Creating Content: Show me the freebies!

You're an innovative classroom practitioner. You embrace the transformative nature of technology. You want to encourage students to take risks, be creators not just consumers. BUT... you don't want to end up in trouble with the law. You've heard the ads about not stealing cars, and you know that somewhere, someone worked really hard to create that music/picture/book/film you loved.

Of course, the easiest way to ensure you're not illegally using someone else's work is to create it all yourself. From shooting the video, to taking the photos, composing the music and creating the sound effects. If your students create the content themselves, they are then free to use it however they wish. However, this is not always practical and this is where Creative Commons comes into play.


By teaching students how to search for and responsibly use Creative Commons licensed works, you are promoting good digital citizenship. Keep in mind that if your students are reusing works, they need to ensure the work is produced under a licence that allows for derivations as the No Derivatives licence does not allow for the work to be added to or changed in any way.

Where to find CC licensed works:

Music & Sound Effects

• Bensound - allows for music to be modified for use in a video, but not to be reused to create music (e.g. you can't add lyrics to it and release it). Some music is only available with a paid subscription. 
• YouTube Audio Library - YouTube has made it really easy to download music to add to videos (presumably in the hopes that you're going to then upload them to YouTube). They also have a sound effects section. 
• Free Music Archive - has a vast array of music, some created using the CC licenses. Can search by genre, length, and license
• MediaCollege - has a small collection of music and sound effects. Most of it does not require attribution
• Jamendo - mentioned in the video above. Costs if you want to use music to create content, so I suspect this has changed since the CC Kiwi video was made. 

Photos & Images

• Google Images - once you search for your image, you need to use the 'Search Tools' to search by usage rights. From here, you can select the license you need. You can also select what kind of image you're after (photo, clip art, etc)
• Flickr - after entering your search term/s, select the license type you require from the menu at the top left side of the results page

Video

• YouTube - after you enter your search term/s, select the filter and then select Creative Commons. This will search for videos licensed under creative commons
• Vimeo - again after you enter your search terms, you can filter results by the licence you're looking for using the "Refine results by" options to the left of the screen

CS50 - So it begins

So, today I started watching the lectures etc. for This Is CS50 2014 via iTunes U. Each week there are problems to work through, and I figured it would be a good idea to put down my thoughts since there's no real accountability other than to myself.

This week's questions:
How do you represent the integer 50 in binary?

• 110010

How many bits must be "flipped" (i.e., changed from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0) in order to capitalise a lowercase a that's represented in ASCII?

• Well uppercase 'A' is 65 in ASCII = 1000001
• Lowercase 'a' is 97 in ASCII     = 1100001
• So only 1 bit must be flipped to change case. 

How do you represent the integer 50 in, oh, "hexidecimal," otherwise known as "base-16"?

• Base 16 would go: | 4096 | 256 | 16 | 1 |
• So you'd need 3x16 =48 PLUS 2x1=2 to make 50
• So it would look like: 0302 (assuming each column made up of 2 digits to represent one state)

Finally, there is a practical task to complete: Your mission is, quite simply, to have fun with Scratch and implement a project of your choice (be it an animation, a game, interactive art, or anything else), subject only to the following requirements:

• Your project must have at least two sprites, at least one of which must resemble something other than a cat.
• Mine uses four: a penguin, a snowflake, a lightning bolt, and a Game Over sign.
• Your project must have at least three scripts total (i.e., not necessarily three per sprite).
• Apparently in total I've used 22 scripts :P Some are repeats though. 
• Your project must use at least one condition, one loop, and one variable.
• Check - I used the if/else condition several times, the forever loop, and the score variable.
• Your project must use at least one sound.
• Check - I used pop, bells, and duck quack 
• Your project should be more complex than most of those demonstrated in lecture (many of which, though instructive, were quite short) but it can be less complex than, say, Pikachu’s Pastry Catch and Ivy’s Hardest Game. As such, your project should probably use a few dozen puzzle pieces overall.
• Although not the most complex of games, I think it's more than what was demonstrated. It's certainly taken me a while to work out! I did look at the scripts of others to see how they worked, but didn't directly copy anything. Much, much fun though :)

You can play my game, Penguin Popper, by clicking on the picture below:

Another Year Begins

And so it is that another year is set to begin... ready or not!

This year is shaping up to be a challenging one for me: I have shifted year levels again and will be teaching Years 1 and 2 this year. In addition to that, my school is moving towards Modern Learning Practices (MLP) in Modern Learning Environments (MLE). I am fairly confident about that first change, after all I have taught at this level before and it will just take a period of adjustment I think. The second change is a bit more daunting - it's asking me to move from only having to concern myself with my own students to working alongside other teachers in a much more hands on way.

I am looking forward to it though. I get along really well with the teachers I have been paired with and I think that we'll work together well. Each of us has strengths that will help the others to lift their game. For example, I know that I'm pretty good at integrating IT on a regular basis, but sometimes my ability to complete paperwork is more of a 'just in time' thing! One of my colleagues however is extremely organised, and I'm looking forward to seeing what strategies she uses to be that way.

But most of all, I'm looking forward to seeing the kids again. After all, that's why I love teaching!

It's Great to Be Me

This term we've started a health unit about Ourselves. Because half my class is involved in a programme run by external facilitators, I've had to think more about how they could learn about what we've been doing, as well as give opportunities to have them share what they've been doing. I also wanted to push myself technically, so have set out the start point for the unit in a series of slides on Google. I've given my students access to the document, and have helped all my students set up their own blogs for recording their progress. I see this as a chance for my students to work through things at their own pace, with regular catch-up sessions to share where we're up to and what we've been learning.