Tool 3

I looked at several of the video hosting sites. You Tube, being the most popular and the one I have used most often, was the easiest one to navigate successfully. I also have use Teacher Tube and School Tube, both have some good educational videos, but they are more limited in their selection. I also looked at Blinkx, which I found to be the least user friendly - at least for my area of need. Blinkx looks to be more focused on news related current events. I was not familiar with View Pure. I am glad to have learned about it. There have been times when I have shown a You Tube clip to students and have been uncomfortable with the side ads and other videos on the screen. Here is a link to a You Tube video using View Pure:

http://viewpure.com/pkIJDXCiZsk

I found two videos on Book trailers; both are posted below. Book trailers are a fairly new genre. They are similar to movie trailers, but are centered on books. Many publishers are now creating book trailers to promote their new titles. I have used book trailers with my 4th and 5th graders many times. Our 5th graders even made their own. It was a great experience for them.

I am familiar with the Fair Use Guidelines. The video clip was a good general explanation of Fair Use - especially when it comes to transforming a work and repurposeing a work. As long as something is being transformed and repurposed and it is for an educational purpose, then students have a fairly wide berth of freedom when it comes to copyright. I do feel though, that it is important for students to give credit for photos and other pieces of media when they are not transforming them, but just using them as is in their work.

I also enjoyed exploring Picasa Web Album. While I have used Flickr Creative Commons many times, I have not used Picasa Web Album. I was pleased to see how easy it was to search for pictures and the number of returns. This will be something that I will use with students this year.

One thing that was mentioned in Tool 3 that I was unfamiliar with was the SBISD Media Server. This is something I have never heard of and would like to learn more about.

Here are the two videos I found on Teacher Tube and School Tube: