Understanding Creative Commons - Case Study

Learning to teach online PDF
Copyright and creative commons is particularly important in the educational context where content is often copied, shared, reused and remixed by both teachers and students in the learning and teaching process. This episode explains the basics of creative commons. We examine some of the different license terms and combinations, and offer some insights into which might be better suited for educational purposes. We also discuss how to generate your own creative commons license and what to do when your work is not attributed by others.

Reference: Australian Learning and Teaching Council

4 ways 2 motivate: keeping it real with students

Earlier today I asked three questions on twitter:

1. What steps can you take to help a student who is negative because of the effects of his/her procrastination? #edchat
2. Do students feel comfortable bringing their problems to you? #edchat
3. How do you introduce a positive element into the assignments you give students? #edchat

If we want positive upbeat students, we need to be the same. We may believe that such a climate is impossible to achieve. But it begins with recognizing, valuing, and rewarding upbeat student behaviours and attitudes. The choice is ours.

Use upbeat positive language
Creating and maintaining a positive class environment depends on the language we use. The power of words has a huge impact on student work as it does on student performance. Telling a student they “should” have studied for the test rather than “could” have studied for the test has an effect on student performance. The word “should” is quite judgemental while the word “could” allows for gentle suggestion, correction, or criticism.

Capitalize on students' needs
Students learn best when motivations for learning in a classroom satisfy their own goals. Some of the needs your students may bring to the classroom are the need to learn something in order to complete a particular task or activity, the need to seek new experiences, the need to perfect skills, the need to overcome challenges, the need to become competent, the need to succeed and do well, the need to feel involved and to interact with other people. Satisfying such needs is rewarding in itself, and such rewards sustain learning more effectively than do grades. Design assignments, in-class activities, and discussion questions to address these kinds of needs. (Source: McMillan and Forsyth, 1991)

Engage students in the learning.
Students learn by doing, making, writing, designing, creating, solving. Watching a movie, listening to a lecture, completing worksheets, reduces students' motivation and curiosity. Pose questions. Avoid telling students something when you can ask them.Encourage students to ask questions, suggest approaches to a problem or to guess the results which are meaningful to them. Use small group work.

What makes my class "motivating?"
Ask students to recall two recent class periods, one in which they were highly motivated and one in which their motivation was low. Each student makes a list of specific aspects of the two classes that influenced his or her level of motivation, and students then meet in small groups to reach consensus on characteristics that contribute to high and low motivation. What characteristics emerge as major contributors to student motivation?

• Instructor's enthusiasm
• Relevance of the material
• Organization of the course
• Appropriate difficulty level of the material
• Active involvement of students
• Variety
• Rapport between teacher and students
• Use of appropriate, concrete, and understandable examples

Motivation is not about using the latest gimmicks or incentives. All you have to do is love your subject, be upbeat, watch negative language, engage students in learning, and ask them what kind of classes they like. In the end, keep it real.

Open 6 doors: one lesson at a time

If we are serious about improving teaching, then we need to begin to open the doors to one another’s classes. This article is not suggesting that the system is broken, but rather it is about giving suggestions on how we might begin to see improvement in the school one lesson at a time.

Anticipate improvement to be continual, gradual, and incremental
If we believe that we can wave a magic wand and expect that improvement in our classes overnight, we are living in a dream. Learning takes time. In spite of the new reforms, initiatives or creativities; change may be thrown on us quickly, but it is really a slow and incremental process. Continue to invent small changes in the system and keep track in order that they may be shared.

Focus on student learning
The point of teaching is student learning. If we forget this point, then measuring success of students will be an impossible task. We need to begin asking one another how these changes are improving students learning in order that we might stay on track and not get lost in excitement of change.

Focus on the teaching
Teachers come and go. Teaching on the other hand focuses on the methods and the tools. Collaboration is key to scripting our approach. Our script is looking at what we value, what we want to improve, what tools we are going to use, what benchmarks we are going to use. Once we begin examine our methods and tools, and then improvement will begin to emerge.

