If the embedded video does not work, try this link. Alternatively, https://youtu.be/w1FjEQxgLe4 .
Friday, October 28, 2016
UDL Multiple Means of Representation Resources for Math and Other Classess
Here I have embedded a YouTube video of a screencast I created using Screencastify. This demonstrates how these resources use UDL and are easily able to integrated in any secondary classroom. Enjoy!
If the embedded video does not work, try this link. Alternatively, https://youtu.be/w1FjEQxgLe4 .
If the embedded video does not work, try this link. Alternatively, https://youtu.be/w1FjEQxgLe4 .
Monday, October 10, 2016
Fair Use Laws + Teaching
Common Definition for the Fair Use Laws
The federal government offers this definition for the laws.
"Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use. Section 107 calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of fair use: (1) Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes, ... (2) Nature of the copyrighted work, ... (3) Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, ... [and the] (4), Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
Rationale for Laws Being in Place
The Fair Use Laws are in place to protect the original work, but also allows for the work to be transformed. In this article from Stanford, it states that the ambiguous definition of fair use--"any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and 'transformative' purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work"-- is in place so that is is open for interpretation, much like free speech in the Bill of Rights. The principle is based on the idea that the public is entitled to copyrighted materials--in portions--freely. Further, it states that most use of the laws come from two purposes: (1) commentary and criticism and (2) parody. For commentary and criticism, the rationale for the laws comes from the idea that the review provides benefits for the public and enhanced by using the original work. it also brings attention to the original work. On the other hand, for parodies, the rationale is that, by nature, parodies must use the original work and it "conjure[s] up" the original work. In all, copyright material may be used in limited form if the work transforms the original work in some capacity and fits into the four factors.
Statistic
The Association of Research Libraries offers the infographic linked at the end of this article. Within that inforgraphic, it states that "Experts estimate that industries reliant on fair use contributed $2.4 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2008–2009, or approximately 17 percent of the US GDP" This demonstrates that the laws are very important to the US economy. The industries most impacted are manufacturing, retail, and agriculture.
Teaching Resource to Use in the Classroom
This website offers a poster of this picture for purchase. The graphic could be hung in the classroom to assist students in understanding what images they can use in the presentations, posters, and more they create for assignments. As described in the comments at the end of the page, this image is one that can be used for educational purposes, but they recommend citing the source. These have been satisfied by this blog post assignment being educational, the blog being an educational blog, being labeled as a resource for teachers, and citing the source through a link.
This fair use infographic would also be very helpful to have displayed in the classroom. It provides information beyond images. The document has been label free for reuse.
The federal government offers this definition for the laws.
"Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use. Section 107 calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of fair use: (1) Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes, ... (2) Nature of the copyrighted work, ... (3) Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole, ... [and the] (4), Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
Rationale for Laws Being in Place
The Fair Use Laws are in place to protect the original work, but also allows for the work to be transformed. In this article from Stanford, it states that the ambiguous definition of fair use--"any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and 'transformative' purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work"-- is in place so that is is open for interpretation, much like free speech in the Bill of Rights. The principle is based on the idea that the public is entitled to copyrighted materials--in portions--freely. Further, it states that most use of the laws come from two purposes: (1) commentary and criticism and (2) parody. For commentary and criticism, the rationale for the laws comes from the idea that the review provides benefits for the public and enhanced by using the original work. it also brings attention to the original work. On the other hand, for parodies, the rationale is that, by nature, parodies must use the original work and it "conjure[s] up" the original work. In all, copyright material may be used in limited form if the work transforms the original work in some capacity and fits into the four factors.
Statistic
The Association of Research Libraries offers the infographic linked at the end of this article. Within that inforgraphic, it states that "Experts estimate that industries reliant on fair use contributed $2.4 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2008–2009, or approximately 17 percent of the US GDP" This demonstrates that the laws are very important to the US economy. The industries most impacted are manufacturing, retail, and agriculture.
Teaching Resource to Use in the Classroom
This website offers a poster of this picture for purchase. The graphic could be hung in the classroom to assist students in understanding what images they can use in the presentations, posters, and more they create for assignments. As described in the comments at the end of the page, this image is one that can be used for educational purposes, but they recommend citing the source. These have been satisfied by this blog post assignment being educational, the blog being an educational blog, being labeled as a resource for teachers, and citing the source through a link.
This fair use infographic would also be very helpful to have displayed in the classroom. It provides information beyond images. The document has been label free for reuse.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Assessments and Preparation Expectations
What a week at Grandville Middle! Throughout the week, I was able to learn quite a lot about what it looks like to live the teacher life. From reviewing content in preparation for assessments and beginning to teach new units to seeing students be heavily impacted and influenced by grades and observing a student and his teachers in a few other classes, it sure was one wild ride this week!
Although it seems as though I could write a lengthy essay on what happened this week, I am going to focus on assessments and their preparation from both the student and teacher sides. In both Math 8 and Algebra 1, assessments were given over units of review material, Math 8 had a quiz over their Integers Unit, and Algebra 1 had both a quiz and test over their Algebra Basics unit. Since these units were review and in-class work and review days seemed to be going well, I was expecting that students were going to perform well on the assessments going into both quiz days. Upon grading the quizzes in both classes, I was met with mixed results. Check out these gifs below for what I found.
