Kelly Longrich's List: Safe, Ethical and Equitable Use of Technology

• Copyright Fair Use and How it Works for Online Images
• Copyright laws were established not to give the author the right to deny their work to other people, but instead to encourage its creation.
• The goal here is to better understand how to use images others create in a way that is both respectful of the author’s ownership rights and allows others to use it.
• Copyright is a federal law of the United States that protects original works of authorship. A work of authorship includes literary, written, dramatic, artistic, musical and certain other types of works.
• Copyright attaches as soon as the original work is created, and applies to both published and unpublished works.
• Copyright is an automatic right and does not require the author to file special paperwork, as is the case for trademark and patent.

• The copyright owner has the right to do four things (called exclusive rights):

  1. Reproduce the copyrighted work;
  2. Display the copyrighted work publicly;
  3.  Prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work; and
  4. Distribute copies of the copyrighted work to the public by sale, rental or lending, and/or to display the image.
• Copyright does not apply to works in the public domain; words, names, slogans or short phrases (those may have protection in trademark law); blank forms; works that are not original; and government works. This is important to know because if the work is not protected by copyright, then there is no concern whether the Fair Use Doctrine will apply to allow you to use the work.
• The purpose of the Fair Use Doctrine is to allow for limited and reasonable uses as long as the use does not interfere with owners’ rights or impede their right to do with the work as they wish.
• Section 107 of the Copyright Act states:
• he fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright
• In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

• the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

  Source: 17 USC Section 107.
• All four factors are used in determining fair use, with the first (the purpose and character of the use) being the most important the court will examine.
• #1: Do you understand the term fair use?
• #2: Why are you using the image?
• #3: Have you transformed the image?
• #4: How much of the image are you using?
• #5: Are you willing to risk your site being taken down,

• In Summary

  When it comes to photos, when in doubt, assume it’s subject to copyright and don’t use it without the appropriate permission.
• Always, though, if in doubt leave it out (or get permission or ask a lawyer).

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• What is Creative Commons?

   

   Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. 

• What can Creative Commons do for me?

   

   If you want to give people the right to share, use, and even build upon a work you’ve created, you should consider publishing it under a Creative Commons license. CC gives you flexibility (for example, you can choose to allow only non-commercial uses) and protects the people who use your work, so they don’t have to worry about copyright infringement, as long as they abide by the conditions you have specified.
• Our mission
• Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
• Our vision
• Our vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.
• Why CC
• The idea of universal access to research, education, and culture is made possible by the Internet, but our legal and social systems don’t always allow that idea to be realized. Copyright was created long before the emergence of the Internet, and can make it hard to legally perform actions we take for granted on the network: copy, paste, edit source, and post to the Web. The default setting of copyright law requires all of these actions to have explicit permission, granted in advance, whether you’re an artist, teacher, scientist, librarian, policymaker, or just a regular user. To achieve the vision of universal access, someone needed to provide a free, public, and standardized infrastructure that creates a balance between the reality of the Internet and the reality of copyright laws. That someone is Creative Commons.

• What we provide

   

  The infrastructure we provide consists of a set of copyright licenses and tools that create a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates.

• Where we’re going

   

  We build infrastructure at Creative Commons. Our users build the commons itself. We are working to increase the adoption of our tools, to support and listen to our users, and to serve as a trusted steward of interoperable commons infrastructure

