school and outside of the constraints of the school day.

As I envision it I will work with teachers who have research projects that require out of school work by their students.  The teacher and I will give original instruction in resources and techniques needed for research.  We will also create digital story telling assists at key junctures in the research project.  Students will be able to refer to these short instructional videos/photostories as needed and in the own time at their own convenience. 

The plan will to be to build up a library of student research assistance videos that will be linked on school website.  Topics to include using various databases to the fullest, citations generators,  online searching tools, MLA format instruction and the like. 

This activity aligns with NETS standards 2a, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4d, 6b, and 6d.   The NETS alignment moves toward promoting both self-sufficiency and flexibility in receiving instruction for the student.  For the teachers involved the initial time consumption in producing the enhanced instruction will offset by the saving of time re-teaching to individuals who may have missed the instruction originally or my need self-directed rather than teacher directed remediation.