What is BlogThis! ?

What is BlogThis! ?

Interesting test...

Real American Heroes Salutes Mr. and Mrs. AYP Getter!

Yes, we did it! Congrats to all for the great work last year and congrats on hitting AYP!

Google Teacher Academy

Well, I finally did it. I have wanted to go to the Google Teacher Academy since it started...but they have always been too far away. In September they have one in Chicago and I think that is about as close as they will get to Cinci. People have raved about the one day event and I really want to be a part of it....not just for the knowledge but for the professional network Google Certified Teachers....I want to be a part of that.

Part of the entry involved a video....I was over the time limit, but I hope that isn't a HUGE strike against me.

Song of the Week: MGMT

Improv Everywhere

Improv is a group of people who put on spontaneuous events. Well, the events are well planned but to the unsuspecting participant it certainly seems spontaneous. If you ever watched the old TV show Fame, or Grease, or even HS Musical then you've seen the spontaneous musical moments when people just start singing and dancing. Improv Everywhere does a great one at the mall food court.



A food court worker spills lemonade and needs a few napkins to clean up the mess and bursts into song. Other performers "called Agents" start singing as well.

Fun stuff!

Google Custom Search

In my previous post I blathered on about how I feel children (at some age) need to learn how to search Google (or whatever is the predominant search tool) in all of its massiveness. Google has created a tool that may provide a nice bridge for instructors that are trying to do just that. A good teacher builds bridges for children from the content they know to the content they don't. Google allows us to do that. They allow users to build custom search engines. http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ With the custom search engine a teacher could pre-search for children finding 10, 20, 30 or even more sites that they think are useful and/or safe for children. The teacher doesn't create a list of sites that they child may use like the old link page on our websites. Rather the student still uses Google to do their searching but the search is limited to the data contained on just those predefined websites. Pretty cool use of their technology and bravo for Google on making another tool available to its users for FREE.

Web Filters

Our school district connects to the Internet through a filter. I do not have a problem with some filtering of the web as long as an adult can override a block for themselves or child when it becomes necessary because although today's filters are pretty good they aren't fool proof. That means some sites that should be blocked will be accessible and other sites that are safe for children won't be blocked.

Some schools are starting to purchase products which are basically a much smaller subset of the internet....that means all the sites have been screened and approved by someone "responsible" for the safety of children. So instead of having the opportunity to search Google and learn about limiting searches to find effective information the children are required to do as much thinking during the search process. I totally understand that approach....but also believe that at some point the children need to learn this skill of finding the right information for themselves and effectively become their own filter....not just in terms of appropriate content but the also the most meaningful content. What age this is I am not sure. Certainly by the age of 9 or 10 children need to know how to search without the "training wheels". I would credit the author of the below post if I knew who it was but I don't. It sums up how I feel about searching with "training wheels".

Filter a website, and you protect a student for a day. Educate students about online safety in a real world environment, and you protect your child for a lifetime.

PLN: Time to start one!

I know what you think....the last think education needs is another acronym. Well, I can't help myself. Okay, you don't have to call it a PLN, you can call it a Personal Learning Network if you like. In its most basic sense a PLN is one's online learning group, tools, and connections. The whole idea is that new learning can happen in other places than a traditional classroom or PD session. One could argue that there is so much new information of value that one can no longer limit that learning to just traditional channels. My main PLN is made up my RSS feeds from blogs I follow. Although I have only tinkered with the technology others might include Twitter and Skype. Skye is online videoconferencing tool. Twitter is a bit harder to explain. It is more or less a microblog. People post by using 140 or fewer characters. So basically you post a line or two about what you are doing. People can follow your posts and you can follow their posts. It allows people to get very quick feedback or information about what might be of interest to them.

Miguel Guhlin posts about the process of building your PLN. But it so much more than just reading the information. It is also about interacting with the information....that means evaluation and synthesizing it, critiquing it and then writing up your own learning based on the new information. ie Blogging about what you learn or figuring out some other way to share it.

I am still tinkering around with the idea of another tech class this spring and if I do PLNs will be a major part of the class.

A Solution for Homework

Just what is the purpose of homework and what value does it have in our children's schooling?

The typical answer is that it teaches responsibility and initiative. Another answer is that homework provides important practice for children on new concepts outside of the classroom.

These are the assumptions teaching and parents have been applying to homework for generations. However, we don't have any data that backs up these assumptions so they just stay assumptions and not fact.