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• Technology Accommodations
• IDEA  law requires that appropriate accommodations be made  in instruction and assessment for all students with  disabilities, and that these accommodations be  indicated on the students' IEP.
• An accommodation is a change in how an assessment or  instruction is given, but does not indicate a change in what  is being measured or a change in the material.  The  accommodation should be to allow a student to participate  that would otherwise not be able to.  The accommodations  allow the student the capability to demonstrate what they  know or can do. The use of accommodations with a special  needs student does not change the content of the instruction,  the skill being learned, or the material being  assessed.  An example of an accommodation could include  the use of a calculator for basic computation or giving the  student extended time on a test.  This is very different  from a modification of the educational situation. A  modification for a student actually changes the content,  level, skill, or changes the standard that is being taught or  tested.  Modifications are appropriate for students  whose cognitive ability does not permit the learning of the  same content or level of skill.
• Technology Accommodations
• INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS AND MATERIALS
• 1.  Student can’t identify main ideas or important points.
• 2.  Student can understand the information but can’t read  the required materials.
• 3.  Student is blind or visually impaired.
• 4.  Student is deaf or hard-of-hearing.
• 5.  Student has difficulty with most lessons.
• 6.  Student has difficulty with mathematical concepts and  processes.
• ASSIGNMENTS AND ASSESSMENTS
• 1.  Student has difficulty following instructions.
• 2.  Student has difficulty completing assignments.
• 3.  Student gets confused by complex materials.
• 4.  Student needs help organizing or keeping track of materials.
• 5.  Student has limited writing abilities.
• 6.  Student has difficulty taking tests.

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• A New Understanding of the Digital Divide
• What is the digital divide?
• In fact, in a 2010 Pew study (Technology Trends Among People of Color (1)), laptop ownership among African Americans and whites broke about even and the percentage of Hispanic and African American Internet users, which was 11 percent in 2000, rose to 21 percent in 2010. A 2011 study showed that 83 percent of American adults own a cell phone (Americans and Their Cell Phones (2)). Recent advances in cell phone technology mean that more and more people are using their phones to access the internet. As a result, many previously unconnected populations are connected through their phones. In fact, another Pew study ("For minorities, new 'digital divide' seen" (3)) reported that 51 percent of Hispanics, 46 percent of African Americans, and only 33 percent of whites used their phones to access the Internet.
• So what does this all mean?
• We are looking at a completely different kind of divide. While access has increased substantially, the kind of access varies.
• This creates an entertainment vs. empowerment divide. As one of the Pew studies suggests, you can't fill out a job application through a cell phone or update your résumé on a game console (another way that many minorities report they access the Internet). The divide has shifted from an access issue to a kind of access divide.
• There are groups right now working on making navigation of important sites more accessible to Americans with disabilities.
• Most of the reports about the digital divide center around racial and socio-economic differences (a 2010 study confirmed that household income is the greatest predictor of Internet use (5)).
• However, for those families in rural areas, access is still the number one issue.
• What are some solutions?
• As the studies suggest, the problem isn't access, it's the kind of access. Families, particularly minority families, are lacking in home broadband access. Just recently, Comcast launched Internet Essentials (6), a low-cost Internet service for families receiving free school lunches that is available wherever Comcast provides services.

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• Guest Blogger: Equitable access to technology in education – can there ever be guarantees?
• How can we guarantee equitable access and use of technology to ensure tech literacy and to support meaningful learning for all students?
• Ideas to address the issue ranged from grants for tech, links with businesses and diverting book budgets, to community access projects, providing netbooks and getting students to bring their own tech to class.
• Equality of access can be measured in two ways - having the technology itself within the organisation and ensuring that where the technology is available it is actually used to best advantage.
• Obtaining the technology is only half the battle, all the reasons for not using it have to be addressed and are fundamental to the questions of equitable access.
• In our divided world, tech or otherwise, while we must use our passion to strive for what is true excellence, we also have to ensure that each child, teenager and adult involved in education has equal access to the very best we can provide within our organisation now.
• #Edchat happens weekly on Tuesdays at 9 AM Pacific (17.00 UTC) and 4 PM Pacific (Wed 00.00 UTC).

