Explore, Create, Contribute: the Best in Free Online Resources for Educators

I’m excited to lead a WizIQ webinar called “Explore, Create, Contribute: the Best in Free Online Resources for Educators.” It’s free and coming soon on 2 April 2015 at 2:30 EST.  Hopefully you can come!

In these days of ubiquitous free online resources, you may be wondering about my use of “the best” in describing the online resources we’ll explore. You may ask yourself, “How would she know the best online resources?”

Well, there is a hint in the title: Explore, Create, Contribute. In this webinar, we will definitely explore excellent free online resources. In fact, they are the most useful resources I’m using right now for teaching English language learners in Bahrain.

What will make them even better, though–the best–is when you join in, sharing your gift, creating and contributing, as well. Hopefully, you’ll be inspired to do just that. Join us!

2 April 2015 Explore, Create, Contribute for WizIQ

A Franciscan Benediction

This seems to be a great prayer for Genius Hour and Choose2Matter:

A Franciscan Benediction

May God bless us with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths,
And superficial relationships
So that we may live from deep
Within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger
At injustice, oppression,
And exploitation of people
So that we may work for justice,
Freedom, and peace.

May God bless us with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain,
Rejection, hunger, and war,
So that we may reach out our
Hands to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us with
Just enough foolishness
To believe that we can make
A difference in the world,
So that we can do what others
Claim cannot be done:
To bring justice and kindness to
All our children and
All our neighbors who are poor.

Amen.

Genius Hour

Why School? The Movie

Quotes from Will Richardson’s blog post about Why School? The Movie

Thanks to a tweet from Nancy Carroll, I learned about Will Richardson’s huge project.

It will be a movie inspired by his TED book Why School?

He wrote about the project on Friday here: “‘Why School?’ The Movie (?)

Regarding the movie and the students and educators Will is hoping to recruit to help, he writes:

…we want it to be “our” project as in the global community of connected educators that care deeply about what schools must become for our kids to flourish in their futures. Those who believe in some semblance of that third narrative I wrote about recently and that we need desperately to bring to scale a new conversation about schools and classrooms and learning in the modern world.

I am all in for that third narrative he wrote about earlier this month in the post “The Three Narratives.”

The way forward is to change the emphasis on student learning from “what” to learn to, instead, “how” to learn.

I’m attempting this in my classroom. I lean every day on my PLN to help me find the way. And now, I’m excited to help make this movie happen!

Do you want to be part of this ground-breaking movie? I signed up to do “grunt work,” maybe you’ll want to join me. 🙂

Read Will’s post to find out how you can be involved.

Precious Water

Monday was Blog Action Day! I want to call attention to hipporollers, which easily transport 24 gallons of precious water.

In church on Sunday, we focused on the preciousness of water and how we who have can help those who don’t have enough clean water.

 

We had beautiful, clean water decorating the pulpit, yet more than three million people die each year because they don’t even have clean water to drink.

Children practiced carrying and rolling a five-gallon bottle of water. “Imagine if you had to carry this water all the way from the Floyd River!?” the children were asked. It seemed impossible. The hipporollers will help.

This month we will collect money to buy hipporollers for the Maasai people in Kenya.

All the photos of hipporollers above are from this collection by Project H Designs: Hipporollers.

Update:

Freedom With CC-BY Licensed Images

So, why do I like the Attribution license best? First, here’s what the license says…

You are free:

  • to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to Remix — to adapt the work
  • to make commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

Three reasons for using the liberal Creative Commons –  Attribution (CC-BY) license.

1. You can use beautiful images to make cool posters or use just a portion of someone’s picture. (derivatives allowed)

This is my favorite reason! When I need a picture of the Eiffel Tower or the Coliseum, I don’t have to go there. I have friends all over the world who take photos and share them, entrusting their pictures to people like me! The last time I looked there were over 150 million photos on Flickr alone, of which we have permission to make derivatives.

Daunting Notebook” by Laura Coughlin (lauracoughlin) with CC BY-NC 2.0

2. You can change the license on derivatives. (no share-alike)

Although I can imagine a time when someone might need to do this, my guess is that most people fail to share-alike by accident. Here is a photo I took, and I suspect here and here, where this person kept “All Rights Reserved,” that it was done unintentionally. S/he shared this in the Flickr group Great quotes about Learning and Change, so perhaps s/he doesn’t know how to change permissions. Maybe s/he is new and just learning how to be a digital citizen. Maybe s/he has no idea what Creative Commons are. It would be ridiculous to believe it’s for any nefarious or money-making reason.

Plus, if I had a stricter license, I would feel obligated to complain to a user if he/she didn’t adhere to the license, and I don’t like to complain. If I am anything, I am liberal. Liberal with belief that most of my fellow humans are trying to do their best. Liberal with good will toward others. And liberal with the photos I’ve shared. That’s why even in derivative sharing, I choose the liberal Attribution license.

3. You can make money. (commercial)

I say this tongue-in-cheek, but it’s true. By using images (and sharing them with) the Attribution license, you are receiving (and giving) permission to use images commercially. I’ve never sold anything or benefited financially from using anyone’s images, but others have used some of my images commercially. You know something, it just makes me proud, not upset, jealous or angry. (See image below for some examples.) Maybe someday, a group I’m in will have reason to make a calendar for a fundraiser, and there will be CC images available for us to use.

It’s risky to share pictures with the Attribution only license, but I made the decision to do it because I’m serious about being a contributor. My friends Kris and Laura, whose pictures I used in this post, each share their images with a different license,  but they both gave permission to make derivatives and just asked me to give them credit and I appreciate that!

There are six different Creative Commons license, which are helpful to both the sharer and the user. Here are two simple questions to ask and answer to help you “Choose a License.” I would encourage you to read about each of them here: Creative Commons Licenses.