Improve with context
Improvements in teaching do not begin at the University, at the Ministry nor at the Board Office. They begin and end in the classrooms where our students learn and our teachers teach. Teachers have known forever what works in one classroom might not work in another. On Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs we see innovation being spread like wild fire. Innovation needs to be tried out over and over again with adjustments as we encounter different classrooms. Traditional methods of weekend workshops and the like do not always allow for improvement to take place in the classroom as they are far too often disconnected to your context in the classroom. Make the innovation real and in context and begin to see improvements emerge continually, gradually, and incrementally.

Take responsibility
Improvement doesn’t happen on its own. It is developed in context and engages the learners though working with other highly qualified professionals to entrust change. If we, as teachers, are the only ones who can entrust change, then we need to seek out the tools, the research, and the best solution to the problem of improving our teaching.

Learn from experience
Each new teacher that enters a classroom starts from scratch. They are capable of solving problems, trying new approaches, and developing their own knowledge base for teaching. But what is missing is their experience. So the team of teachers who have been working together for the long run, incrementally changing and storing professional knowledge might be effective, but that knowledge and experience needs to be shared. New teachers to the profession need to find a mentor, while experienced teachers need to provide a means to share their insights. How else can we get better over time?

Once we begin opening the doors to one another’s classrooms, we might begin to see what we have learned about teaching. The fruits of this learning, might emerge in school improvement over time.

Evernote

Great tool for students. My question is who owns the copyright?

Grading : DR. Douglas Reeves

Which class would you choose?

	Classroom A	Classroom B	Classroom C
Similarities	5o minute class about to begin, students in rows of desks, Students with binders and books, posters in the room, high yield strategies posted, teachers desk, computers, interactive whiteboard, and similar atmosphere, teachers welcome students and say "Let's get started"
9 a.m.	Teacher A checks homework Calls on students for attendance	Teacher B reviews yesterday's lesson Teacher B assigns new twist to the same problem Students present an approach and solution to the new problem	Teacher C asks students short answer review questions in a warm-up style Teacher checks homework and does attendance by calling on students for answers.
9:10	Teacher A presents a problem to students Students answer specific questions related to the problem Teacher B emphasizes specific methods to solving the problem	Teacher B presents the task of the day and monitors progress Students work at on it independently Teacher takes attendance	Teacher C distributes worksheets with similar problems Students work independently Teacher C monitors work Teacher C notices confusions and demonstrates how to problem solve
9:20	Students begin working on a handout. Teacher A asks that they stay on task. Class reviews the work by reading answers aloud from the handout.	Teacher B suggests students continue their work in small groups. Small group leaders share problems with teacher who writes them on the whiteboard Class discussion ensues	Teacher C presents another worksheet with more challenging problems Students work independently
9:40	Teacher assigns homework Students get a head-start on homework	Teacher B highlights a good method to solving the problems No homework assigned	Teacher conducts a quick oral review Teacher assigns homework
9:50	Class dismissed

Call for Action

In my reading of Getting Started the authors ask the the questions: What do we expect our students to learn? How will we know they have learned? How will respond when students don’t learn?

To answer these questions, we need to build a collaborative culture in schools and organizing teams to develop mission, vision, values and goals. What is the school we are trying to create? What is our purpose? If we are serious about the implementation of collective commitments to move our schools in the intended direction of technology and creativity we need to continuously promote, protect and defend the vision and values.

Let’s explore this a little further: What are we planning for? What are we modelling as a staff to our students (you can’t give what you don’t got)? What do we monitor? What do we celebrate? What are we willing to confront? How are we prepared to allocate time, energy, money? What other questions are driving our school?
It is not about recreating schools but redefining and prioritizing our focus for our respective districts and schools.

To start you on your journey explore the following link:

32 ways to use Google Apps

What’s your story?