Alumnet

I would claim fair use on this material. The name would be used for educational purposes, students created the page, assuming students were learning to build a website. Next, one would have to argue that by using the name, Alumnet was taking profit away from the copyright owners.
The nature of the use was that it was a website that students developed, thus the nature of the work would be considered when calling fair use.
This would be very hard to argue, because this is a specific group of people that they are targeting for this name, and are no way competing with the owners of the original name.
This would be for a transformative use, because the purpose of this name is specific.
The next would be the amount that one copyrighted. If it is just simply the name of the site, then one is not in any copyright violation.

If the name was developed before the other group copyrighted it, then the school could continue to use the name without any harm. In a town next to mine, we have a "Burger King" that is unrelated to THE Burger King. One is able to do this because the name was established before the chain made the name.

Lesson Plans

First, just because one does create a cease and desist letter, does not necessarily actually mean anything. This is often just a scare tactic. In this situation, this may be the case. I believe that this is fair use. First, the material is being used for non-profit educational use. When claiming fair use, one looks at the purpose of the material. Under the Best Practices in Fair Use for Educators, one can create and share curriculum materials that include copyrighted materials. The teacher could even sell this material because it is for curriculum use.  The next question is the question of transformative.
I would argue that this is a transformative use of copyrighted materials because the purpose of the graphics has been transformed thus making it appropriate for one to claim fair use.
Finally, I would argue that the small group of educators using the graphics would not affect the market value for the graphics.

Movies All Day

This is a case study I really struggled with. I have heard of this happening at Johnson. Our Student Government Association has been unable to plan a movie night because of copyright issues. Coming into this case study, I had this view that it would not be okay. My mind was changed with the Fair-Sale Doctrine. The first thing I would ask is if the movies were purchased legal. Assuming the movies were purchased legally, one could use the fair-sale doctrine.  When one purchases a movie, they receive a kind of right. This also involves the fact that one can loan out the movie as one wishes. Thus, the school can play the movie under the fair-sale doctrine. I also believe it would be very difficult for one to argue that by playing the movie one is preventing others from actually buying the films. Thus, the movies would not have a large economical effect on the film maker.   This case is not a situation in which the teacher is handing out multiple copies of the film that are pirated. This would not be under the fair-sale doctrine.
Overall, I say have the movie day!

Pooh News

In this school, educators can easily claim fair use on "Pooh News". First, fair use looks at the context of the material. Pooh news was for educational purposes. Another question one should ask is the use transformative. The name "Pooh News" is transformative because the intent of the name is not the same as the copyrighted "Winnie the Pooh".  The next is the amount of copying that took place in comparison to the whole work. This is clear that the students' only used a small portion of the copyrighted work. Next, the question of whether or not the "Pooh News" would infringes upon the market value of "Winnie the Pooh". I think that this is clear that it would not. Finally, one can not control all information about any particular source. One can not sensor all uses of Winnie the pooh because of fair use.

Gap Steal

This case I found very interesting. I researched the case more and found that the man who posted his photo on Flickr did put the photo in creative commons. The issue with this is that Gap still did not ask for permission to use the photo, and made money off of it. This means that although the photo is creative commons, it is still a copyright violation.

In an educational setting, this would not be the case. Students would be using this photo in a transformative way. The photo has been altered and turned into something new. Plus, the photo was in creative commons, which was created to enhance educational situations. It would be also hard to argue that a students' project could take away profit from the original photographer of the photo. 

Controversial Billboard

This was not a copy write violation. While it was clear that this billboard was offence and demeaning it was not a copy write violation. The mother gave the right to the photographer to sell photos of her daughter and to even use the photos as stock photos. When one gives this permission anyone can use the images for anything. She signed a release, and from that moment on she lost control on how her daughter's photos could be used. The mother could by law do nothing about these images. 

 In an educational setting, this situation would be the same since the photos are stock images. Students could freely use this photos, without concern of any copy write violation! It would have not even have to be considered transformative!

A Family Christmas Card

For this specific situation, I do believe it is a copy write violation. When one gets professional photos taken, such as the case with this case study, the photographer would give a licensing agreement to the family. From there, the family would be able to freely post the blog on social media. Some photographers even let one freely print photos from a selected photo service. Since the shop did not have a licensing agreement, the shop should not have printed the photo. 

In an educational setting, this could work under the Fair  Use Act.  For example, students might have an assignment to make a fake advertisement when studying economics. This would be used for educational purposes.  This is because this would be used for a transformative purpose, therefore,would fall under the Fair Use Act. 