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• High-Impact Professional Development for Rural Schools
• I've discovered that where you find enthusiastic teachers enjoying persistent classroom success, you will find sustained, collaborative, educator-directed PD programs.
• This month Edutopia focuses on professional development at a small rural elementary school in southwest Missouri. The school is Hartville Elementary School (1), in the town of Hartville (population 613). The program is called eMINTS (2) and is produced by a nonprofit, Missouri-based professional-development organization of the same name.
• For 12 years, eMINTS, which stands for Enhancing Missouri's Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies, has been educating teachers and other learning professionals about how to use technology to enhance inquiry-based learning in K-12 classrooms.
• The eMINTS professional-development program (3) consists of as many as 200 hours of learning time, spread over a two-year period, including in-classroom coaching and follow-up training sessions.
• According to research from the Education Development Center (4) and the Missouri Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis (5) (cited in Learning Point Associates, 2010 (6)) those students attending Missouri schools which received training from eMINTS consistently out-performed their statewide counterparts in state standardized tests.
• A Cultural Shift
• "We want to help teachers learn to be learners again," says eMINTS National Center executive director Monica Beglau. "We want to help them move away from being the people who hold all the knowledge to being the people who actually sit alongside -- not in front of -- their students and become facilitators of learning while continuing to learn themselves."
• So after her school secured a grant to purchase essential tech tools like classroom computers and interactive whiteboards, Wilson embarked on her two-year eMINTS PD experience. She and other educators from the Hartville district gathered once a week for up to four hours of training throughout the school year. "eMINTS focused us on how to teach skills relevant to our kids' futures, from things as simple as transforming a lesson to the whiteboard (7) to how to use Web-based tools like Animoto (8) or GoAnimate (9) to make videos," she reports.
• Teacher Engagement
• A typical PD session, in this case about creativity, unfolds something like this:
• • First 15 minutes: Teachers get settled and the trainer leads them through a fun collective exercise, e.g., each participant picks an image from a group of pictures (famous paintings, wild animals, landscapes) that depicts their feelings about their progress in digesting their eMINTS training experience. 
   
  • Next 30 minutes: The class views a video of creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson on building a creative classroom culture. Discussion follows about how to put the ideas into practice. 
   
  • Next 70 minutes: The class divides into groups, and each group uses simple materials to construct a product inspired by Robinson's words. Groups reflect on the process and draw conclusions about how to implement a similar project in their classrooms. 
   
  • Next 50 minutes: The class focuses on how to develop an assessment tool to measure creativity, and teams reflect on how to use the tool in their classrooms. 
   
  • Final 15 minutes: Participants redo the pick-an-image exercise, this time to reflect their feelings about what they've learned about creativity, followed by closing thoughts on how they will implement what they've learned that day in their classrooms.  
• Four Essentials to Successful PD
• • Duration: Aim for 40 to 50 hours per year, and not in bunches but comfortably spaced out across the calendar so teachers have enough time to digest what they've learned and experiment in their classrooms. 
   
  • Coherence: Training must be explicitly connected to classroom practices as well as in sync with what the district, the principal, and the teacher believe is important to success. 
   
  • Relevance: Training must be applicable in the classroom right away; principals should provide the support and tools required for teachers to put their training into action. 
   
  • Coaching: Have an instructional specialist available periodically in the classroom to provide support and suggestions as the teacher tries new strategies. 
• The cost of the program, according to Beglau, is approximately $22,000 per classroom to implement a full and comprehensive program, including all the technology (hardware and software), teacher training, in-classroom trainer support, extensive resources, and follow-up. Introductory and shorter programs for less than $100 per class are also available.
• Consistent Results
• According to a Learning Point Associates study (11) in 2010, ten years of eMINTS PD research has consistently demonstrated that the program increases teachers' use of technology to support inquiry-based learning, and students in grades 3-6 who receive this high-quality, technology-integrated instruction outperform students who do not.
• Mark Piper, the principal at Hartville, has been more than pleased with the results. "By helping our teachers with training they can apply directly in their classrooms, we not only improved our test results, we changed the entire culture of our school. And our focus has grown from improvement to excellence."

