The SurRural Librarian

After a short discussion on lm-net & further discussions at Blue Skunk on hyper-compliance with copyright, I thought I should mention a couple of handy applications for teachers needing to download video for use in class. We hear so often from teachers who can’t access online videos at school due to strict filtering. It’s ridiculous to cut off this wealth of free, useful material for instruction and I do hope some are successful in convincing their schools to re-think their policies. (Chant with me now…fair use, fair use, fair use)

In the meantime,

Download Helper is a very easy to use Firefox extension that will quickly grab any material you need from a website, and Miro is my favorite application for viewing media files of many types. Easy peasy.

Hold the fort, here’s a very handy search engine.

Compfight is a super easy way to search Flickr for images. It’s got a very simple interface, it feeds you back loads of clickable thumbnails, allows you to limit to Creative Commons licensed material, and gives you the option of searching full-text or just tags.

With more opportunities to publish student research projects online, it seems to me we should really be pushing the use of CC-licensed images in student work. I’ll definitely be showing this to the students. (and Safe Search is the default. nice.)

I can not get enough of the images the Library of Congress has posted on Flickr. They are gorgeous, and completely free of copyright restrictions.

Vermont librarians - check out the large set form the Rutland State Fair. Here’s one from “Backstage at the Girlie Show”.

I’m a big one for finding legitimate academic uses of fun internet tidbits, so I’m sure there is a great curriculum just waiting to be written around this fabulous video. Or maybe I’ll just show it to the kindergarten on the 100th day of school.

Video at YouTube of 100 people in order of age - 1 to 100 years old - each banging a drum.

My Junior High students are writing a Wikipedia entry on our school. It’s a great way to get them involved with the content creation side of things, good editing practice and fun.*

There are so many good ways to use Wikipedia and to teach it. It’s crucial to address it early and often. Wikipedia is often the first entry in any Google or Ask search, and people often use it without knowing what wiki is.

I hear adults say many silly things about Wikipedia. I hope the frenzy dies down soon, but in the meantime I need to get this off my chest. Here are a few things I’d like adults to remember when they talk about Wikipedia with students.

Wikipedia is a wiki, not the other way around. The word wiki isn’t synonymous with Wikipedia. That’s like saying all cheese is wiz.

Wikipedia is not out to get you. It’s a huge effort and there are many good-intentioned people working to make it a very informative site. It’s just a wiki, not a plot to disseminate inaccuracies.

Please do not intentionally add erroneous information to Wikipedia to make a point. This is vandalism. It’s not very good modeling.

If you find erroneous information in Wikipedia, change it!

Of course it shouldn’t be your only source of information. And of course it shouldn’t be in a bibliography. Not only is it written by anonymous folks on the internets, it’s an encyclopedia. Last time I checked, an encyclopedia wasn’t a valid bibliographic entry.

Everyone should read at least these two pages before using or teaching Wikipedia:

Ten Things You Might Not Know About Wikipedia

Researching With Wikipedia

And if you take the time to teach Wikipedia use to your students (and I hope you do), I recommend sharing this classic video clip:

Stephen Colbert on Wikiality
(I embed the video in my site to avoid the distracting adds & links. I also skip the first minute to avoid the silly drug reference. It’s worth it, a brilliant piece of comedy.)

*If you’re curious, here’s how we’ve structured the Wikipedia project. Everyone is responsible for one section, then we’ll be swapping sections to go through an editing process. We’re using Google Docs to co-write the entry for now, so we don’t have to be “live” with the material until we’re ready. Our principal will also have access to our document to lend a hand with the big picture. So far the toughest part has been keeping the pieces neutral and without personal narrative. Once we post to Wikipedia, it’ll be fun to see other people come in and edit (I’m sure we’ll get some townspeople interested). I wonder if it will be hard for the students to let go.

I’m usually not one to get all mushy and anthropomorphize animals. But since Owen & Mzee is on the DCF list this year, and since I’m doing non-fiction informational texts & animal research with my 3/4 grade right now, I thought it would be a good read-aloud. It was.

Plus, there’s a nice video on the book’s website. I showed a segment in class and the kids enjoyed seeing the animals. They also have some fun animated shorts.

And then wouldn’t you know it? This little gem was sent to me today.

It’s part of a talk on animals at play by Stuart Brown. A great story about a polar bear playing with a husky, with amazing photos. Wow, wow!

I can’t wait to show them tomorrow.

I don’t use much video in my lessons, it’s not a popular medium at my school and I really don’t like to encourage too much screen time. But this short video from Google does such a good job of explaining how they collect information on their users that I think I might just try it out on my JH kids.

I’ll certainly show it to the teachers, I get many questions on privacy and search engines.

Link to the Google Video On YouTube

World Book is holding a contest for the best kid-produced video on evaluating websites.

A couple of things made me giggle about this.

They (wisely) promote looking for bias, among other criteria, while judging sites. I wonder how many kids will point out the bias in a (not free) encyclopedia making a big hoopla about evaluation criteria.

And the video by these hipster “Rhett & Link” guys. I had to look them up in Wikipedia to find out who they are. I wonder if there’s a World Book entry on them.

Heck, the big prize is a Macbook, and it could be a fun media project for the kids. There will be winners in three categories: K-8, 9-12 & post-secondary.

via School Library Journal

The Reactable is an amazing new instrument developed in Spain. It’s got a tangible interface, meaning you move the icons around - rather than point and click.

I’ve been slightly obsessed with these videos (1, 2, 3). I’m not sure if it’s the retro prague rock sound or the completely cool little blocks that thrill me the most.

Searching for a reason to show the videos in class, I realized it would be a great way to talk about the difference between command line and GUIs, and what a huge difference that’s made, making computers accessible to non-computer scientists.

The kids were agog (admittedly, it was first thing in the AM). There’s something so compelling about being able to touch what you normally click. We had a good discussion about what it would be like to be able to move your iTunes or Word around like that. They made some pretty creative comments.

Now I need to think of a way to work the Puppy Monorail into class.

both via Boing Boing