Learning about the Internet and the HTML language

Learning about the history of the Internet this week gave me a chance to see how it all began. I know this may sound stupid, but I had never even heard of ARPANET before doing this assignment. Also, I was able to learn about a lot of the people who set up the foundation of the Internet. I enjoyed creating the timeline on Dipity which I had never done before. This is a great resource that can also be utilized in the classroom. Timelines could be created especially for social studies. I like how you can add pictures, links, videos, and information to each block on the timeline.

I also enjoyed learning the language of html this week. I had never used it besides copy and pasting stuff to put on my Myspace page, but I wasn't the one who wrote those html codes... It was interesting to learn the process behind creating a website using html codes. I think this will be useful if I ever want to create a website to use in my future classroom. Also, I liked the activity of having to alter and correct the website provided. It was good practice for me to go through and see what corrections needed to be made to the website provided. It helped me to understand this html language even better since I had to apply what I learned!

To copy, or not to copy? That is the question.

This weeks information on copyright and fair use really helped me to understand what I should and should not do as a teacher. Before reading about this, I kind of just assumed that as long as you give the person credit, then it is okay to use their work. However, I have found that a lot things are copyrighted and not legal for you to use. Also, I was able to learn a lot about the different conditions of creative commons such as attribution, no derivative works, non-commercial, and share alike. I found the videos and links provided for this week very helpful. They aided me in understanding the issues of copyright and creative commons.

I think that it is important that everyone is informed about information regarding copyright laws. Personally, it helped me to see things that I have done wrong in the past, and now, for the future I know what I can/cannot copy and when I need to give credit to someone. I think that it is also important that we inform our students about the different laws, so they will be able to distinguish what items they can/cannot use when creating projects, doing homework, writing papers, etc.

Flickr is a great source to find items that you are allowed to reuse. I feel like Flickr makes it easy to use creative commons works, and it even gives you the option of refining your searches to only creative commons items. They make it so easy for you. I found that I will probably use Flickr when using video, audio, or images in my future classroom because I know I am allowed to use the resources provided under the creative commons search. What a relief!

ECI 719- And the fun begins...

I am so excited about taking ECI 719 this semester. I have already been introduced to so many new technologies and it is only week one! I have been able to work with WordPress, Ning, Twitter, and more. I have enjoyed viewing other people's VoiceThread's, and I am excited to see more as people in my group begin to post them. VoiceThread is such a neat program where you can upload pictures and/or videos as well as audio to go along with them. Additionally, you can type comments to other individuals and leave audio comments. It is a great tool that can be utilized in the classroom especially. Students could share projects, do introductions, teach concepts to the class, and more! What a great first week. I look forward to the weeks to come in this class!!