Here are the updates I have made to our Skype conversation for using the Smartphone.  Comments are appreciated!

Holographs- Future Meeting Tools?

I know this is somewhat Star Wars possible currently, however, this will be a cool way to attend a meeting. 

Digital Music Delivery

The current technology we all use for this week's blog is digital music.  There are many benefits, problems, and challenges that we face using this type of music delivery system.  The benefit of digital music is you no longer have to carry around a tape player, cd player, or small player.  Phone designers have integrated a digital music player into it.  Problems that occur with using this technology are the restrictions of personal phone use at work, as many businesses restrict such activities.  For students, the school district's technology policy determines how their phone may be used in the educational institution.  The challenge facing the digital music consumer is the ability to place all of your music on your phone.  I use iTunes for my iPad/Ipod, and my family uses Itunes for their iphones.  I have a Google play account where I can access my music on the cloud from any device, such as my Android phone, Ipad, or computer, which is handy.  It gives me one place where I know I can access my music when I need it for work or pleasure.  Digital music allows us to listen to music and celebrate events in our lives.  Music reflects emotion, therefore allows the user to reflect his or her mood, happiness, or sadness.  Music is a part of human celebration as part of life and as we pass.  When my father passed, we had the  Irish song "Too ra lo ra" playing during the funeral service.  I still get choked up when I perform or sing Amazing Grace, as that was a part of his service.  In order to improve the delivery of this product, having access no matter your player, such as phone, tablet, computer, or internet will make the use of digital music a better experience for the user.

Apple iPad

Making the cloud work for you

The cloud has become a place to store files in quantity.  Most services offer large files offerings, where you can purchase more online cloud storage if needed.  Skydrive is my go to tool of choice, however it has one flaw:  It will not work on the antiquated computer I work with at work, and the system treats it as a "social" network.  Icloud offers opportunities to upload and download files between work and home, however, the files will only open with pages, numbers, or keynote, again due to the antiquated technology I work with.  This made Google docs my go to program to share files.  Recently, I have not been able to use Google docs as I have in the past, where I woudl upload files and then print them at work.  I guess they think I am checking my personal email versus actually uploading files that will assist me in doing my job.  Dropbox is a great tool to use and works on my older computer.  Recently there have been problems uploading and downloading files from the shared folders.  Working in the 21st century with a 20th century technology philosophy, have a great evening!

Copyright Video

Copyright Video

Suggestions will be appreciated.

Working with your Technological Limitations

School systems have a variety of internet use policies in place for the educational use of technology whether it is portable or wired.  Being an educator who uses technology in the classroom, one task is to make sure that the use of technology is in compliance with your local systems policies.  As an example, Google and Icloud are accessible at work, while Live.com is not.  This is due to the social media MS has placed into the live.com environment. While this was a problem at first, I found an add on from Google that uploads my office documents to my Google drive.  This was a very handy tool, and is part of Google's business add ons.  I adapted how my software worked together to get the best results for my system's internet policies. 

Copyright in the Classroom

Rubrics make assessment easier for the learner and instructor.  The learner knows what the instructor is looking for concerning how they will be evaluated individually and as a team.  The instructor can observe and assess the learners level of performance based on how the learner interacts within the learning community.  The group presentation and individual effort rubrics on page 45 and 46 of Paloff's and Pratt's book, Collaborating online,  offer two well thought out rubrics for each aspect of online and individual effort.  Using Google docs, I have had online teams assess their performance as well as the performance of their team mates.  With this tool, students were able to give honest feedback without feeling peer pressure.

Learners make a decision about learning online in a collaborative environment.  Teammates can assist apprehensive learners by reaching out them via email, video chat, or a phone call, to help them ease their fears, or clarify what is needed for the team to be successful. Having a rubric allows the learner to see the expectations of the project.  This will assist the apprehensive learner in making a decision about how they will be assessed.  Feedback by the instructor will allow the learner to be guided through a coaching process that allows the learner to be successful.  For learners with disabilities, the assessment shows growth through the learning objective.  An alternative rubric could used in such a case for that student or population of students. 