Some teachers (http://bluebirdsclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/03/weird-homework-thing-we-do.html) are starting to adjust the way they do homework. There are basically three types of homework students. Those that will also do the homework and most likely do it correctly. Those who will do the homework but sometimes struggle with some of the questions and then finally those who won't be the homework at all. There are plenty of reasons they won't do it....they don't see it important, they don't have someone at home to encourage them, and a multitude of other reasons.

The teachers at the above site have changed their homework in an interesting way. They put 4 homework signs out at the beginning of the week. A student needs to turn in two of the assignments by the end of the week. Not only that they make the homework answers available for students so that students may check their answers as they work. However, they don't make the answers readily available...rather than only have them in the classroom and they only make 10 copies. They have seen their homework rates way up from where they were earlier.

I wondering if all schools should take a look at their homework policies. Perhaps something as posting some homework answers might make it possible for more students to complete their homework. Perhaps we even need to look at the amount and quality of the homework that we assign. If homework is truly practice doesn't the teacher have the obligation to review each student's homework assignments so they can determine whether or not the student has indeed learned the new concept. However, I don't think this happens very often. There simply isn't enough time in the day for a teacher to review each homework assignment with their class.

It has been a long time since we have evaluated our homework policies....but I think we need to do so. For anyone serving on that committee I would certainly recommend they research some of the changes other schools across the country have made with regards to homework.

A good start would be Alfie Kohn's book the Homework Myth.

YouTube for Memories

Although I don't necessarily agree with the decision YouTube is blocked at school for teachers. I understand blocking it for students but I question blocking it for teachers and yes, admin. too.

Yes, YouTube sure is waste of bandwidth and storage on those YouTube servers but there are some occasional Gems out there. Although it doesn't really fit with the 3-5 curriculum I could see a MS teacher using some of the videos posted by the user Nostalgic TV.

If I were teaching a unit on the depression I would be sure to show at little a few of the Little Rascals videos posted on YouTube. Not only do they bring back some childhood memories of my own they also give a student a peek into American culture from the 30s and 40s.

Here is a link to an education related one....called Bored of Education.

Enjoy as long as you are at home and while you are at YouTube see if you can find other videos that might fit your curriculum.

Popular Music in the Classroom

I'm not sure how often this happens in an elementary school classroom but I know that it happens in Middle and High School classrooms. The students have some work to do, perhaps a project, and so they ask if they can listen to music. The teacher doesn't mind, especially since she knows that kids sometimes work harder when they are more comfortable so she allows one of the students to hook their ipod up to the speaker system. The teacher is busy circulating the classrooom helping where she is needed and pushing those kids who need a bit of pushing. Some of the songs that play she has heard before and some are new to her.

Some of the songs are dance, pop, and even rap. She doesn't give it much though until she begins to listen a little more closely and catches a word here and there. She hears "ho" and "bitch" and realizes the students aren't aware of the words they are even listening to. She tells the students that the music is inappropriate for a school classroom and despite the groaning of the kids she turns the music off and replaces it with one of her own classical CDs. The students complain for a minute or two but with the new music they settle down and get back to their project work.

This teacher was lucky....as it could have been much worse. This post
http://thedreamteacher.blogspot.com/2008/03/am-i-just-too-old-to-crank-it.html
shares the story of a teacher who listened to Soulja Boy's Crank It and even let the students teach her a dance. She was so proud that she was learning something new and gaining a different connection with her middle school students until her 24 year old son found out what song she was dancing to. He points her to the UrbanDictionary.com website for her to look up some of the words in the song to see what the "common" meaning of the words are. The teacher is more than embarrassed.

I am a music lover and certainly have let kids play music in the classroom while working or have given the kids the chance to use their own music for their powerpoint projects that might benefit from music. However, before I do this I always type the name of the song in Google followed with the word lyrics. I'm not sure why, but there are thousands of websites that feature just lyrics. Skim through them to make sure you know what is being said and if you don't know what a word means then put that in Google as well. Or you could just say that you the teacher get to play full time DJ.

Song of the Week: The Moldy Peaches

I haven't had a chance to see Juno yet, but its soundtrack sure is a good listen, especially if you like quirky folk music. Anyone Else But You is a silly, but still catchy song.

