Weekly Report & Reflection #11

Alright, well that went by quick, time for one final blog for this ADED course.

In my exploration of webcasting tools I have learned that I am not as tech-savy as I had thought I was going into this course. I had believed that I had experienced all that the internet had to offer, before really creating anything long lasting for the internet. While completing this week’s exercise I have noticed that by saying what you are thinking rather than just typing it you are reinforcing it in your memory, making it easier to learn, and easier to connect as a listener to what people are saying. To hear someone’s voice instead of reading what they have wrote you are connecting on a much more personal level. Podcasting could be useful in my educational activities simply because it adds that extra dimension to things such as group projects, or online presentations.

SoundCloud contributed to my work in building knowledge by allowing me to connect with others and hear their voices. There’s a lot that you can gather from a person’s voice, their inflections, their nuances, how deeply they feel about different subjects can really come across differently compared to when you are just writing something that they have written in the past. The best example of this is texting. Many people love to text, and that’s fine, but it’s no replacement for a phone call once in a while.

SoundCloud, Muziboo, and the other creative knowledge expression tools are different from previous collaborative/communication tools because of the keyword in its title. EXPRESSION! As we type, we are limited to the ways that we can truly express our feelings, of course we can use italics, all caps, even an exclamation mark or two, but that doesn’t give you the real feeling, the vibrato, the inflections used.

 This one wouldn’t be too difficult to integrate into my PLE, as I stated earlier by saying things out loud it simply reinforces these thoughts and forces you to articulate them in a more polished style. You may feel that you have a very good grasp on any given subject, but to truly understand anything, it’s helpful to be able to teach it, to tell other people how to do it. While coaching baseball in the past, I have realized that showing younger kids how to do something is way easier than specifically breaking down the individual steps involved through verbal communication. However, telling the kids the individual steps involved creates better fundamentals, and at the same time reinforces these basic principles that I have long forgotten. This in turn, makes me think more about the basics of baseball and helping me in becoming a slightly better athlete.

This week’s Feedly article of the week that I am linking to this blog is What Your Students Really Need to Know About Digital Citizenship by Vicki Davis. In her article she talks about proactive knowledge and experiential knowledge and it corresponds with this course perfectly.

Alright, well with this being my final blog I’d just like to say one more thank you to everyone who has followed me thus far, hopefully you check back in once in a while!

Gideon Burton https://www.flickt.com/photos/wakingtiger/3156791845/

Kevin 

Creative Commons Attribution

Kevin's ADED1P32 by Kevin Gillies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Podcast!

This week we are looking at podcasts! This being the first time I have ever done was at first I was a little bit nervous, however while completing the other tasks involved in this course I have realized that there is nothing to be worried about while working online. 

Colleen AF Venable -  https://www.flickr.com/photos/abletoven /322 

Using a podcast contributes to my digital citizenship through forcing me to create the two way street that I have talked about in the past. Before this course, I would constantly take from the internet, I would take from YouTube, I would take from google scholar, Facebook, Instagram, always an uneven one way street where I was taking information, I was not much of a contributor.  Although being a digital citizen is about creating a two way street, being a GOOD or GREAT digital citizen is about much more than that. To be a great digital citizen there are other rules which have been adapted from real life situations, those ideas include, leave everything better than how you found it, and remembering the human, or treat others as you’d like to be treated. Often people feel a disconnect when they are typing away from behind a keyboard, not only does this make you a poor digital citizen, it leaves behind a very negative footprint, that will remain with you forever.

This course has taught me that not only is this digital footprint a direct representation of you it will remain available for anyone to find for the foreseeable future.Hopefully my footprint is on the positive side as I am finally beginning to contribute to the online community rather than constantly taking from it. Hope everyone has enjoyed my podcast, and as this class winds down I would just like to say Thank you to everyone who has been following my blog thus far. 

Kevin  

Weekly Report & Reflection #10

Immediately after posting my previous post about copyright infringement in music, I came across This great article on my feedly reader. In it, it continues the discussion of copyright in regards to the music industry.



