Wk 1 comment #1 - Michael Wood

My response on Michael's blog

I can totally relate to your experience of drawing pictures from comic books when you were younger. I have always loved to draw and that is partially what got me into web design. I spent many a day drawing images from magazines, books, television, or whatever else interested me at that moment in time. My daughter has now followed in my footsteps, but has so much more media available to her to create even more than I ever could.

I agree that many teachers do not emphasize to students that they shouldn't use copyrighted images or for that matter what is even considered copyrighted. My daughter is taking a graphic design course this year and they have had discussions over copyright, which I feel is appropriate given the type of course that it is.

I also agree that Creative Commons is a blessing even though as you stated it can be rather difficult to find exactly the type of images you are looking for, but it is getting better. There are so many graphic sites available on the internet, but they are very costly as you mentioned. Even as a web designer the only way I am able to use those graphics on my clients websites is to charge them for the additional costs. I do think that having a resource available for teachers and students to use that is similar to those other sites, at perhaps a more feasible price range would be more beneficial to a lot of people. It is a thought and considering all the photography and art students there are in the schools around the world, one that I think could work.

Michael Wood's MAC-Copyright Response original post:

Wk1 Reading: Copyright Issues

Being in an industry for the past 15 years that requires you to be creative and observe those copyright laws I can understand where a lot of the reading this week comes from. My web design business has been around since 1996 and I can readily admit to being in that group of people who believed several of the "big myths" revolving around copyrighting when I first began in this business. Basically I had an incident with a wedding website that I was creating where an image I used as the logo per the client was apparently a copyrighted image created by someone else. Long story short, I had to agree to remove the image after proof of copyright and learned to be a bit more careful from that point forward.

There was so much information given to us during the reading and videos this week on copyright information that it was almost overwhelming. However, much of the information was helpful to answer many questions that have always just sort of loomed out there in the world of copyright law. I know that during our time here at Full Sail University we have been told not to use copyrighted material without prior permission and that we are better off creating our own original images, music, etc... I know that Creative Commons has become many of our friends throughout the EMDT program and something I had not heard of before this program. 

The duration of time that a copyright lasts surprised me (lifetime +70 years or 100 years for a company). That along with the logistics of what can be determined as "fair use" can be confusing. As an educator there are time when you just want to use a clip of something because it can help get your point across to the students using something they have likely seen before or are familiar with to help build a connection to the subject matter, but that is where you apparently have to be careful. While it was noted that Teachers were one of the four different areas that could use copyrighted material it also was noted that if the lesson could be taught without that material then it would not be considered "fair use". It all sounded like a lot of lawyer speak and verbal jargon to confuse the masses in order to keep them scared about using copyrighted material.

That is where Creative Commons comes into play. I love the ability to search for images on Creative Commons and find ways that I can use them and share them with others in my own work. I also am thankful for the opportunity to add my own works to Creative Commons in order to share my work with others and allow them to use it through whatever licensing I choose. Being in the web design business I have found that this offers me a great new opportunity to license my works and share them with others. I can also see this as being a very useful avenue for educators as well.

After watching Larry Lessig’s TED Talk about Remix Culture, I find that my daughter is one of those teenagers who uses her creative video remixes as a means to "be heard" so to speak.  For the past several years she has been creating these remixes using popular songs and anime videos that she remixes together as well as some of her own Flash creations to share what I consider to be a great talent with others.  Now I worry about the copyright repercussions to her works that she shares freely on her YouTube channel and her Facebook page.  In my opinion taking that creativity away from our children is as bad as removing the creativity from schools.  She is currently taking Graphic Design and her teacher has told the students that if they change and image by more than 75% from the original image that they are not breaking any copyright laws.  How true this is I am still unsure of even after reviewing all of our reading this week, but I do know that at least she is getting some copyright knowledge while she is expressing her creativity.  I just know that as a parent and educator that I feel it would be wrong to stifle this creativity and from allowing our youth to express themselves in one of the only ways they know how and that is through the digital technology that is so easily accessible to them. 

LMO

Join the Movement to Transform Learning: A Guest Blog by George Lucas | Edutopia

Join the Movement to Transform Learning: A Guest Blog by George Lucas | Edutopia

Can our dreams of becoming teachers be realized in this economy?