OAT: Grade 4 Overview

A month or so ago I posted a neat little document that Cleveland Heights schools posted on their website that was an item analysis of all released test questions from the OAT. I took the results of their count and put into a chart format that shows what items the state tends to test more than others. There is an old saying..."what is most important is what is measured". You can use this document to help you "predict" where future emphasis on the test may be based on past emphasis. Reading Process is the most tested standard in that category they seem to test summarizing and responding to questions. They have never tested self-monitoring. I'm not even sure what a self-monitoring item would look like. More than half of the Vocabulary standard is context clues. There are plenty of opportunities in any text we read to model that important skill for children. Character analysis seems to be the most important of Literary Text while main ideas and summarizing are most important for Informational Text. Hopefully you can put this information to work and get the most bang for your buck. These skills will not only help your children perform better on the test, but also become better readers. Isn't it great when they all align like that.

The Rules Have Changed

We work in a great school district. We have wonderfully supportive parents and a community that supports education. We have students that are eager to learn and put forth their best efforts on almost all occasions. Upwards of 90% of our students pass the state mandated tests. We have one of the highest performance index scores in the state.

Why worry now? Why change anything, when we are doing such a good job?

Well, dig a little below the surface data and you’ll find that we did not meet AYP in reading and that our initial data on Value Added was not as green or yellow as we would have liked.

While it is still important for a certain percentage of students in any grade level of subgroup to pass the OAT, the rules have now changed, and the criteria has been ratcheted up. Starting next year each student in the state of Ohio from grade 3-8 will need to show one year’s worth of growth. While the means of measuring this is still somewhat fuzzy to me (and I’ve tried to understand it) the fact remains that this important measure becomes public next year.

The fact that is becomes public worries administrators as it should, and it should worry teachers for other reasons. No teacher wants to be told that a student they were responsible for did not grow one year during a year of instruction as compared to “similar” students in the state of Ohio. Teachers put their heart and soul into their job and knowing that they failed a student even when measured by perhaps questionable means will nonetheless be upsetting.

So what can we do now, this very day to start working towards that goal?

We need to continue to define our own internal measures of student growth. For reading (and it is all about reading) we have basically two different types of measures that we need to be using. We need to be measuring a student’s ability with the various indicators. We have a great start on that with the QRA but we need more “in between” or even “before” measures. We need to see what our students already know/can do via pretests, we need to assess as we teach and record detailed results for each learner, we need to reteach when needed, and then we need to use the QRAs as the more summative measure.

But this isn’t the only type of reading measure. We need to use what many call a Curriculum Based Measure (CBM) which isn’t linked to the indicators. Rather it is linked to the overall skill of reading. Many schools do this thru the Dibels tool. Dibels is an oral fluency tool used mostly K-2 but they have norm referenced reading assessments that go thru grade 6. Aimsweb is another (for pay…Dibels is free) measure that not only makes uses of oral reading fluency but also tries to gauge some comprehension levels to help identify the student who reads fluently but has little idea what they’ve read. Countless studies have shown that stronger readers are more fluent readers.

Another benefit of using the CBM measure such as Dibels is that it would help us more easily or systematically identify students who need additional reading support since tests of this type fit nicely with the response to intervention method of identifying students. Dibels will also show more growth detail. For example, a student can show growth from one Dibels administration to another administration in as little as a week. The QRA might show growth...but not in the same detail and remember different content makes up each QRA test although some of the most important (ie context clues) are repeated throughout.

I hope to work with staff this quarter to put one or both of these measures into place in their classroom. The last step and this one may take the most time because I don’t think we are used to always doing it is to document what works best instructionally.

As we teach our content, sometimes modify our content, and then reteach our content we need to keep detailed records of what we tried, what worked, and what didn’t’ work. We need to share our results (both good and bad) so other teachers on our team can learn from each other. Over time we could build a resource of what works with various types of learners. The work is hard and time consuming but the payoff is huge.

I’m looking forward to being a part of that work.

Reading 101

I’ve shared articles from the Reading Rockets website before. Reading 101 is a primer for anyone interested in reading instruction. The article gives basic definitions about key reading terminology such as phonemic awareness, fluency, text comprehension and the gives additional articles related to each topic. Great review of information and a chance to find some articles you might not have read yet.

http://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading101

Buzzwords for 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/weekinreview/23buzzwords.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
In the spirit of growing our vocabulary I thought I would share this wonderful article published in the NY Times a few weeks ago. While these words aren’t necessarily in the dictionary quite yet, they still show us how the English language is always growing and morphing. Take a look at the article and you will not only learn a few new phrases and words…you’ll also get a chuckle on a few of these.