Google Forum/Slide

My google slide and Forum
Today I created a Google Sheets and a Google forum. Setting up the spread sheet was very frusterating to me. I have worked with excel before, but never sheets. The hardest part was crossing it over from one spread sheet to another! Once I figure this out, I could easly see the benifit of this tool as a classroom teacher. This would be an easy place to keep the students grades and have grades automatically figured. This could make keeping track of a students grades.

Creating the Forum was something that I have done a lot of different times. Most reciently, I created one for my cross country team to take a poll for superalatives.  Forums are easy to use and set up. This could be an easy and quick exit ticket for students if one is in a one-to-one schooling situation. I will use this in class.

Youtube Editor

YouTube editor is a service provided by YouTube that makes it easy to create videos quickly.  The idea is that anyone- whether a skilled video editor or not, could quickly and easily make a professional looking video. It does this by allowing users to add pre-existing or creative common videos or audio to the project. The user can then cut videos and audio as needed. When the video is done, the user can simply upload the video to YouTube for anyone to see!

To start this process, one must have a YouTube account. Once the user has a YouTube account, one simply goes into YouTube editor and starts making a project. The user can place video and audio as wanted. When I made my project, I made a video about Pandas. I simply typed in “Panda” to the creative commons and chose the videos I wanted. Next, I wanted some to be in black and white, and some to have filters, such as black and white.  To do this, I simply clicked on “Filter”. Next, I cut the videos to be the length I desired. Finally, I added text by clicking on the text button and typing in my desired text. Finally, I added audio. For this video, I used a song from a band named “Panda”. I have included this video bellow. 

Personally, I will be using this tool.  I have been using YouTube for years, yet I had no idea that this feature even existed. I have run into times when I needed to make a video quickly and easily, such as when I wanted to record a friends fiancé answering questions for a bridal party. I could easily make such a video with this editor with little to no trouble.

I would love to see what my students could come up with given an hour on this editor. If I could make a video in two minutes, students could easily make a video quickly that has a lot of good content. The academic possibilities could be endless, from making a video about their favorite animals to making a music video about a math concept. This allows students to reach the creative level of Bloom’s Higher Order Thinking.  With some help, even younger elementary students could make a video quickly! I really liked this service and will keep it in mind for future teaching.

MathBoard Addition

MathBoard Addition is an application aimed at assessing student’s addition skills. This gamee has various addition games such as quizzes, an addition problem-solution match game, and a find the sign game.  All of these games give students feedback and allow students to save their results. Students have the option during the quiz to use the “blackboard” feature. This blackboard feature allows for students write down their ideas. The game also has a built in addition chart for students to use and manipulate. Mathboard has a variety of different applications that focuses on a variety of skills. This makes the application easy to use for multiple grade levels.

In my classroom, I would use this application for assessment purposes. Students can all take a quiz, and I could see the progress of the quizzes. It is not a super “fun” application, so it might not be what a teacher is looking for if the teacher wants to have a center where students are going to be extremely self-motivated. It is still a great application that could easily be used as an assessment tool. This saves the teacher time because the application makes the quizzes.

Be Smart Kids

Be Smart Kids is an application for early learners. The application has four different games build in. The first is fun with balloons. In this game, students select different colors of balloons to be displayed on the screen. The balloons blow up, and then Mr. Clown flies the balloon. The next is ABC fun A-E. In this game a student chooses a letter from A-E. This plays a video of something the letter starts with and how to trace the letter. The next is Mary and the Lambs. In this game, the application sings a song to the student, and the student can point at the words as they are read. The last is an animal matching game called critter shuffle.

I would not use this game in the classroom. This game was overall very boring and not very interactive at all. This application is to be used with very young children, but that does not mean that this game should not be interactive.  It could be easily changed to more fit the needs of students. For example, I would really like to see in the ABC fun game for students to trace the letter instead of the letter being traced in a video. In my classroom, I will use an alternative application.

Stack The States

Stack the States is a game in the geography genre. Users answers a series of questions about states. For each question, the students have four options of states to choose from. The questions ask students to identify a state, identify a bordering state, match capitals to states, or identify major landmarks in states. After answering the questions, students earn a state. Once earned, the students have to stack the state, similar to a Tetris type game.

I could see this application being used as an application for students to play when students are completed with work early or when students have free time on the IPad. This game is fun and engaging. I had a hard time quitting playing. There are multiple levels for students to work through. I could easily see this being a game that students are begging to play!

