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LIFE's Amazing Resource

Designing a new presentation? Need raw material for student research? For a treasure trove of (mostly unpublished) images, try the new Life Photo Archive hosted by Google. LIFE magazine's catalogued images number in the millions and easily reach all the way back to the 1750s.


The image below actually contains live links. Click on any decade to see a sampling of images, which will show up as a Google image search tagged with a green LIFE keyword.

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google via kwout




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Code of Best Practices in Fair Use

Just released. I will comment further once I've digested this document from the Center for Social Media of American University and the Media Education Lab of Temple University.

UPDATE: Here is an edited version of a presentation I gave at the NICE (Northern Illinois Computing Educators) Conference in February, 2009. More recently, I have presented this material at the IETC (Illinois Education and Technology Conference) in November, 2009, and at both ICE (Illinois Computing Educators) and CUE (Computer-Using Educators) conferences in February and March, 2010, respectively.
Copyright And Fair Use
View more presentations from Spiro Bolos.
LATEST UPDATE:
"You are a Presentation SuperStar on SlideShare!

Your presentation is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team.

We thank you for this terrific presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everday.

Congratulations! Have a Great Day!,

- the SlideShare team"

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A Way Around the Law?

Photograph of a VHS cassette and a metric rule...Image via WikipediaAt least at our school, one of the teacher tools that was prohibited last year was the extracting of short DVD clips for classroom use. I think we all know what advantages this process offers, especially within the confines of the 40-minute period (or, as I like to refer to it, "the 40-minute fury"!). Excerpting clips instead of fumbling with the menus and previews of an actual DVD was the fulfillment of the early promises of DVD technology. Instead, I see teachers running around with old and degraded VHS tapes, laboriously cued and re-cued up to the scene they wish to use in class.


Although the DVD clipping process is clearly illegal according to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), we now have an opportunity to apply for an exemption to the law. The Librarian of Congress (LOC) is about to revisit the law for the first time since 2006 and could grant us the same rights given to film studies professors at the post-secondary level.

If you are at all interested in crafting a "comment" (petition) to the LOC, please let me know. Just to give you some perspective: in 2006, nationwide, only 74 petitions were posted. These were made by various organizations as well as by private citizens. Each and every request was reviewed and ruled upon by the LOC. A successful "comment" by New Trier would certainly be consistent with our "Lighthouse District" reputation, and might also be a relevant tie-in to our ECGC initiatives. If you are from another school and wish to join me in this effort, please contact me here. The due date is December 2, 2008.

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Free Video Creation from ANIMOTO

Image representing Animoto as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBaseHave you or your students ever created slideshows with music? Usually, we are limited to computer-based programs like iMovie, iPhoto, Windows Movie Maker or Photo Story. But now there is an amazing online creation tool called ANIMOTO, which is Japanese for "ANIMOTO". It completely automates the process and syncs the images to the structure and sound of the music provided either by you or the website. You can even embed the finished video in another web page. And best of all, it's FREE.

The free version is limited to 30 seconds and doesn't allow any videos to be downloaded. BUT, if you are a teacher, you can request an educational account for you and your students as long as you promise to share what your classes are doing with the tool. The educational version is UNLIMITED and allows you and your students to DOWNLOAD the videos to a computer.

Here's a "get-to-know me" video I created for my students. All of the images came from my online Picasa account. You can also get images from your computer or websites like facebook, flickr, or photobucket.


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A Googley Way to Collect Info

This past summer at the Google Teacher Academy, I learned of an efficient way to collect student info or even create quick surveys. It's all via Google Docs, specifically the Spreadsheet function. My own knowledge of spreadsheets is woefully inadequate, since I am math-challenged. But this is just populating lists and cells, which I actually do understand! Here's how to create a web-based form from a spreadsheet:



So here's how I use a Google Docs form in my classroom. At the beginning of the year, I need the following information from my students:
  • Name (i.e., what they prefer to be called, NOT what the computer spits out)
  • Email address (i.e., an email address they actually prefer to use to contact a teacher)
  • Blog address (because each one of my students has his/her own Blogger weblog)
The beauty of this form is that because it is online, any link in an individual cell becomes "live", meaning, I can click on the web address next to my student's name and it will take me to the student's blog.

And here's what my form looks like (scroll to see the input fields):



Disclaimer

Although this blog is authored by New Trier High School (NTHS) staff, the audience is global and the views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of NTHS as an institution.

Copyright and Fair Use

This site contains images and excerpts the use of which have not been pre-authorized. This material is made available for the purpose of analysis and critique, as well as to advance the understanding of technology in education. 
The ‘fair use’ of such material is provided for under U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with U.S. Code Title 17, Section 107, material on this site (along with credit links and/or attributions to original sources) is viewable for educational and intellectual purposes. 
If you are interested in using any copyrighted material from this site for any reason that goes beyond ‘fair use,’ you must first obtain permission from the copyright owner.