Reference:

Paloff, R., Pratt, K., (2005) Collaborating online,  Josey-Bass Publisher

Storyboard - Copyright in the Classroom

1 Copyright for Student Use:  How to comply with the law.	2 Copyright in its basic definition is the protection of another persons creative work in writing, music, photography, art, or another form of an idea being recorded.	3 Copyright is confusing for learners to grasp.	4 Plagiarism is a copyright infringement where a student takes someone else's ideas, and claims them for his or her own.
5 Music is downloaded using file sharing services all the time.  Many artists such as Metallica, want their music protected.  They took Napster to court.  When the dust settled, Napster had to stops sharing their music.	6 Film is abused as well.  In many places, a showing of a movie on DVD can be interpreted as showing the film without the copyright holders permission.  In one school system, the faculty was banned from showing any portion of a Disney movie in their lessons.	7 What is a learner to do?  Being enrolled in a government, academic, or religious institution, these organizations have permission to use parts of the total work without permission from the copyright holder.	8 Fairuse is the policy that allows these institutions to use the material.  I like to call this the 10% rule.  In music, 10% can be used by these institutions without permission.  As an example, a 3 minute song can have up to 1.8 minutes of playtime.  This is the reason why music apps can play a small snippet of the song.
9 In literature, 10% can be used for less than 1000 words of text.  Any use over that amount, permission from the copyright holder must be granted.	10 As an example, my wife was presenting her materials at a literature conference.  While planning her presentation, one of the book's author refused to let her use a form published in the book she used in teaching.  She said it was a central part of her presentation.  She found a similar sheet whose author granted permission for her to use in the presentation.	11 When the Disney movie Mulan came out, marching band arrangements for the music were not completed.  I called Disney to see what I had to do.  The music librarian at the Orlando Disney complex told me that "Disney realizes that people use our materials all the time without permission."  I replied that I wanted to follow the law both ethically and as a  teaching tool for my students.  He gave me the phone number for Disney's copyright lawyers in California.  Within fifteen minutes, I had contracts with permission to arrange four songs for $50 each.	12 In writing, some of our more famous plagiarists are Vice President Joe Biden, and journalist Maureen Dowd. Both used someone else's creative work without permission.
13 In one of the Batman movies, a famous sculpture comes to life.  The artist to created the sculpture took the movie production company to court, as animating the sculpture without the artists permission altered the initial work.	14 With the web being more interactive, many authors and creative people are allowing people to use their materials through "Creative Commons" licensing.  The symbol lets others know how they can use the materials on a webpage for their own work.	15 Each symbol represents a different level of permission for their web content.  Clarification is given upfront for materials.	16 Obtaining permission from copyright holders has become very easy with the use of email.  Many responses come back within one hour.
17 Guidelines that help- If someone else creates it, you are buying their book, dvd, cd, or music track to read, watch or listen to.  You have bought the delivery method being used. If you create the work as a book, dcd, cd or music track, you control who gets to read, watch, or listen to your work. You control who the creative work works for you	18 Copyright is confusing for many people.  The easiest way to remember how to follow the law is this: If you create the creative work, you control it. If someone else creates the creative work, they control it

Collaborative Interaction

Collaborative interaction has evolved from working within face to face groups of people to online formats where people can collaborate virtually. Wikispaces offer a Web 2.0 experience of working with others using text, graphics, sound, and video from many different locations. Kanuka states that "philisophy inspires our activities and gives direction to our practices" (Anderson, 2012, p.93). While this format is constructivist in nature, the people working within this environment learn to work together. My own experiences working with learners creating wikispace pages taught the students that when they stopped fussing about their pages, they had reached consensus about the look, content, and graphics usage for their page. Learners who participate in this type of learning have to develop and use a scholarly voice versus their texting voice on their phones. It was interesting to watch my learners begin to use what we had completed together, and create their own wikipages with their own interests. With the advent of cloud computing, online collaboration has become mainstream. In Google docs, you can share, edit, and collaborate on the same document. In Windows Live, you are able to share documents, collaborate, and edit online with changes occurring to the original from each team member. Microsoft OneNote allows real time collaboration in the application using sharepoint. IBM has launched it's own version of cloud computing that allows online collaboration. Each of these tools allow teams of people to be creative and productive. Reference: Anderson, T., Theory and practice of online learning, Marquis Book Printing.

Collaborative Interaction in Educational Technology

Collaboration has become commonplace in the business environment. In order for people to work within the highly communicative and collaborative nature of working, learners must be able to work within both aspects their job. Computers are tools that people use in many positions now for communication and collaboration. In Heather Kanuka's work, she illustrates many of the positives of using online education which were "argument formation capabilities, increased written communication skills, complex problem solving abilities, and opportunities for reflective deliberation"(Kanuka, 2012). These skills are components of working collaboratively online. While communication is the first priority, effective communication and collaboration help teams of people accomplish tasks and projects. Reference: Anderson, T.(2008). Theory and practice of online education, Athabasca University, Edmonton, AB

Equivalent Distance Education

According to the authors of our readings this week, online education must take a different approach to offer an equivalent education. This learning goals, objectives and evaluations will be very similar to a face to face classroom, yet will not be able to deliver the same experience for the student, due to geography, time differences, and schedules that people have. Equivalent education is the ability to offer the content and learning of a classroom or course in an online environment. My father in law passed away this week, so please keep him in your thoughts as we go through the process of getting him buried.