Read Me Story

Read Me Stories is a reading application. When one first logs on to Read Me stories, the parent or educator is given a set of questions about the child that addresses:  the reading level of the student, what the student needs to work on, how much the child read, if the child reads independently or with an adult, and how long each day the child reads. The program selects books that are appropriate  for the child's level and the child’s needs. Each day, the program gives students a book selected just for them. The book either reads the book to the child, or has the child read the book by themselves. As the application reads the book the book highlights the word being spoken.

I personally could see this application being useful in a lower-elementary classroom. I have seen in classrooms that teachers do “listening centers” during reading center times. During this time, students often listen to a book on tape. This could be a much cheaper alternative than to buy audiobooks for students. I think this application could be enhanced by questioning the students’ interest. Students can go back and reread books that they enjoyed. For students who are international, the application gives the option to read in different languages. This could be a good application to give ELLs to use with their parents.

Sentance Builder

Sentence Builder is a free application. In this application, a picture is displayed . Bellow the picture words and punctuation are displayed. These words and punctuation can be arranged in such a way that it builds a sentence. Students have to move the words in the correct order to go on to the next level. In the next level, the program adds an adjective to the sentence. For example, the first sentence would be “He is playing.”, and the second level would be “He is playing very well”. There are only two levels for each sentence. The user also has the option to have the application read the sentence to them before rearranging sentences. The application address all three modules of learning: Kinesthetic, auditory, and visual. Students are able to see the sentences, physically arrange the sentences, and hear the sentences. This could be helpful to all students.

As an ESL educator, I find this a very helpful application. One of the hardest things to find is activities for lower level ELL students to use. This application could benefit these lower level students. It teaches basic sentence structure, using primarily sight words. The biggest issue that one could run into using this kind of program is that one could only stay interested in it for so long because of the repetitive nature of this game. Overall, for students who are level 2 ELL students, this would be a great game to get them acclimated to English sentence structure.

Edmodo

Edmodo is a way of bring the classroom to the students' location. With Edmodo teachers can make available to students essential resources, polls for students, websites for students to look out, and assessments. Edmodo is designed to look like Facebook. Students are able to collaborate with each other and the teacher in real time.

To use Edmodo, a teacher simply has to sign up for the free service. From here, teachers can create their class. Once the class is created, students can add themselves to a class by simply typing in a code into Edmodo. Once the class is created, teachers can start adding content and assessing students.

In my personal life, I find little need for this application. For my future teaching career, this could be very beneficial. This website has been perfected as a classroom tool. I like that this allows for whole class collaboration. I would love to see my students using it as a tool for homework help. Students could use this site to work through a problem together and a teacher can monitor. All students, even the shy students, will have more of an opportunity to share their ideas with others. This could also be a great tool for assessment. Edmodo has this feature called "Snapshot". Using this tool, teachers can put in a common core standard that was covered, and Edmodo will instantly create a quiz for students for that standard. Overall, I was pleased with Edmodo and I could easily see how it could be implemented into a classroom.

Remind

Remind is a website for teachers to keep in communications with their students and parents. A teacher creates a class, and with a simple text or email, teacher, students and their parents are connecting. From there, teachers can send out reminders content to their students and parents. This content can include study materials, reminders about what is happening the next day, and other important information that students need to know. Teachers can send a personal message to a parent or student, but the messages cannot be edited and a record is always kept. This protects teachers and students.  One teacher said that during a hurricane that scattered her class, she was able to send out text messages to students to find out if each of them were safe.

To use the site, a teacher simply creates a classroom and has students and parents send a code to the number. This connect the teachers and students automatically. Teachers can also put a link to the page on their website and invite others using email.

Personally, I currently have no needs for this site. I did have a need when I was a RA. I would often need to send the girls on my hall reminders. We used the app GroupMe a lot in order to communicate. In our GroupMe, my co-RA and I send out information, but this caused an issue. The girls would send messages to each other using GroupMe, and this got annoying. Girls would turn off notification so that their phones would not receive an exuberant amount of notifications. This often resulted in our girls missing essential notifications. If I used Remind, then my girls could have their group chat while the RA’s could still get essential information out.

