Wesley Fryer's Web 2.0 World

I think that concern about abuse is a major factor. Schools don’t want to deal with problems (who does?) and so they are trying to circumvent them by setting up a level of not-use that quickly becomes egregious.

As a teacher, I think I ought to be able to use social networking on my own time without any ruling from the school. First amendment rights do apply to teachers. However, I also think that we are responsible for what we write on our accounts.

Whether you agree with him or not, Loye Young has lost his job over publishing the names of students who plagiarized. (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/13/tamiu) And a teacher in North Carolina may lose her job for saying she teaches in the “most ghetto” school. (http://www.charlotteobserver.com/597/story/374394.html).

I would much prefer the option and being held responsible than to be treated as someone without personal responsibility.

This is a good quick introduction. Thanks for the reminder.

@Gary
I have talked to a few teachers who have been told they cannot have a MySpace or Facebook account at all! I can understand schools mandating that teachers cannot have contact with students on social networks, but I don’t think schools can tell employees that they cannot belong to social networks on their own time outside of school.

Those of us who are connected understand the value of our network. We derive so much satisfaction from connecting with like-minded people. We also appreciate the conversations we have with people that challenge our beliefs because we grow as professionals from those interactions as well.

To most recent draft of the Nebraska Language Arts standards states that “Students will identify, locate and evaluate information using 21st Century Skills.” One of the indicators of this is that students will be able to “Use social networks and information tools to gather and share information(e.g. social bookmarking, online collaborative tools, web page/blog.)

How are teachers supposed to teach students these skills when they are not allowed to use them at school? I don’t think it will be long before we see parents and students filing lawsuits against schools for not teaching them these skills or teachers suing districts for not providing adequate training so they can do their jobs.

Now I will answer your question about why I believe schools ban networks. I do not think many schools have a procedure in place for approving sites that have been blocked. In many places the decision to block or unblock sites is left completely up to the district tech department. I have found that techs are very good at presenting worst case scenarios to administrators when they would prefer to not unblock a site for a teacher. For administrators who do not have a strong background in technology they are easily persuaded to keep something blocked to “stay on the safe side.”

I also believe that the entire concept of learning online is so new that it is hard for anyone who has not done it to see the value in it. Teachers who spend hours making copies must be busy while those sitting in front of a computer must be goofing off. While there are teachers who do not use a computer for more than keeping track of grades and playing solitaire, so many of us have realized how to harness the potential of the Internet to help us become better educators. Is it too much to ask that we be trusted to engage in meaningful learning activities during the school day?

In my district, we had to fight to get student created videos made in a collaborative project uploaded to edublogs.tv (the fight concerned why I needed it unblocked.) The argument was that it could be burned to DVD. They unblocked twitter for me, but I only push so far. If teachers are not immersed in it to see the difference that it can make, it will not be used effectively for students.

Can anyone point to an actual case in which a school was sued over Internet use?

I maintain that there are no literacies. In fact, I don’t think “literacies” is even a word.

That said, there are states in this nation where teachers are denied their Constitutional right to assemble (and unionize). Why should it surprise you that they are discouraged from using Facebook, a URL I have proudly never typed into my browser?

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And let’s not forget the American Film Institute’s ScreenNation at screennation.afi.com

That link is good as well Steve… I hadn’t seen it but it does address some of these issues as well. Thanks.

Did you mean this link?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534

My son is soon to be in the same situation, so I’ll also have to think about this approach.

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H: I’m delighted you found MPEG Streamclip also straightforward to use. I love the control of setting in and out points with the keyboard shortcuts similar to FCP. I’ve used QuickTime Pro in the past to do this but I like the MPEG Streamclip interface better. Plus it’s free, of course.

When I was at the university we used a Sony capture device to import VHS and DVD video into the MacG4 we had setup as a FCP station. I like this method better since it doesn’t require extra hardware or wiring!

Please let me know how this goes with your students!

Wes,

Just downloaded MPEG Streamclip. Light, clean and pretty versatile. I opened and played a number of different file types and even opened a URL from YouTube and all the media played back perfectly.

I opened an MPEG clip and set in and out points, then I saved the edited sequence as a new file. The file saved with the exact in and out points as I specified. I got an error message when I tried to open an MP3, but the file played anyway. It’s a much more hands on approach to conversion and editing than Zamzar. I will be sharing it with my students.

This approach might seem a little cumbersome, but it’s been working for me for quite some time now.
I use a capture device (Dazzle) together with my DVD player to bring DVD content into my computer. I come out of my DVD player/recorder into Dazzle and then out of Dazzle into my tower. While the DVD is playing, I capture everything in iMovie, save the project and then import the DV streams into Final Cut.

Thanks

H Songhai

I learned FCP 1.0 by working with an editor to learn Adobe Premiere (which was then in a much earlier version) and then was able to pick up FCP with no problem. I actually find it easier than iMovie to use as it’s much less finicky and has less limits.

I agree that there is a lot of free material available and don’t think subscription services are necessarily required though for someone who doesn’t want to hunt for the movies, it might be useful. If I was going to buy a service, I like totaltraining.com particularly for their photoshop DVDs.

If the stylesheets for a Ning site like Classroom 2.0 are not available, along with photo and video content, it may be that the http://api.ning.com domain is blocked on your organizational content filter. See This Nov 11th post and the accompanying PDF link for more info about unblocking a custom domain for a Ning site like Classroom 2.0.

… its just me. Classroom20 is not blocked from work, but the style does not work??

Wes and Dean-

FCE is only a slightly paired down version of FCP. I haven’t used Express in a long time, but my understanding is that the main difference between the two is that you can’t keyframe effects in FCE - really only important if you’re using special effects besides green screening.

So in terms of it being an ‘easier’ version of FCP -not so much. It just leaves out some of the advanced features.

With my students (high school) I find that starting in Imovie helps the students understand the basics of editing without getting too technical- then we move to Final Cut Pro, and learn different parts of it in pieces.

With FCP there are a couple of important inter-related areas to cover- like editing, keyframing, sound and image control. In that way, I don’t necessarily agree that its a more complicated software than Photoshop. It just looks more intimidating :). However, I’ve been using Photoshop since version 2 (when it was still in black and white on my leeetle Mac SE) - and I still learn more about it with each new project. Part of that is because it has changed so much in the last 15 years, but also because different tools, effects, and styles, can be used in such a multitude of ways.

Thanks for the informative post with all the great links, Wes!

Did a little research and found that GPSrs might be OK to use on some airlines. Need to check with each airline to know for sure. It was a lot of fun to follow my flight this way. Hope that I will be able to do it again.

Bernie: That is an excellent question — as of May 2008 according to GPSinformation.net Northwest Airlines (which is the carrier I was flying with last week) DOES officially approve of GPS units in flight at cruise altitude, when use of approved electronic devices is permitted. I have not seen that in writing on a Northwest Airlines website or asked a Northwest employee that question, however. Next time I fly I will.

Does anyone else have any other links or info about this issue?

[...] communication and collaborative tools. Wes participated in this session and was kind enough to stream it. I did note there were a few sessions related to Ning (Liz Davis), and Google tools but not much [...]