Try my simple matching quiz. Match the definition with the term or phrase listed below.

1) In military jargon, the site of an explosion, severe gunfire or a destructive engagement.

2) A person who eats no meat, uses no animal-derived goods and prefers not to have sex with non-vegans.

3) An odd or funny picture of a cat given a humorous and intentionally ungrammatical caption in large block letters

4) Employment discrimination against a woman who has, or will have, children.

5) No Income, No Job or Assets. A poorly documented loan made to a high-risk borrower.

A) maternal profiling
B) ninja loan
C) post-kinetic environment
D) vegansexual
E) lolcat

You will have to read the NY Times to see how well you did. :)

Grade 3 OAT Multi-year Item Analysis

A couple of weeks ago I found a school in Cleveland that did an item analysis of every released item (including the practice test) for the Ohio Achievement test. I thought the information was interesting...so interesting and valuable for teachers that I posted about it.

As our training with Pat Terry several years ago revealed that not all indicators are of equal importance. All of the indicators are important and students should be accountable for all of them...but the fact remains that the state tests certain indicators more than others. I would like hope that these indicators or the most important ones for students to know in order to be better readers...not the indicators that are most easily tested.

I took the item analysis which was basically a table. I took that information from multiple years and plugged it into a spreadsheet to see if I could find any anything of interest.

As you can see Reading Process makes up the majority of the points on the test and Acquisition of Vocabulary makes up (just barely) the smallest % of the points. Within RP, compare/contrast,summarizing, and drawing conclusions are big. Central ideas (sorry for the Excel typo) appear to be overwhelming the most tested indicator at 60% of the points for that standard. Within Literary text, main idea and characters account for close to 70% of the points for that standard. Context clues are the biggest indicator for Aquisition of Vocabulary. What does this all mean....it gives us some idea where to spend our most time getting ready for the test. Not that we forget the other indicators....we just want to really make sure the kids "get" these indicators and have experience answering them in the same format that the test uses. Too often the test format trips up a student when we know they know the content. A teacher may sometimes accuse another teacher of "teaching to the test" when they use a strategy like this. In Ohio, I'm not sure how applicable that is...since the test is the standards is our curriculum. So if you teach our curriculum you are teaching to the test....which is exactly what we should be doing. However, don't beat a dead horse...if you students have shown mastery in these indicators then it is time to move on and work on others. I will put the results of my grade 4 and grade 5 spreadsheet work up shortly.

"Reading is the Key to Everything"

I'm more of a "Car Talk" guy when listening to NPR while driving around on Saturdays getting the weekly errands and delivering the kids to what seem like weekly birthday parties. I do sometimes catch a few minutes of Lake Wobegon with Garrison Keillor. Mr. Keillor has written an article for Salon.com concerning some Democratic candidates promising to dismantle NCLB if they are elected. He is more concerned that they are making this promise simply because the program came into existence under the guidance of a Republican president rather than whether or not the program has worthwhile goals. Certainly worth a read....for a concerned educator or parent.

We're Failing Our Kids
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/01/30/education/

Wikis....speaking of Collaboration

A Wiki is a group based website. The software resides on the server so there is nothing special to install. Rights to author are shared so basically whoever the creator of the wiki wants to be able to edit it can edit. However, they can also be locked down. Wikipedia is an example of a collaborative website that we have all used at one time or another. IF you haven't, then you need to go there right now so you can see what they are all about. Well, now educators are starting to do just the same thing. One of the big players in the Wiki business has just made its product ad-free for educators. The product has been free but to have a free wiki you had to accept whatever advertisement Wetpaint happened to load at the time someone looked at your page. You had no say over what the ad was....and for an educator not knowing what a student might read or see in an ad is a bit (and rightfully so) scary. Now teachers can get ad-free Wikis....meaning no more potentially bad ads. What a great way for students to share their thinking with each other or you the teacher.

http://www.wetpaint.com/category/Education--Ad-free/?wpcmp=educp1

I've posted this before but to get a better idea of just what a Wiki is I would recommend that you watch this video.

A Whole New Mind

I just starting reading Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. It
covers same of the same material that Friedman covers in the World is Flat. According to Pink there are three factors (abundance, Asia, and automation) are changing the way life is and will be in the future for citizens of the United States. He believes that in order to be successful in the future (not too distant) people will need to be right brained...that is creative, open minded, designer types. If this is the case (and when we will know?) then we as teachers need to remember to balance the mastery learning of NCLB with more open-ended assignments that get students using the right side of their brain. The Partnership for the 21st Century is basically asking our nation's schools to start trying to do the same thing. Their aim is to have students gain more collaborative, problem solving skills. There are only a handful of state department of education offices that have embraced 21st Century Skills. I would encourage you to look at them and see how they might fit/enhance the good things we already do.

