Omnivorous Surfer

cc licensed flickr photo shared by qthomasbower

I've posted before about Creative Commons copyright. MakeUseOf had a great post this week about How to Search and Credit Properly-Licensed Photos on Flickr. A great source with lots of information about CC and Flickr, it includes something I haven't seen before, which is a Grease Monkey script that will give you the code to display the image along with the proper attribution; see the image at left for an example.

Grease Monkey is a Firefox add-on which will allow you to use small bits of JavaScript to customize how certain web pages are displayed. All you have to do is to add the Grease Monkey add-on if you do not already have it and then click the Install button on the script web page.

I normally use Google Chrome, but I'll be using Firefox now to get the code to add Flickr image to a web page. It makes the attribution so much easier!

DROPitTOme is a FREE site which coordinates with Drop Box to allow you to accept files from other people. If you want assignments turned in electronically (or need to receive files from others), but have no way to do that, here's your solution. All you have to do is give them the upload link and password. For more information, see the Free Technology for Teachers post where I found this. Mr. Byrne has included a good description and video tutorials.

The Free Technology for Teachers blog is one of my favorites, so even if you aren't interested in DROPitTOme, check it out!

used by permission

Thanks to a former colleague, I was reminded of the FREE online quiz software I used to use. On investigation, I found that it is still available and still FREE. Perhaps some who read this may find it useful.

QuizStar is one of several online tools made available at 4teachers.org. Students can take quizzes or tests you have created and then see their results and review their individual answers immediately. As the instructor, you will have a report that looks much like a gradebook for that assignment and can also view their individual test "papers" as though they had been printed and scored.

One of the things I especially appreciated was the listing at the bottom of the test report page showing the number of students answering each question correctly and incorrectly. This allowed me to quickly identify a "bad" question and/or a concept that needed to be retaught. I could usually address the latter as soon as everyone had completed the test.

To prepare the students to take a quiz using QuizStar, I would create a simple 3-question quiz and make sure that they would miss one question. Then they could look at their test and see how to read the markings for the ones they missed. I would always give students the option of taking a paper test using QuizStar's printout.

I won't go through all the features; you can read those on the QuizStar website if you are interested. I used this program for at least 10 years when I was teaching in a lab and found it to be beneficial for teaching and learning and quite a timesaver, too.

Horia Varlan, licensed under Creative Commons

I guess I'm on a copyright kick! I found a great post, Digital Storytelling and Copyright, for teachers and others. Among other things, the authors shares information about Creative Commons Copyright and how to do a Google search for copyright-friendly images, as well as giving some sources of royalty-free music.

I learned from this post how easy it is for copyright owners to track the use of their images! I had no idea; very interesting information.

While students have leeway under fair use, it is important for all of us, including students, to understand and abide by copyright laws.

Horia Varlan, licensed under Creative Commons

Teachers have a responsibility to acquaint students with copyright issues, stressing the importance of abiding by copyright restrictions and citing sources of all materials used that were created by others. This wiki initiated by a teacher to provide both information on copyright and sources of copyright-friendly (primarily Creative Commons licensed) resources is a great resource in and of itself for educators and others as well. I have it bookmarked and refer to it frequently.

Spell with Flickr is a very simple website that lets you enter a word or words and then spells out your entry using images from Flickr.

Taking advantage of the fact that today is election day, I created this image:

This amazing list from 21st Century Lit is a great first stop when looking for technology tools for the classroom. Some on the list are online tools, and some are downloadable software. Categories include blogs, graphic design, comics/animation/storytelling, media presentation, information visualization, collaboration tools, audio, and more. I am familiar with or have used several of these, but this gives me lots of new ones to investigate!