Have you ever wanted something so badly, but it just always seems to be out of your reach?  I have and still do!  Since I was a child I have dreamed of becoming a teacher.  I didn't go to college after High School like many of my friends did, instead I started a family that I stayed home and raised.  


In 1998 I went back into the workforce as an Office Manager for a computer store, where I dealt with the various school districts around us on a daily basis as I quoted them computer labs and other peripherals.  I continued to work at the computer store for about five years before I decided that I would never be able to grow at my current place of employment and I wanted something more out of my life.  It was then that I thought about what was really important to me along with my hopes and dreams.  I thought about my children and their education.  It was then that I took my first step and decided to go back to school to get my degree in education.


I began that journey in the Summer of 2003 and I worked very hard to keep my grades up while taking care of m family.  I even started volunteering at my children's school with the parent teacher organization, which I later became treasurer and president of.  I also became a Girl Scout leader for both of my daughters Girl Scout troop.  It was a very rough ride, but in December 2007 I graduated with my BS in Early Childhood Education (P-4). 


It was at that time that I began my job search for a lifelong career as an elementary teacher.  I began by substituting for all of the local school districts.  After a year of doing that with no nibbles I took a job offer at a local NBC affiliate in their Accounting department to help my family meet their financial needs.  I continued submitting applications and resumes for job positions that became open throughout the various school districts, but never received a phone call to interview for any of them.  


In February 2010, my position at the television station was eliminated and the very next day I received my divorce papers in the mail.  It was a very hard month, but my children and I decided to move from the only home they had ever known in Arkansas over 2400 miles away to Oregon for a fresh start.  We have been settling in here for almost a year now and I have gone back to school to get my Masters in Education Media Design & Technology, which I will graduate with in July of this year.  I am still submitting applications and resumes to various school districts hoping and praying for a teaching position, but have yet to see a response or even a glimmer of hope in that direction.


In our current economy I am not holding my breath for an education job due to all of the budget cuts, employees who aren't ready to retire, and being in that over 40 age bracket that sometimes isn't considered with all the younger graduating hopefuls.  Everything has become so political and if you don't know the "right person" then your chances are even lower.  I am not so much set to teach elementary school anymore as I once was, but then again breaking into secondary education or even online education for that matter these days is just as difficult.  Especially if you have absolutely no teaching experience besides just your internship and substituting.  So how does someone get their dream job these days with so much against them???  That is a very good question and one I would love to be able to answer.  I just keep trying and pray that one day I will be able to fulfill my dream of teaching.


I have been told by my friends, colleagues, and other educators that with all my technology background and willingness to try new things that there should be multiple opportunities available to me.  Being out of work for a year now I have looked at taking a position just about anywhere and everywhere.  However, it seems that I am over qualified for many of the accounting or office positions I have taken in the past or that they are afraid to hire me in fear that I will leave if a teaching position should become available.  The economy has been hit hard making it difficult for us all.  This has been a very hard road to walk down, but I am determined to follow it through until I finally do reach my goal and dream of teaching somewhere in what was once a great land of opportunity for us all. 

Cycle 1 complete

Friday finished up my first cycle of research for my Action Research project.  Now I am trying to sort through all of the data to measure whether the project was a success or failure.  Then hopefully I can tell what changes I need to make, so that I can begin cycle 2.  I know that there are things that will have to be done differently and perhaps even a whole different approach will be needed.  


I've had suggestions from participants that I should choose one person to be in the leadership role on a weekly basis versus a daily basis to get them more acclimated with the role, have them take a more in-depth look at the various primary and secondary professions before choosing, making sure that everyone has a microphone to be able to communicate verbally in the Ventrilo server, and having daily required discussions on the discussion boards.


I see many of these as very valid points.  It was hard to communicate with some participants when they only typed in the chat box versus verbally in the Ventrilo server.  It was also rough during the last couple of weeks of the project with one person in the group having to be the only healer on every quest/mission because the professions were not discussed and chosen before their creation by all participants. The discussion board suggestion is a hard one because I would have loved for them to communicate more in there, but I just couldn't seem to keep them interested or posting at all for that matter.  I don't know if requiring them to do it on a daily basis before playing or after playing would have helped or done more harm.  That is going to be a hard call.