In the classroom, this website could be used a lot. For lower elementary age often things are forgotten. From book sales, to permission slips, to returning a library book, and when AR points are due, these are the things that slip through the cracks in parent-teacher communication. This website would make it easy to keep parents informed, without having to trade personal information to parents. One feature that I found would be extremely helpful in the classroom is the paying features. If teachers are collecting money for something, they can simply connect their Remind account to their bank account. From there, parents can send money. This avoids trusting a seven-year-old with money that walks off somewhere between home and school! I would also use the activity feature on Remind frequently. Using this feature, teachers can make an event, such as a field trip, put the date and time, and how much it cost in one message. This makes field trip preparation easier

Puppet Pals

Puppet Pals is an application in which students can create their own stories using different characters, backgrounds, and by recording their voice. After the students create the content, students can share content  through email, YouTube, MMS, or transfer to the computer.

This application overall could be used for some really great things in the classroom. Students can write their own scrip, record their voices, and be able to share this with the class. If one wants to buy certain parts of the program, students could even use their own pictures and have an unlimited amount of characters to interact with. Using this application, students are able to let their imagination go wild. I could only imagine the kinds of stories a kindergarten class would create when given such creative freedoms!

The reason why I would not use it in the classroom is the price of the content. This set back is a complete deal breaker for me.  Although it starts with one set of characters and scenes, the rest of the content cost money. As many good free apps that are similar to this one out there, teachers can easily find an alternative application.

ShowMe

ShowMe is an App where teachers can create content in a lecture-like format for others. This App allows one to make a ShowMe. A ShowMe looks a lot like a teacher is using a smart board in class. Teachers can record their voices discussing the topic. Once designed, teachers can share this ShowMe to anyone, anywhere in the world or a teacher can keep the information private. Anyone can look up a ShowMe to learn something new or to include in a lesson.

As an ESL educator, the fact that this app has an entire category dedicated to ESL excited me. In my experience, there is not a wide variety of content available for ESL educators, especially since the implementation of WIDA. This makes it very hard to create lessons. Since there is little curriculum, teachers are often making entire lessons from scratch! ShowMe would be great way to introduce to students any lessons for ESL students.

In my undergrad, I learned a lot about a new trend in education: The Flipped Classroom. The Flipped Classroom is where student’s complete lectures outside of class, and time in class is reserved for doing assignments and other activities. ShowMe would be a great means of implementing the Flipped Classroom. Students can easily watch a ShowMe outside of class, anywhere and anytime.  

Dictionary and Spelling

One app that I have used throughout my life, even in classes is the dictionary app. This app is a dictionary, thesaurus, and more. One can simply search for any word, and find the definition. This app would be very easy to use for students. In the past, I have used this app as a student by looking up words that I was unfamiliar with in text. Upon further exploration, I found that this App has a lot more feature then I initially thought.
 I found that under “Slideshows” this app has a lot of different articles for users to look through. These articles range from anything from strange names to baby animals to adjectives for mother’s day! In addition, this app has an interesting feature in which a user can look to see what others are searching for around them. This could be a great way for a teacher to informally evaluate their students and make decisions on what vocabulary words needs reexamined and how to best scaffold students. Another feature that I found interesting was the word of the day. It would be a fun challenge to display the word of the day each day, and see if students can use the word in their everyday life some time that day!

I was really impressed by the app Spelling Free. This app would be great for students. As someone who has a learning disability, spelling was my hardest subject. I would work so hard to learn spelling words, and I think this app could have really helped me. One important thing is this app gives students the ability to work at their own pace. During a spelling test, I often took longer than my peers, got behind, and then had to have my teacher repeat the entire. This app takes care of this problem.
Another thing I like is the instant feedback. It is so important to give students feedback quickly. This has been proven effective for students. This app automatically shows students their mistake, helping students learn quicker. Overall this app could effectively be used in the classroom.

Evernote

Evernote is a powerful life organization tool. In Evernote, a writer can keep video, audio, images, scanned documents and typed out notes in one organized place. One of the most powerful features of Evernote, in my opinion, is that Evernote can detect text in a scanned document. One can create different notebooks to organize information. One can also add tags that can help identify what a note is about. Beyond notes, Evernote can set reminders which sets off an alarm. One can also create a to-do list with Evernote. This syncs across all devices.
Personally I would use this application for the ability to search for information. Who hasn't during a class with both digital and written text  misplaced information? Using this tool, it would be so easy to find any document given from a class with a typing of a few letters. Tags could further organize information by sorting documents by chapter or subject.