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• Digital Citizenship Means Character Education for the Digital Age
• The "two lives" approach assumes that students should unplug when they enter school, and then plug back in when they leave and reenter the zone of continual connectivity that had no place during the school day. This approach assumes that the digital technology so integral to their lives is too costly or distracting to use responsibly or effectively while at school. Most important, it assumes that studying issues related to the personal, social, and environmental effects of a technological lifestyle have no place in school. This leaves our children to fend for themselves as they come to grips with issues of digital citizenship, cyber safety, and the responsible use of technology.
• On the other hand, the "one life" perspective assumes the opposite -- that the most important job before us is to help students understand issues of digital responsibility, and to do so at school as part of a digital health initiative.
• The reality of students' cyber lives has thrust upon us a third approach: creating character education programs tuned to digital youth that are proactive and aggressive. This will help integrate students' digital activities within the context of the communities in which they live, both local and digital.
• Character Education for the Digital Age
• The sudden emergence of cyber issues that literally defines K-12 policy toward technology integration has created a dire need for ethical clarity and behavioral policy. The digital age beckons a new era of character education, aimed directly at addressing the opportunities and challenges of living a digital lifestyle.
• More than 40 years later, sex education is a fairly well-established part of most high school health curricula. This development is due, in large part, to a concern for the safety of our children, who, without an informed understanding of the risks of sexual behavior, were clearly jeopardizing their safety in a number of ways.
• We need to talk to children about how to live digital lifestyles that are informed, safe, and healthy. We need to set this discussion within the context of encouraging students to develop the many social and professional opportunities that the digital world provides. This discussion needs to happen at school as well as at home.
• The inclusion of digital health and digital citizenship in our educational lives is inevitable.

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• Rules to Stop Pupil and Teacher From Getting Too Social Online
• Faced with scandals and complaints involving teachers who misuse social media, school districts across the country are imposing strict new guidelines that ban private conversations between teachers and their students on cellphones and online platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
• But the stricter guidelines are meeting resistance from some teachers because of the increasing importance of technology as a teaching tool and of using social media to engage with students.
• “I am glad that it is not more restrictive. I understand we need to keep kids safe. I think that we would do more good keeping kids safe by teaching them how to use these tools and navigate this online world rather than locking it down and pretending that it is not in our realm.”
• Nicholas Provenzano, 32, who has been teaching English for 10 years at Grosse Pointe High School in Michigan, acknowledged that “all of us using social media in a positive way with kids have to take 15 steps back whenever there is an incident.” But he said the benefits were many and that he communicated regularly with his students in an open forum, mostly through Twitter, responding to their questions about assignments. He has even shared a photo of his 6-month-old son. On occasion, he said, he will exchange private messages about an assignment or school-related task. He said that in addition to modeling best practices on social media use, he has been able to engage some students on Twitter who would not raise their hand in class.

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• Leverage Social Media
• There is a misguided stigma about social media and, as a result, it is often banned in schools. However, there are a growing number of passionate educators who have embraced social media as a powerful tool for learning.
• Social media is all about conversations that center around user-created content. When structured in a pedagogically sound fashion, learning activities that incorporate social media allow students to apply what they have learned through creation. This fosters higher order thinking skills and caters to a wide range of learning styles. Social media tools allow educators to authentically engage students as they encourage involvement, discussion, communication, collaboration and creativity. These include utilizing mainstream tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, as well as specialized ones such as Voicethread, Glogster, Animoto and Prezi.
• Teachers can set up a class blog to foster creative writing and reflection or as an alternative to a school newspaper.
• The ability to comment on any blog increases both student and community engagement.
• A shift toward incorporating social media into education provides a golden opportunity to teach digital responsibility and citizenship to our learners, an area where many schools are failing. When doing so, we must ensure that policies are in line with this change, teachers are supported through professional development on how to effectively use social media in the classroom, and parents are educated on its value.

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• At a Tech-Savvy School, Smart Questions About City's New Social Media Policy
• The guidelines state that teachers cannot "friend" or follow students through sites like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube. But they can ask students to join professional school pages or forums related to a particular class.
• The students participate in many social media projects for classes, including one called Sixteen in which they use Skype with teenagers around the world, and another that involved making a Web site about Zimbabwe. The school also has a social studies class called Disaster Camp in which they develop social media applications to help victims of earthquakes and hurricanes. They use Twitter to collect information.
• “I feel like the more dangerous thing is private interactions,” she said. “If we’re direct messaging young people on Twitter or even texting, that could potentially become dangerous. But I feel that public interactions are not that serious because they’re fully public.”
• The principal, Alisa Berger, offered this advice to her staff: “Every time you interact with a student from the school you have to be your best professional self.”
• “After graduation at 4 p.m., I will accept all of your friend requests.”
• In the meantime, the city's Department of Education blocks Facebook and YouTube from school computers by default unless a principal requests a change. A spokeswoman, Marge Feinberg, said, "At this point we are still using this policy and we will let you know what filtering functions will be available next year when we implement the new policy" on social media

