Blog Post PLN Reflection #3 Microblog

Alice Keeler lists herself in her Twitter bio as “Mom of 5, Math Teacher, Youcubed consultant, Author, Speaker, Google Certified Innovator, T3 Trainer, NMCk12 Ambassador, MIE, gamification, #coffeeEDU, coder”. She joined Twitter in October 2010. Alice Keeler is someone I began following when I first started using Twitter in 2010. I also met her in person at ISTE 2014. She provides many userful resources to teachers using Google Classroom and Google Apps for Education. Alice has over 170,000 followers, but some find Alice Keeler controversial. She is known to tweet out complaints about her childrens’ teachers, including this tweet of a gif she created of burning her child’s interactive student notebook.

joyfully BURNED the "interactive" science notebook. Gluing is not learning. pic.twitter.com/uesyvAISg2

— Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) July 17, 2017

She has also made the blanket statement that no homework should ever be given, receiving criticism from other teachers who use homework to reinforce learning rather than as a punishment for assessment.

Keeler also received backlash when she marketed masks during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have a bag of these face masks. Now to decide what to do with them. pic.twitter.com/D1B8t6xVxo

— Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) May 20, 2020

Perhaps the most disturbing issue with Alice Keeler happened in June 2020. Either Alice or someone in her camp created a fake Twitter account and impersonated @jennthetutor. Jenn reached out to Alice to ask that the account be suspended. Keeler later apologized, but was slow to reply to @jennthetutor.

You replied to other people and did live tweets. You responded on your org page

In the blog post I outlined what I wanted. I refuse to let you pretend you didn’t not see this. You acknowledged it- I have tagged you multiple times.

Don’t insult me pic.twitter.com/vl2Q3R1GFn

— jennthetutor 🎓 👩🏾‍🏫 #TestFreeNow (@jennthetutor) June 4, 2020

@jennthetutor's official statement on all that happened can be viewed here.

Keeler is a big personality and does create useful resources for teachers who may be new to implementing educational technology. However, I would not recommend her to other teachers to follow. I would not find this account valuable to follow, nor the other two accounts suggested in this course. I prefer to follow other teachers in my content area on Twitter, rather than "big name" personalities or websites like Edutopia. Twitter can be a wonderful resource for teachers if they follow users who have positive things to share, including asking for help, when the lesson doesn't work, and general collaboration suggestions. Twitter is a great thinktank no matter what time of day. Using a hashtag can provide specialized tweets so that others see what you are tweeting.Personally, I prefer Instagram or Facebook as a microblog of sorts. Twitter seems to be a sounding board of frustration of teachers in 2020-2021. There are still some good teachers to follow on Twitter, but my main source of microblogging is not Twitter.

Blog Post #3 - Copyright & Fair Use

Copyright law is incredibly important to know as a teacher. It affects all multimedia shared in the classroom. According to the University of Maryland, "Copyright is a legal right, grounded in the United States Constitution, that gives the owner of copyright in a work the exclusive right to: reproduce the work, modify or prepare derivative works based on the work, distribute the work in any format by sale, pbublication, license, rental, or for free, publicly perform or display the work, and authorize others to exercise some of all of those rights." Copyright ensures the creator receives acknoledgement and payment for display or reproduction of the work. Copyright lasts for seventy years after the death of the creator, ninety-five years after publication or one hundred and twenty years from the date of creation, whichever expires first. Copyright applies to literary works, musicals including sound and recording, dramatic works, pantomimes and choreographic works, visual works, multimedia, software code and architectural works.

Section 107 of the Copyright Act states: "...the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research is not an infringement of copyright". Four factors must be considered in Fair Use.

1. What is the purpose of the use?

2. What is the nature of the work?

3. How much of the work will you use?

4. What effect will the use have on the market or potential arket value of the work?

As a teacher, it's important to note the author of all works in addition to teach students how to recognize and give credit to creators. In order to properly use created works, teachers can only recreate a classroom set of reproductions of the work for educational use. During COVID-19 and pandemic teaching, several publishers allowed teachers to reproduce works such as read alouds as long as the teacher housed the reproduction on a private link and credited the creators of the work. Although classroom sets can be created according to copyright, the law may need to be updated to consider 1:1 devices and how copyright plays in to electronic copies of created works. Teachers can use works in the public domain for any legal purpose without permission. Teachers can also access Creative Commons licenses of works to be shared in a variety of ways. Find out more information on Creative Commons licenses at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Blog Post #2

Definition of a Wiki

A wiki is a collaborative online website that allows multiple users to enter and edit text or information. Wikis update asynchronously as users input information. As Chris Penna states in this video, a wiki is "a multiply edited, always evolving webpage".

Advantages of Wikis

Wikis are a great way to get multiple students engaged on one site. Students can take ownership of researching and disseminating information in a centralized location. Wikis can have embedded widgets.

Ways that Wikis Can Be Used in the Classroom

Wikis can act as a centralized location for a class project or a class resource. Students could create their own study guides for an upcoming assessment. In the past, I had students create an online French grammar wiki to review for their end of course assessment. I used pbworks.com for the French grammar wiki. Personally, I have found having a spreadsheet or table via Google docs works better for a whole class collaboration of more than three users.

Blog Post #1

Hello! I am Melinda Bailey. I have been teaching in public and private schools for almost twelve years. Most of my career has been in the 9-12 grade French classroom teaching French 1, 2, 3, 4 and AP. I worked for two years as an instructional technology coach for a PreK-12 district. I have taught in Alabama and Louisiana. I have always used instructional technology in my classroom to implement authentic francophone resources. I am pursuing my masters in Educational Technology through LSU Online. I will graduate in August 2021.

This blog is an assignment for ELRC 4507. The purpose of this blog is to evaluate technology tools as outlined in the course. Personally, I do not read a lot of blogs professionally. Microblogs such as Twitter and Instagram are much more practical to ignite teaching ideas and share new strategies. I also subscribe to e-mail newsletters from the blogs I read so the information goes straight to my e-mail rather than RSS feeds. For more resources, please visit the website I created for ELRC 4507 by clicking this link.