Anthony

Fair Use Reflection It is good to see that copyright is catching up with technology. There are so many questions about what is allowable or not in school that this document could make a home permanently on your desk. Possibly the best perk of being a teacher is that you are very well covered when using other's material for the purpose of education. That word can take on as broad a definition as you'd like. Possibly even better news is for educators is that fair use is more broad than many of us realize, and standards we often use as guidelines have no basis in the actual Copyright Act itself. There probably ought to be a class taught in this before educators hit the job market after school, or at the very least there should perhaps be a class on fair use as a part of the induction process for new hires. I'd bet that most districts are like mine, and never make mention of the fact - almost ignoring where teachers access materials from or how.

__Here is the phrase I will be carrying with me from the reading:__

Educators’ and students’ fair use rights extend to the portions of copyrighted works that they need to accomplish their educational goals—and sometimes even to small or short works in their entirety.

I also thought of an awesome example of what we're talking about. Here it is: media type="custom" key="5944247" align="center"

__Week 4 Reflection__ It is amazing to me that very early on, teachers could already see the negative impact on instruction that standardized tests would soon have. This book was published in 2004, which means that these interviews took place soon after the changes in accountability. I wondered reading the story about City Academy, why schools like this weren’t studied prior to the 2001 inception of the No Child Left Behind laws. I also wondered about the claim that City Academy makes that the school was “putting together a solid academic record” and that “test scores were at the upper level for urban schools and each year they saw measurable progress.” I asked the question in class last week – how does technology co-exist with accountability to standards. The teachers in the “average school” section are wondering the same thing, often putting technology aside to teach to tests using drill and practice. I took issue with the suggestion of an inequitable distribution of technology use for students with special needs based on the interest of test scores. Because the effect of technology on the majority seemed negligible to the author, he would rather have the better performing students go without the use of technology. I understand that the majority of students without special needs don’t have the same rights and protections as students with disabilities, but something seems un-American about asking the majority to go without to bring the few along. Dave – to answer your question about how technology is being implemented in these schools – in some (especially the school where the kids were cutting and pasting about regions in California or the school where kids were dragging and dropping geometrical pieces on a computer screen to make a dog) it seems like technology for technology’s sake. The effective schools from the beginning of the book used technology as a way to support instruction or help motivate kids that operated below grade level. They did not put kids in front of a keyboard to learn that proper nouns got capitalized. I think as a principal you only get to //really// stand for one or maybe two things. If you are going to pick technology as the thing that you are really about (like many of the people we are reading about) than you have to go at it full bore. It can’t be a system that goes down, or a shoddy lesson that happens to use a computer that motivates no one. I think that is why when the PDE gave away their CFF grants they made sure there was continuing staff development and continuing administrative development in the use of their technology. Also – I do read some of my classmate’s reflections, but won’t let theirs shape mine, or they would no longer be //my reflections.//

Anthony,

What exactly are you missing? My suggestion is that as you read the book, consider how, from a leadership perspective, technology is being integrated with focus, commitment, and vision. Do their practices jibe with what we read in the NETS from ISTE? Will all schools yield desired results? Do they all know what results they want? Are they all maximizing the available resources? What are they doing well and what could they do better?

Also, I would suggest reading some of the other reflections that have been posted from class members. Perhaps seeing how others are reacting to the text may help shape your own perspectives. Just a thought.

And, yes. I do believe that students are ready to educate themselves with guidance and facilitation. Some, however, will need more intervention than others. That is part of the differentiated instructional philosophy. Thanks!

David

Week Three Reflection

More later, but for now a question. If the role of an educator in a school is to facilitate learning, are teachers comfortable with that in light of a focus on accountability? In one of the author's "Viewpoints" sections he makes his argument for teachers needing to be a facilitator. Are all of the students we teach ready to educate themselves with guidance and faciliatation of an educator?

I think in reading this book you get a sense how much has changed since it was published. The discussions regarding data that is gathered from multiple sources to drive instruction seems to be a new thing that schools are searching for in 2001. I would bet that at least half of us in class have that tool in our hands today, with a more familiar name such as Performance Tracker, etc. Also, teachers and the author seem to give themselves kudos for using email to communicate, where today we’ve changed the way we operate schools due to the existence of email.

I am still trying to figure out what the author is trying to do with each section of vignettes. I thought that the first section was supposed to be where technology was used correctly in the authors estimation, and the second section were the places where technology was given more lip service than actual attention, but having read both, I don’t think I’m savvy enough to tell the difference between what each group of schools are doing. They each seem pretty similar to me.

Week Two Reflections (pgs. 11-56)

It’s okay for you to smack him, I’m going to when I get him home… I LOVE APPALACHIA! I think the way that most of the schools visited in part one of this book remind me of the district that I teach in. We have computers in nearly all classrooms. We have “technology” on our checklist of things that our district stands for, however we don’t have a genuine commitment as a building or district to technology. I guess my reaction to the technology commitment is that you need to make it priority #1, of it will not get done. “Data rich, information poor” is a quote from the reading that comes to mind when I think about my own situation. I am constantly being given more tools to use on a computer or the internet, but there is rarely any follow-up or rarely and follow-through with what teachers should be doing with the new technology. The one exception is Read 180. My district just this year has made a semi-commitment to a reading program aimed at bringing students reading levels up to par. We are only letting students who are in the current junior class and have an IEP use the program (the focus on making AYP is not denied by the administration). I draw a connection to the text here. It seems that even Methacton has realized that technology is best used in the hands of kids from a lower socioeconomic status or less supports at home.

Week One Reflection (NETS)

I guess my immediate thought when reading through all three of the sets of technology standards for students, teachers, and administrators was similar. WOW - there must be some schools out there with the money to worry about this type of thing. I feel left behind a little at my school I guess.

For Admins: No shock here - we've been talking about Instructional Leadership for what seems like ever, so I am not surprised that something like "Visionary Leadership" makes its way into the standards. In fact, all of the standards for administrators look like what good administrators do or believe, with or without the technology component.

For Teachers: Obviously teachers are the ones that develop lessons. These standards seem like they revolve around teachers ability to blend good lesson planning and good lessons, with technology. You could probably remove the phrase "digital age" from in front of most of the standards and they would still make good sense and make for good teaching.

For Students: Again, good students are good students. These standards certainly set out what a good cyber-student should look and act like. More importantly, they set up what ALL good students should be able to do and should act like.