Right in the thick of it.....Learning Log 1.2

Module 5: Selecting Resources for Inquiry

"Does a school district have an obligation to provide more than the booklet? How should districts and/or teacher unions ensure that teachers are familiar with these new conditions for respecting copyright? What are the consequences of violating the terms, wittingly or otherwise?"

I really appreciated this prompt as it gave me some focus for this Module's Learning Log. In looking at the resources for this module including the ERAC, the Copyright Matters booklet, and other blog posts, I am quickly feeling overwhelmed. The next assignment in our project is creating the Annotated Bibliography - ie. resource selection for our inquiry unit. This now feels like a daunting task with all of these guidelines that I wasn't quite aware of before.

Image Retrieved from Cayman News

Like many teachers, I was aware of the basic copyright restrictions through the Copyright Matters Resource. The one that stuck in my head is the 10% rule: for educational purposes copies could be made of up to 10% of a work for classroom use (Noel & Snel, 2016). This resource is a very handy tool for understanding basic copyright guidelines when it comes to print resources, but does not begin to touch digital resources. As many in the discussion board have already posted - this is an area that we hadn't really considered before. For example, I was unaware that I could use my personal Netflix account in the classroom as it violated the Terms of Use agreement with Netflix which is for household use only (Netflix Terms of Use, 2017). Additionally, any music played in the classroom is to be for educational purposes only - ie. it is not allowed for a teacher to have music playing in the background while the students are working (Noel & SNel, 2016). I am learning these guidelines as a result of this course - not through any effort on the part of the district(s) I belong to.

As so many of us are unaware of all of the guidelines surrounding copyright, I think it prudent that district's provide more than just the booklet to inform educators. I believe this topic is worthy of an annual Pro-D (though one wouldn't necessarily need to attend annually), allowing educators to brush up on the topic. This would allow teachers to have designated time to brush up on any changes that may have occurred since they last familiarized themselves with copyright law. Though the Pro-D could be presented annually (for the benefit of any teachers who may be new to the system), teachers should only be required to attend every 5 years (or so - depending on when major changes come about).

Continuing On.....Beginning the Bibliography

So, assignment two is fast approaching and it is to complete an annotated bibliography. I truly appreciate how in this course the assignments build upon themselves and we end up leaving (hopefully) with a completed unit ready to use in the classroom. I knew that I wanted to come at the annotated bibliography intelligently, that is, use a bibliography that I could use within my inquiry unit. That means jumping into my inquiry unit earlier than I was hoping -- who doesn't love to procrastinate on that big project after all? As I am currently on maternity leave I was struggling with how to come up with a list of resources that I would make available to students; not being attached to a school library at the moment does pose a few challenges - but I am very grateful for this one - I learned a lesson!

I decided to come at the resource curation from the point of view of students outside the classroom. Yes, I agree with our instructor that teaching how to use search databases is a much more intelligent way of going about resource selection; however, I also feel that if I am teaching students how to learn, then why not teach them with the tools I know they have available to them? Namely, Google. So, simply with the use of Google and some out of the box searching, I have managed to select seven resources already that I think are pretty great. My first excellent find was a published journal exactly on the inquiry topic: The Journal of Social Media in Society. This journal is a scholarly publication that is freely available and fully accessible online! Aside from this excellent resource that far surpassed my expectations I have selected novels at varying reading levels, non-fiction resources on my topic, as well as blogs by experts! I am getting jazzed up about the possibility of putting this unit into place with these excellent tools for students! Who knew resource selection would help me feel that this project is possible?

Module 6: Curation - continued!

There were two articles in this module that I found particularly helpful, and I am noting here for the sole (well, almost) purpose that I can easily refer back to them at my convenience. I have noticed that during my TL Diploma I have come across so many excellent resources through course readings, the professor's specific recommendations, or other students - yet in the busyness of the course I have lost track of so many! I am hoping that this blog will help in that regard, yet I digress.

The first article that I have found to be exceptionally valuable is Abilock's "How can students know whether the information they find online is true -- or not?". The article points our four key aspects in judging online resources - importance, trustworthiness, accuracy, and info-graphics - and gives advice on how to judge each part. The article also points out the usefulness of Wikipedia and how to teach students to use it effectively; ie. how to judge which pages are more trustworthy. I enjoyed the overall readability of the article as well as the clear points to look out for when judging an article's usefulness.

The second article from this module that I am noting for safekeeping is Bromann-Bender's "You can't fool me: Website evaluation". This article provides a comprehensive approach to teaching website evaluation including how to effectively introduce the topic (with some example website), and some pre-search tips such as using boolean search phrases, and also includes an excellent handout for students to use during their evaluations. I appreciated that the authors acknowledge that teaching this lesson to students doesn't eliminate all poor website choices, but it does open a dialogue regarding website evaluation. The one negative aspect of this article is that it is slightly outdated. In the pre-search tips Bromann-Bender suggests using the Internet Public Library (www.ipl.org) for student searches as a way of narrowing the search to better resources. However, while the IPL is still available for use it is no longer maintained and no new articles are added. However, the remainder of the article was useful and and well worth keeping a copy of.



References Used

Abilock, D. (2012). How can students know whether the information they find online is true – or not? Educational Leadership 69(6): 70-74.

Bromann-Bender, J. (2013). “You Can’t fool me: Website evaluation.” Library Media Connection 31(5):42-45.

Hall, M., Elliott, K., & Meng, J. (2017). Using the PAD (Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance) Model to Explain Facebook Attitudes and Use Intentions. Journal Of Social Media In Society, 6(1), 144-167. Retrieved from http://thejsms.org/index.php/TSMRI/article/view/230/118

Netflix Terms of Use (2017). Help.netflix.com. Retrieved 4 October 2017, from https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse

Noel, W. & Snel, J. (2016). Copyright matters! (4rd edition). Ottawa, ON: Council of Ministers of Education (CMEC), Canadian School Boards Association (CSBA), and Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF). Rertrieved 4 October 2017, from http://cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/291/Copyright_Matters.pdf