Thursday, February 23, 2012

TOOL THREE

I have used several of the search engines/video hosting sites listed. I use the news sites pretty regularly to show my journalism classes breaking news stories or examples of good news writing/interviewing/reporting. My students do "famous journalist" presentations at the beginning of each school year and we often use You Tube to find videos of the various journalists "in action."

I went to and found this video on iconic photos and a new book that Life has put out regarding the 100 Photos That Changed the World. I could use this video to introduce the book, which I have, and then show the students the book and give them the assignment that I do each semester in which they have to explore an iconic photo and then present it to the class and explain its significance. Iconic Photo Book Video

I also found a video that would be a great example to show my Journalism students of a well-written personality profile/human interest story. In the past, I have shown videos like this one and typed out the transcript of the story to show them that even VIDEO news stories must be well-written and follow the same structure of written news stories. This example would work well. Basketball Player Profile

I am fairly familiar with copyright laws because of images I've used in the yearbook. I thought it was very interesting to see the two extreme ways the material was presented in the 11 Tools blog...the first was a straightforward, text only approach and the video was fast paced/fast moving. I looked at both and learned some things from both. I think the video would be much more appealing to kids, obviously, and I may show that in my Journalism and Yearbook classes. I think the video did a good job of explaining the four factors that need to be considered and explaining transformativeness. After reading more about the laws, I think I am doing just fine (as in not violating copyright laws) when using certain materials in my classroom, but we probably need to look a little more closely at how we are using certain images in the yearbook.

I have set up a Dropbox account and dropped files there. I can see that I could place instructions for assignments there that my students could retrieve when necessary or I could drop files that would supplement classroom assignments/lessons. Students working in partners or groups, which is common in my class, could share files/documents this way as well and could even turn in documents/assignments to me this way.