Learning about the Human Body

The human body is fascinating and amazing. The newspaper has been covering the controversy regarding the Bodies: An Exhibition showing at the Museum Center. There is some concern that the people who are on display never gave consent to have their body on display in the way it is.

If you still want to learn about the human body and don't want to look at polymer covered bodies then perhaps you might enjoy National Geographics online presentation on the human body. This one doesn't require the expensive parking since it is online.

National Geographic: Explore the Human Body

Visual Math

Quite an interesting way to solve a math problem visually. Isn't it neat how the algorithm works.

An Apology with Further Clarification

Several weeks ago I posted about our school's quarterly summative assessment of reading indicators that were taught during the second quarter. In that post (which I have since removed) I offended parents who found the post via Google.

Specifically there were two statements that were most troubling to parents. There was a comment about the perceived importance of donuts as recognition for a job well done. As a teacher and more importantly a parent I am a big believer in intrinsic rewards.....i.e. doing something because it feels good on the inside...not because of external prizes or rewards. As a tech teacher and classroom teacher I have participated in many morning recognition ceremonies. The focus of these ceremonies is to recognize students for a job well done. However, some teachers feel that with the addition of donuts to the recognition ceremony the original purpose of the ceremony has been lost. Before we had morning recognition ceremonies our school listed the names of students who achieved the different honor lists in the cafeteria prominently for all students to see. It was a concerned parent who thought posting names was a bit too exclusive and asked for a different approach to recognize students. Teachers, parents, and administration decided that a simple breakfast be used to recognize those same students before the school day even began. I am sorry that my comment summarizing teacher observation of these breakfasts and grading practices was offensive.

A second comment was made concerning the reading assessment and the "shattering of dreams". I believe that our most powerful learning comes from mistakes. I want all children to achieve and realize that with the greatest growth will come many mistakes along the way. It is my greatest hope that children who miss questions on the reading assessment have the opportunity to work with their teachers and parents to better understand the tested objective. One purpose of the test is for teachers to use the results to guide future instruction. In addition to a simple grade, teachers receive a variety of reports that will help them understand the test results and organize the results in a way to further enhance future instruction. Teachers are working hard to create mini-assessments to identify "problem" areas so they can be addressed before the reading assessment is given.

While grades may be important to students and their parents, it is important that we all look beyond those to the bigger picture of the learning. Sadly, grades are not always the best indication of how much or well a student has learned.

If one could overlook the two troublesome lines of my post, I hope that they would see my post was directed to teachers asking them to question their own practices. We live in an age of accountability and while I don't agree with everything that is the No Child Left Behind law I find its basic tenet that all children will learn and grow to be an admirable goal. I also agree (but sometimes question the methods of calculation) that a child should "grow" a year in skills and ability during the course of a school year. If we are to be making gains towards NCLB's lofty goal of 100% proficiency then we (teachers) need to look at how we approach our professions quite differently than we have traditionally.

A teacher can no longer simply lead his or her class through the curriculum....because they are no longer teaching a class....they are teaching 24 or depending on the subject/grade level as many as almost 100 individuals. And to truly meet the needs of the individuals we need to know what each individual has learned and is capable of achieving. We need to know what approach or method of instruction is most successful for each learner and we need to document that knowledge so that other teachers may benefit.

Our superintendent often reminds staff that each day we make important decisions about what to teach.....and equally important what not to teach. My post asked teachers to take a hard look at their grading practices and the assignments they give and ask themselves which of those grades/assignments truly is aligned to the standards the state and district has employed us to teach. To ask themselves which grades really give an indication of student learning. It is when our gradebook becomes bloated with assignments that don't clearly correlate to a student's proficiency, ability or acquirement of some skill, that we as educators begin to do a disservice (perhaps even a misrepresentation) to the people we are here to serve -- the students and their parents who want nothing but the best for their children.

Winter Class Ideas

As in the past I was hoping to offer an tech class for Ashland credit this winter. When it is cold and gray outside what better way to spend it than with your teacher friends learning how to use new technologies?!