To use Evernote, one opens up Evernote on their web browser or the Evernote App on a tablet. From there, a person can automatically make notes. One can write the note, title it, add tags, and add it to the appropriate notebook. Once a note is completed, one can share it with others or keep the note for personal use. One can add images, voice recordings, documents, and a variety of other content. If one want to search, one simply presses the search tool on the left side. This allows students to search any note.
Personally, ever note could be very useful. For me this would be especially true when

As someone who wants to be a lower elementary educatator, this can be a very useful tool. A teacher can share content with a whole class. For lower elementary students, one feature that I would use a lot is sharing notes with parents. This will allow for students to really track the progress of their students work. 

Rover VS Safari

Both Rover and Safari are internet browser apps. Rover continually streams a video of the website that students are accessing. The IPad does not have flash or java. Unfortunately, a lot of educational websites use flash or java for educational games. This causes issues for teachers.

Safari on the other hand does not have any way to access Java or Flash. It does have a variety of other features that would help an educator in the classroom. One thing that really stands out to me in Safari is that a teacher can create a reading list for students. This could be very helpful when students are doing a project in which they need to get on a few different websites.  Another feature that would make Safari useful in the classroom is the cloud feature. Students can use the cloud to connect to the same website as the teacher at the same time.

I think that Rover is okay for what it does. The goal of Rover is that students are able to have access to websites that they could not on Safari because of the lack of Flash or Drive. The biggest issue is the lag time. In my use with Rover, it was very slow.

I overall prefer Safari. It allows for teacher and students to synchronize when visiting websites for educational purposes. Overall, it is faster and a better browser than Rover.  

IThoughtHD

IThoughtHD is a mind-mapping app. Mind mapping is creating a diagram that organizes information. In a Mind Map, it is clear how two concepts might connect to one another. IThoughtHD allows a user to create a mind map in an easy to use format.
Mind mapping allows students to see how information connects.  Piaget was a learning theorist. One of his biggest theory is the schema theory. The students make connections from concepts to concepts.  The groups of concepts that students connect is called a schema. Mind mapping helps students see the connection from one concept to another. This is a good way to visualize the schema and make connections between concepts.
In the classroom, one could use iTHoughtHD in many ways. When trying to get students to organize thoughts for an essay, IThoughtHD could be a perfect tool. Students can first write down their main ideas. Branching off from these main ideas, students can list support for these main ideas. This allows students to easily organize their thoughts.
Teachers can also use this as a pre-assessment activity. Teachers can have students make a mind map of birds. From there, students can write everything they know about bird, and how information connects. This could be helpful to activate student’s prior knowledge.

Box.com

In my past experiences with Box.Com, my family has used this program to share files with each other. While my family are avid DropBox users, Dropbox does not allow for others to share videos and pictures as easy than on Box. Actually, all my childhood pictures are currently on a Box file, along with a video explaining the Stem Cell Transplant that my mom received over Easter Weekend. While I have used Box for looking at picture and videos that my parents have put up for our whole family to use, I have never used the program for personal use. This was very easy, just as easy as it would be to use on Dropbox. This could be used in the classroom for students to use to work on documents in multiple devices. Students can also collaborate by uploading documents to the same file.

The first screen, there are three options. One can upload documents to Box. For my purpose, I created a new folder to use.

The next thing I did was name the Folder. I also chose to keep this file private. There is an option to invite others to download.

Finally I uploaded the image to my new folder I created. I did this by clicking the upload button and selecting the file I wanted to upload.

When I logged on to my Box account on my IPad, I was able to access the image that I uploaded.

Page VS Word: An Epic Battle

The purpose of Pages is almost identical to Word. Both applications allow for one to create a word document. Both allow you to edit fonts, headings , and text style and size . Both Microsoft word and pages allows for the word document to be customizable for the needs to the creator. A difference in Word and Pages is how the user accesses features. On Word, the creator has many features that are accessible by clicking on various option tabs above the word document . Each tab has a variety of features that the user can choose from . Even though I have been working with Word since I was a young child , I still do not know what half of the features are and how I could use them when creating a world document . On the other hand, Pages have the paintbrush tool. This tool gives the user features of the word document as the features become applicable to what the user is doing. I believe that this is far more user friendly than the Word . As an educator to young children, I could see this being a lot easier for young children to use. This gives students the features they need as the students need the features. One feature I found on Pages that I did not find on Word was the password feature. On Pages, a student could set a password for a document that allows only the student to access the document. This could be very useful in a classroom in which students are sharing an IPad. This way, students can create documents without others being able to access their content. As far as quantity of features, it is clear that the amount of features is vaster on Word. Although, I found in my time of working with Pages that the essential features that a student would use on daily on Word are all present in Pages

Using the Password Feature

Using the Paintbrush option. It is displaying features only applicable to charts.