Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that allows creators of original works to share those works online while retaining their copyright. Creative Commons licenses work along with traditional copyright, but allow creators to give permission for others to use their works with certain restrictions. Before reading through this assignment I had never heard of Creative Commons or noticed their logo on any web sites. From what I have read and seen while completing this module, I think that the collection of works available to use through Creative Commons will have a tremendous effect on how students learn and create projects. While students already use images and videos they have found on the web in their projects and class presentations under fair use guidelines, traditional copyright laws keep them from sharing these further (on a class wiki, for example) without getting permission from the original creators of those files. If students were to use files with Creative Commons licenses, however, they would be able to share their project outside the walls of the classroom. As a chorus teacher, I often use audio and video clips in my lessons. One of our chorus standards is to be able to evaluate music and musical performances, so my classes utilize YouTube on a regular basis. I am excited to see that Creative Commons includes not only images, but songs as well. One of our other standards is to compose and arrange music. While we can compose our own music and share it, sharing an arrangement we have created of someone else’s music is another story. If we were to use a song with the right Creative Commons license, though, we would be able to share our version(s) on the web. At this time, I do not share my class content on the web, only announcements and links to listening examples. Due to the nature of the classes I teach, most of my teaching materials (musical scores) cannot be posted online because they are under traditional copyright. The potential negative I see to using Creative Commons with students is that there are several different types of licenses. Some people who share their works with CC only want them to be shared as they were created. Other people allow their works to be changed (such as creating a new arrangement of a song). Students would need to understand how the different licenses work and be sure to follow the guidelines for the content they share. Flickr is an amazing source for images under Creative Commons licenses. Like any Web 2.0 site that uses tags, you need to search for what you want using one-word versions of what you mean. For example, to find this picture of Audrey II I searched for “littleshopofhorrors” instead of “little shop of horrors”. Finding images with CC licenses was easy using Flickr’s advanced search. I chose Little Shop of Horrors as my theme since we are currently preparing this musical for performance. The photos that I found have licenses that would allow students to modify them. This means that students in our cast or crew could use the ideas they see from this production of the show and modify them to meet the needs of our production. In my classroom Flickr could be used for presentations, finding images of time periods and cultures related to the music we are singing, and posting pictures of our performances. Creative Commons. Retrieved on February 15, 2014, from http://creativecommons.org/ Flickr Creative Commons. Retrieved on February 15, 2014, from http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oak, California: Corwin. Social bookmarking is a great way to save, organize, and share web sites of interest to you and others. Traditional bookmarks allow you to save and categorize sites that you visit frequently, but social bookmarking sites allow you to do so much more. First of all, social bookmarking allows you to access your bookmarks from anywhere because your information is stored in the cloud and not on your device. When saving your bookmarks you can tag them to keep them organized and include descriptions to remind you why you wanted to save them. Depending on the social bookmarking site you are using, there are other tools that allow you to highlight and add notes to the web sites and save that information as part of your bookmark. Finally, all of this can be shared with the public, with groups that you have created, or just saved for yourself.
After reading about Delicious and Diigo, I decided to sign up for a Diigo account in order to explore social bookmarking. As I tried the different features of Diigo, I saw the potential for using this both with colleagues and with students. The ability to highlight and add sticky notes makes it easy to share not only the web site, but the specific information from that web site that you want your student(s) and/or colleague(s) to see. Diigo also makes it easy to create groups and keep the information you are sharing organized. Using the Community tab in Diigo, I was able to search for sites of interest to me in my teaching. Chorus Teacher Resources included a great list of resources from advocacy, to vocal health, to lesson planning, to repertoire. Technology in Music Education is a blog dedicated to incorporating technology into the music classroom. Both resources are now saved and tagged in my Diigo account. As I continue to explore Diigo and social bookmarking in general, I hope to create a great list of resources for myself, my colleagues, and my students. Diigo. Retrieved on February 3, 2014, from https://www.diigo.com/ Florida Vocal Association. Chorus Teacher Resources. Retrieved on February 9, 2014, from http://fva.net/for-directors/ctr/ Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oak, California: Corwin. Russell, C. Technology in Music Education. Retrieved on February 9, 2014, from http://techinmusiced.wordpress.com/ |
AuthorKathleen Landolt is the Chorus Director for both Adairsville High School and Adairsville Middle School in Bartow County. Archives
November 2014
Categories |