Many if the participants would like to see the second cycle carried over into one of the other Guild Wars campaigns like Factions or Nightfalls instead of repeating Prophecies whole storyline again.  I can see the point of that as well because once you have completed it once you generally don't want to do it again.  There are many factors to consider and I will be deep in thought on what should be done to make this next cycle better.  If any of my critical friends or subscribers have any input or suggestions please let me know.

My first action research cycle is coming to a close

I wanted to take a minute to update my blog and copy over a post from my Action Research blog that updates where my research is currently at.  Next week will complete my journey using Guild Wars to teach social skills.  It hasn't exactly been what I expected, but then again when is any type of research exactly as you expect it to be?  During this journey I created a website and forums (http://virtuguild.com/).  I have been collecting data using pre & post surveys, weekly polls, forum discussions, as well as in game chat through the use of Ventrilo's voice communication program and in game text chat.  


The first week was kind of a get to know the other participants in the group and a chance to get everyone setup with their Guild Wars character as well as familiarize them with the game interface and quests.  I lost two participants during the first week because one felt she was too experienced with Guild Wars to be a part of the research and the male participant just vanished into thin air after answering all the first week challenges.  That brought us down to six participants, although during the second week we had another male who asked to join us in the research and was more than happy to catch up to where we all were. 

The second week began the quests and missions to play out the whole storyline of Guild Wars.  These continued up until Wednesday of this week when we completed the last mission of the storyline.  There are now five quests that will be completed to round out the storyline for everyone.  Every week I setup topics to post on in the forums and a weekly poll with a question for the participants to answer.  The hardest part has been to get everyone to answer the questions and polls in the forums.  They are generally eager to participate in the game itself, but not much on the writing or answering of questions.  They all did participate in the pre-survey I conducted before we began and I am hoping they will all answer the post-survey questions next week at the end of this project.  

What has been a surprise with your results?

There have been some unexpected twists and turns along the way needless to say.  Guild Wars only allows for 4 members to be in a party for most of the beginning quests and missions.  This forced the group to be divided up in order to accommodate everyone, which made it more difficult for me to see all of the interaction that was going on in each group at all times.  

The party size then moved up to 6 during week 3 and eventually to 8 members for weeks 4-6.  During the first day of six members allowed in a party I divided the groups up by their profession/class in the game trying to make the parties more effective.  This unfortunately backfired on my research in a way because it ended up being 4 guys in one party and 4 girls in the other party.  

The reason I say it backfired is because there was more communication during the 2 quests and mission completed between the guys that day then there had been in the past 2 weeks.  That was kind of a twist, although now that I think about it perhaps not completely unexpected that the guys would feel more comfortable communicating in Ventrilo and Guild Wars together than with the girls in the same group.  

The following day I split the groups up half and half to see the differences in the interactions.  It was somewhat better than before, but still did not work out as well as putting all the guys together.  The following week when we began working as a complete group of 8 it became a lot more difficult in some aspects.  I think this may have been due to the group size being too large for effective communication between all the members.  

I also found it difficult to get members to volunteer to lead the quests/missions.  Some were more eager than others, but I wanted everyone to have the opportunity in order to see the strengths/weaknesses of their leadership role and look for ways to improve upon it.  The teamwork has become better as we have progressed from week to week, but I feel it was still better in the smaller groups than when we merged everyone together into the group of 8.  

What tweaks are you making for your next cycle of research?

At this point I am somewhat at a loss as to what to do for my second cycle.  The whole point was to see if using Guild Wars could lead to teaching effective social skills like leadership and teamwork that are needed in todays workforce.  Yet I am seeing a pattern of the males being more comfortable working with other males instead of the females in the group and that the smaller groups actually work together more effectively than the larger groups do.  This is quite the conundrum for me and leaves me somewhat baffled as to where I should go from here.  Do I say it failed and try something else or should I perhaps try another approach?  As I am drawing near the end of my first cycle these are questions that I am asking myself, so that I can prepare for my next cycle.  

What is the overall participant’s response?

Since I am no quite to the end of my first cycle it is hard for me to get a definite picture of the overall response from my participants.  However, from the lack of posts in the forums I would say that they prefer to communicate more orally than in written form.  I feel that some of them tend to leave abruptly at the end of some of the missions/quests depending on who was the leader that night, especially if the participants died a lot and there wasn’t as much communication between members of the party.  I will know more about their overall feelings towards the project once it comes to an end next week and I have looked at all the data from the surveys and polls.