Podcast Reflection #7

Seedlings: 1/1/09
I enjoyed this podcast but it left me wanting a little bit more. On the one hand, it was interesting to hear about their personal journey as educators learning technology, but it didn’t really teach me that much. And it took up a lot of their show. I did like their geek of the week segment though. However, I wish they had gone into more depth about each of their materials. They did say that this one was short due to technical difficulties. There was one resource I thought would be very helpful to me right now, and a few I know I will enjoy more when I am actually teaching. The one I went to check out right away was copyrightconfusion.wikispaces.com. It provides a completely new level of clarity on how much fair usage teachers and students have in their classroom. From the front page of their website they say:
According to the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy...
Teachers can:
1. make copies of newspaper articles, TV shows, and other copyrighted works and use them and keep them for educational use
2. create curriculum materials and scholarship with copyrighted materials embedded
3. share, sell and distribute curriculum materials with copyrighted materials embedded

Learners can:
4. use copyrighted works in creating new material
5. distribute their works digitally if they meet the transformativeness standard

The website goes into more detail, expanding what is okay and what isn’t. I found the discussions on music and news clips very helpful. This website has helped me understand how I can best use resources legally. One of the podcasters mentioned seesmic.com. He said it was basically video twitter; it allowed you to have video conversations and form conversations. I went to check it out; only to discover it has changed into a place to compile Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Foursquare and Buzz. I was less excited about this. I only have a Twitter and a Facebook, and I am fully capable of managing both those separately. What would be nice was if Facebook integrated tweets. I will use the site for a week (if I remember) to see if I find it useful. I don’t think I will, but I will let you know.

All things considered, I might listen to this podcast again, but I found others more informational.