Week 9, Thing 23, Wrap It Up!!

I really enjoyed the copyright video and wonder if it would work for students. Or, knowing how Disney protects it copyright, would it just confuse the issue? Copyright is a huge issue in high school, especially with online information and resources. Part of the reason is just the ease of copying and part of it is ignorance of the topic. Students truly do thing that if it can be copied, it is OK to do so. There is a lot of education to do on this subject.

Creative Commons was fascinating. I really love the idea that creative people can share all or part of their creations. I think it really optimizes creativity when people can build on each others creations and add to it or alter it in some way. Really exciting stuff. Plus the peace of knowing what you are doing is legal. Copyright laws are not always real clear.

Raven About 2.0 was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to sample lots of online tools. Not all of it excites me, but plenty does lend itself to many possibilities in the library. Some of the online image generators are wonderful tools for someone who is basically not very creative to pretend to be somewhat creative. I know I can use some of them for posters, postcards, etc. I also really do want to try using VoiceThread to have students do oral book reviews or book talks. And I truly hope this is the year I can get a blog going off my library wiki.

The class took way more than the 32 hours we were required to put in to fulfill the credit--at least for me. Sometimes I was amazed at how long I had been online working for one of the Things. Others took less time, usually because I was familiar with the tool. A few of the links were broken so were dead ends. Overall, these criticisms are so minor comparing to the overall benefits of the class. I loved the format of working at my own speed and communicating with you, Ann, and the other students via the blog. I really enjoyed reading the other blogs--so much that I even read some of the older ones from former sessions. It is interesting that everyone reacts so uniquely to different tools, but that there were a lot of commonalities. Some tools, like VoiceThread and Flickr toys, are almost universally loved. The shear volume of available blogs was overwhelming to most Raven 2.o bloggers.

Thank you, Ann, for putting this class together. I learned a lot and now know that I don't have to be at all afraid of these tools. Most are easy and intuitive to use, and I now have the textbook (which I really enjoyed and have read from cover to cover) to use as a tutorial when I venture to use one. I feel less like a novice now that I at least know what someone is talking about when they mention a tool!