Images, Copyright, Mashing, OH MY!

This past class was very exciting and busy! We learned many new and interesting tools to use for fun and also the classroom. I was not familiar with most of them so it was a lot to take in!

We first talked about the use of images and copyright. Did you know that you are not supposed to copy and paste images from the internet? I didn't. I frequently took images from websites and put them in documents or what not. I don't think a lot of students know this either. This would be a great thing to discuss with them and ask them why they think it is not allowed. Can we take written work of someone and use it as our own? Nope, so it makes sense that we can't do this with images. A website called Flickr enables us to use other people's pictures because they have given us permission. How nice! You can also post pictures and make them public for others to use or make them private or copyrighted, but it is nice to give others the benefit of using your photos if you are willing. Flickr is a great website to introduce students to because the photos there are available for use. Some students may not think it is a big deal, but it is since photos (like written work) belong to someone. It is like stealing. That is a no no.

We also looked at mapmashing. It is as fun as it sounds. You can create your own maps using google maps. They can be world maps or they can be zoomed in to be neighborhood maps. You can pinpoint locations with a marker and create lines between various places. This would be a great tool to use with students to have them follow the travel of explorers or where battles were fought. They can use them to make a wish list of places they would like to travel to or make a travel route for vacations. The possibilities are endless!

After learning about these tools, I think I will use some of them. I use iPhoto a lot and plan to continue using that. It would be fun for scrapbooking to use Dumpr and Fauxto. I might use Flickr for some of my pictures also. I definitely will use Google Maps to create maps of my own for personal use and probably for teaching as well!