I have been thinking of making the core of the class related to data driven instruction. We certainly hear the term "data driven" thrown around a lot. But how can you use it to make your teaching more powerful? Right now have access to some data such as the OAT results, WrAP results, QRA results....but those are all somewhat summative in nature and not frequent enough to impact your day to day lessons.

I would like to have a class in which teachers learn how (and have time to do so) to create shorter assessments that can analyzed on a shorter term basis so they impact instruction much sooner and frequently than our QRA. How can objectively know our instructional strategies are working if we don't stop to measure and then track change over time?

Of course, I am always willing to entertain other ideas for this class which brings me to this posting. Do you have ideas of what you think a winter tech oriented class should cover? I look forward to hearing your ideas.

Best Albums of 2007

I can't help myself and feel the need to list my "most listened to" albums of the year. These aren't in any particular order...but if you are looking for some new music to give a try I would recommend any of these.

Amy Winehouse
Andrew Bird
Arcade Fire
Avett Brothers
Bat for Lashes
Bishop Allen
Brandi Carlile
Cribs
Feist
Jens Lekman
Josh Ritter
Lily Allen
Lucinda Williams
Nicole Atkins
Rilo Kiley
Ryan Adams
Sarah Borges
Shins
Spoon
Tegan and Sara
White Stripes
Wilco

Scientists are amazing people….thinking outside the box

Some of our best scientific discoveries were happy accidents or happened when someone was thinking outside of the box.

While teachers are worried about hitting achievement goals (remember 100% in 2014) with their students some leaders in the US are worried whether or not we are creating the type of thinkers we need to meet the needs of the the 21st Century workplace.

Type 21st Century Skills into Google and you will find multiple reports about how the US is falling behind other countries and their technological "know how" and science and math competence.

One of the 21st Century Skills is creative thinking and the ability to solve higher level problems. Wired magazine features an article on how scientists are “hacking” the Earth to solve or attempt to solve our growing problem of global warming.

For example, cows and other livestock emit more than 80 million tons of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is 20x more potent than carbon dioxide. It seems that certain stomach bacteria that exists in these animals creates the methane as a product of digestion. Scientists are trying to solve the problem by getting less volatile digestive bacteria into cows. Through research they have found that the bacteria in the stomach of kangaroos produces no methane. So now the process of getting kanga bacteria into the cow has begun. Garlic in the cow’s diet also kills the methane producing bacteria…now scientists just need to figure out how to make the beef taste less garlickly (seriously).

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/multimedia/2007/12/YE_10_geoengineering?slide=1&slideView=5

Acquisition of Vocabulary...for Teachers

Acquisition of Vocabulary is an important content standard for our students. Actually vocabulary growth is also important for teachers. Have you ever heard one of your students say something and you weren’t sure what it meant?

A couple of years Gwen Stefani had a hit song called “Hollarback Girl”. I was making an end of the year video for the students with lots of photos etc. and I want to include some popular songs they would recognize. I was able to find a clean version of the song but was unsure about using it since I wasn’t sure what a “hollarback girl” was. For all I knew it had to with something that a teacher shouldn’t be playing in the classroom.

After consulting the Urban Dictionary, my favorite guide for the vernacular of the students, I learned that a hollarback girl is someone who won’t get in a fight with you…they only yell at you. Sounds safe enough.

It really is a fun and useful site although I think it is for teacher eyes only since the dictionary is user generated and some of the language isn’t appropriate. I recently signed up to receive an email of a new word every day so I can continue to remain as “hip” as I was….when was that….oh yeah, I never was. :) Still fun to read it though.

Yesterday’s term was “blackout”. That is when you turn off all electronic devices to avoid communication with someone.

Urban Dictionary
http://www.urbandictionary.com/

Copyright and Fair Use Rules in the Classroom

Copyright laws and rules on Fair Use of video materials in the classroom are quite confusing…and sometimes downright silly (IMHO). Eric Faden of Bucknell University created this informative yet humorous video using clips from one of the most litigious companies around (Disney). This one has to take some serious time to edit together.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/documentary-film-program/film/a-fair-y-use-tale

Love the end of the Year Lists...

I love the end of year lists that everyone seems to put out at the end of the year. I enjoy my music and quite a bit less I enjoy my music videos (who has time to watch them?). But when I see a favorite song of mine actually won an award for best video I had to share. This is from Bats for Lashes.




I know the video is a bit weird...I'm not sure what it symbolizes but I do like it.

Fun Video to Watch...

Who comes up with these video ideas anyways? Make sure you watch the whole thing.