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• The State of Educational Blogging in 2012
• So we’ve surveyed educators on their use of blogs and combined it with benefits of blogging responses.
• Majority of the response were by teachers (72%) followed by students (12%).
• Roughly a third were based in Elementary/Primary schools (41%) followed by Middle/Junior (27%) and High School (23%).
• Majority of respondents were introduced to using blogs through a professional development session / workshop(31%)  or via a work colleague (22%).   Other ways they were introduced to blogging included college class, book and websites.
• Although our survey didn’t include geographical location of respondents statistics for all blogs hosted on Edublogs.org from Jun 25, 2011 to Jul 25, 2012 highlights United States is the main user of blogs (accounts for 63.1 % of visits to Edublogs blogs) followed by Canada (10.7%), Australia (8.5%) and United Kingdom (7.3%).
• How blogs are being used
• Majority of respondents told us they mainly used their blogs for class and/or student blogging and a high proportion also had their own personal/personal blog (39%).
• Majority of respondents said they used the student blogs for global collaboration and authentic audience (43%), reflective blogging (44%) and collaboration / discussions (38%).
• Students are more reflective about their own learning because of their blogs. I love that they are able to look at their learning, think about the process, and then write about the experience. What a valuable opportunity! Additionally, the kids love feedback that goes beyond our classroom walls. When someone from another state or country responds, they get SO excited!
• Blogging opened up the possibilities of audience in new ways. So, when they are considering writing or publishing for an audience other than me, the teacher, that really impacts how they view what they d
• Students love seeing their work on the Internet and adore getting comments from people. It motivates them to write as it gives them an audience that is real. I think they find it hard to be motivated when they know the writing is just going in their books and will only be read by themselves, the teacher and their parents. The blog opens up a whole new world of people who can offer encouragement and feedback.
• The blogging experience has forced the students to do more reflection on their learning and has allowed them to showcase products they have produced with online tools.
• Students take pride in having an online space and attempt to keep work accurate and pleasing to the eye. It extends their learning beyond the classrooms and increases their exposure to other teachers across the globe such as the Student Blogging Challenge, Flat Classroom Projects.

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• Introduction

  Each day, students of all ages, colors and backgrounds, f

  rom communities large and small, urban and rural as

  well as suburban, all over the United States and the world, are tapping into a wide range of technology tools and

  services to enhance their learning productivity as well as add real world relevancy and context to their studies
• t is worth noting that after years of

  internet safety instruction, a very similar percentage of students (48 percent of high school students and 44

  percent of middle school students) say that they know how to be safe and protect themselves when on line.
• Students are already very effectively

  implementing this student vision of socially-based, un-tethered and digitally-rich learning on their own, in and out

  of school, with or without the assistance and support of their teachers or schools.
• tors and 1,391 technology leaders representing 6,541 public and private

  schools from 1,340 districts. Schools from urban (34 percent), suburban (29 percent) and rural (37 percent)

  communities are represented.
• And in 2010, almost half of all 6th grade girls and over a third of 6th grade boys are regularly updating

  their social networking site, an increase of over 125 percent since 2005. All of this despite the fact that

  many of those 6th graders are not old enough to legally register on many social networking sites
• Almost 73 percent of 6th graders have an MP3 player today – compared to one-third in 2005.

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• How to Teach Internet Safety to Younger Elementary Students
• With children spending time online at younger and younger ages, it is vital that we explicitly teach young children how to protect themselves online.
• First, the transfer of handling strangers in "real life" to those in virtual environments is not automatic.
• It needs to be taught.
• Second, while most "Stranger Danger" programs teach that strangers are scary, mean and want to hurt or abduct children, this contradicts the way collaboration occurs between strangers online. Not all strangers are dangerous. Lastly, in "real life," students can walk or run away from a potential threat. In an online environment, the danger is inside a student's home and hard to escape without the necessary skills for handling tough situations.

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