Let's start with discussing Math 8. These classes had multiple days in class to review the content as they played Integers Jeopardy and had a quiz review worksheet. The students seemed to be doing well over the course of those days, and their quiz scores showed that. Most students scored over 80%, leaving me mostly satisfied. I wonder how much of the errors that were made were due to a lack of understanding and how much of it was feeling overconfident in the material, since the entire unit was presented as a review unit. In the days after the quiz, its content has been needed in the new Expressions and Equations unit, and it does seem as though students crammed and dumped the concepts. On a side note, the equations side of this unit is a 10-day "mini-unit" that I am so beyond excited to be developing with my partner teacher assistant!
Ok, now don't get too exited, Nick. We still have to talk about those Algebra assessments.
You've probably guessed it by now; they didn't go as well as we would have hoped. Well, my cooperating teacher knew that the scores would likely be the lowest average grade for the year (since they would feel overconfident in their abilities), but none of us expected them to be as low as they turned out. I mean, this is just about the reaction the students gave us once the quizzes were returned.
Given that this class is an advanced course in combination that it was a publicized review unit, the students seemed to be expecting an excellent quiz score. However, the high score was an 85%, with most of the scores in the 60-70%. This lead to one student asking, "Well, if we all did bad on this quiz, is it really our fault?" This really is a valid question. As teachers, we must look at quiz scores like this and wonder how much of it can be explained by our teaching. But what else is important to consider is what efforts students are contributing as well. Before this quiz, the students were given a quiz review worksheet the day before the quiz and were provided an answer key with all of the problems worked out. Thus, the expectation, which was verbalized to students, was that they would complete the worksheet and check their answers to make sure they knew what was going on. What they did not know was that the quiz was essentially the same thing as the quiz review, but with different numbers. Joey, below, shows the reaction of the students when they learned of this fact.
This revelation was made the day between the unit quiz and the unit test. Also, they were given a test review that day to complete in preparation for the test the next day. This time, too, they were given a worked out answer key. I had the opportunity to score both the quiz review and the test review, and it was definitely interesting to see how students responded to these quiz scores. For the quiz review, only two students out of the combined 64 had a perfect score. For the test review, that increased to about 12 of them, with another 20 only a couple questions behind. What this told me was that students still were not looking at the provided answer key, even after being explicitly told to do so.
To explain this occurrence, I can offer my best guess. Students worked more carefully in completing the rest review but still did not check their answers, since it was made known to them that the score in the gradebook would be based on completion. After all, the test scores were beyond better; as a matter of fact, they looked a lot like the Math 8 distribution as there were a good chunk in the upper 90% range and one student even received a score above 100% after one question was thrown out.
So what really happened? I'm not sure. I can only really know if I polled the class and they gave honest responses. However, what I do know is that this tells me that there is a disconnect between what my cooperating teacher, my partner teacher assistant, and myself were expecting of students. In other words, it is apparent that the students are not preparing in ways that are beneficial to them, even when they are explicitly given a method to help them out. To me, this tells me in another capacity that teaching is more than delivering content. We must also be helping out students as much as possible with test preparation strategies, among many other things. After all, we cannot assume that students enter our classroom with every tool and strategy that will allow them to be successful in our class. Thus, I will take this lesson and keep in mind throughout the rest of this year in both of my placements as well as in my future classroom.
With another assessment coming in just over a week, I will look to be more intentional helping students learn what they can do to assist them in brushing up and learning the material in order to be successful. Here's to another week full of lessons to be learned about teaching!
 |
| Two thumbs up for Math 8 |
 |
| Oh, yikes for Algebra... |
 |
| That's me! |
 |
| Oh, yea... |
 |
| What?!?!?! There's no way! |
This revelation was made the day between the unit quiz and the unit test. Also, they were given a test review that day to complete in preparation for the test the next day. This time, too, they were given a worked out answer key. I had the opportunity to score both the quiz review and the test review, and it was definitely interesting to see how students responded to these quiz scores. For the quiz review, only two students out of the combined 64 had a perfect score. For the test review, that increased to about 12 of them, with another 20 only a couple questions behind. What this told me was that students still were not looking at the provided answer key, even after being explicitly told to do so.
To explain this occurrence, I can offer my best guess. Students worked more carefully in completing the rest review but still did not check their answers, since it was made known to them that the score in the gradebook would be based on completion. After all, the test scores were beyond better; as a matter of fact, they looked a lot like the Math 8 distribution as there were a good chunk in the upper 90% range and one student even received a score above 100% after one question was thrown out.
So what really happened? I'm not sure. I can only really know if I polled the class and they gave honest responses. However, what I do know is that this tells me that there is a disconnect between what my cooperating teacher, my partner teacher assistant, and myself were expecting of students. In other words, it is apparent that the students are not preparing in ways that are beneficial to them, even when they are explicitly given a method to help them out. To me, this tells me in another capacity that teaching is more than delivering content. We must also be helping out students as much as possible with test preparation strategies, among many other things. After all, we cannot assume that students enter our classroom with every tool and strategy that will allow them to be successful in our class. Thus, I will take this lesson and keep in mind throughout the rest of this year in both of my placements as well as in my future classroom.
With another assessment coming in just over a week, I will look to be more intentional helping students learn what they can do to assist them in brushing up and learning the material in order to be successful. Here's to another week full of lessons to be learned about teaching!
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