Another case of questionable copyright infringement is shown in the mash up of these two songs which is made to compare the commonalities between the two. Now, copyright is a huge topic that could easily cover a whole course. Copyright is supposed to be a way to protect original audio, visuals, thoughts etc. However things such as fair use are where copyright becomes fairly confusing, especially in the music business. Sure you can use a little bit of the idea, some of it, not a lot of it but maybe a little bit is OK, the question is where do you draw the line? As a student who has been writing essays for years copyright is something that I have been avoiding for quite some time. Unfortunately with the internet amalgamating everyone’s ideas into one place this has created an issue. As I have previously mentioned in my blog I am beginning to feel that there is a finite number of original thought, or original guitar chords, or original drum beats, and this is where copyright can become a scary thing. I’m not cheating because I have borrowed from someone else’s thoughts, just because Sam Smith used similar guitar chords as Tom Pettys, or Pharrell has used similar drum beats as Marvin Gaye, should these new artists be responsible for searching out the entire history of music to give credit to someone who may or may not of helped them create their own sound? If this was the case it may be impossible to write an essay without a thousand references. As far as how this affects me being a better digital citizen it worries me. Copyright can be a scary thing.

After using Animoto I was slightly concerned because of the template that is set up and that I selected, sure I added a couple of photos, and a few words, but the whole background of the slideshow was not my original content. If I post this online is that copyright infringement?  That would be a shame because in my exploration of the slideshow tool Animoto I noticed how easy it was to look professional. I simply added a couple pictures to a predetermined style of background and the webpage did the rest of the work for me. These tools are so useful in my educational activities because it makes it look like I spent way more time than I actually did developing the slides! These creative knowledge expression tools are different from other collaborative/communication tools I have explored because of the output of information. The webpage is very simple to use and gives off such a professional look at the end. With the combination of Animoto and Google Docs a group could create a slideshow in twenty minutes that would look like they spent a whole week to put together. This is definitely going to get added to my PLE for future presentation.

Sam Smith's "Stay With Me" and Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down"

This weeks studies made me think of this, thought I'd share it.
what does everyone think? Copyright infringement?
Sam Smith settled with Tom Petty although Smith claimed to have never heard this song in his life!



Kevin

Animoto

Hey again,
This week we got to play around with Animoto!
First check out my slide show, then we can talk more about Copyright




As you saw in my slide show the Mickey Mouse Curve is a huge issue with Copyright, if you aren't familiar with the Mickey Mouse curve, you can learn more here.  This week using Animoto contributed to my digital literacy by allowing me to experience how to properly cite copyright free work online!  Also this week we have been focusing our time on the issues of copyright. Copyright is a very tricky thing to have to deal with, after watching videos and reading articles about it, I am scared to write anything because I am scared that I may be infringing on other peoples thoughts. This makes me think of the millions of monkeys on millions of typewriters because simply based on the number of people in the world, it’s hard for me to imagine that my thoughts are “original”, in other words “everything is a remix” (Ferguson, 2012) After reading these previously assigned articles and watching specific videos my thoughts have been created based on these previous experiences of watching the same videos as the rest of the class.  The idea that there are a finite number of original thoughts comes to mind. Is this possible? Is the world limited to a number of original thoughts? Although this is an original thought, has it been thought of before? Luckily I can type this into Google, and I'm willing to bet that I wouldn't be the first to do this. Which makes me think of Schrödinger’s cat…..Maybe we are limited in original thoughts, but only if we look to see if our thoughts have been thought of before.  I don’t even know if this string of thoughts is original any more.  Hope you enjoyed the video, and make sure you check out my reflection which will continue to look at copyright

Kevin

Weekly Report & Reflection #9

VoiceThread

In this week’s blog I will be discussing VoiceThread. VoiceThread is a web based platform which allows students to collaborate on specific ideas, through various methods, including texts, audio and video.  Using VoiceThread for my personal academic learning was a huge success as I often learn better while experiencing different ways of inputting information. The ability to see and listen to other students made class much more exciting. VoiceThread will definitely fit in with my PLE however, what I really enjoyed about VoiceThread is my ability to expand my personal learning network. After gaining digital access to VoiceThread and leaving behind my digital footprint on the discussion, I then received emails any time that new students would post in the same thread. Having the ability to "meet" these students who are interested in the same topic as I am through hearing there voice and sometimes actually seeing them speak, I felt as though I had expanded my PLN. VoiceThread was easy to use, and allowed me to progress my academic learning while using proper digital etiquette and interacting with people who like to share in similar discussions. Below you will be able to view the VoiceThread that everyone has been able to interact in. 

This week I also came across this great article in my Feedly which mentions VoiceThread as well as many other useful tools that you can add to your toolchest.  The article talks about different content-sharing platforms, assessment aids, as well as the capability of electronic note taking, and cloud syncing. My favourite part in this article is where Vicki Davis mentions linksharing through sites such as diigo, and others that we have visited this semester. Definitely worth taking a quick look at.
Well thanks for reading, until next week.
Kevin