Wk2_ Project of the Week: Really Cool Website! I think.

I've really enjoyed getting into the website project. I'm pretty proud of how it is working.
If you get a chance go to http://web.me.com/jalxeller/Site_2/Welcome.html and check it out. Please tell me what you think.
All the work is either videos that I have produced or work that my students have produced. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I have the best job in the world!

Opportunity is PIP!

Perception

Interpretation

Perspective

Why is it that there are two kinds of educators?

Ones that perceive their students as the enemy? They’re out to get me.

The others perceive their students as wonderful individuals. They’re our future.

When I first started teaching, I ate lunch in the Teacher’s Lounge with my colleagues. As a new teacher, I thought this would be a great source of information on classroom management and a better understanding of our Administration. I quickly decided to eat by myself in my office. I found that the more I listened to the burnt out naysayers the more it affected the way I interacted with not only my students but my Administrators as well. I didn’t like who I was becoming.

It was like I was living chapter 1 in the book “Art of Possibilities” by the Zanders.

I was listening and watching my colleagues stuck in this jack-n-the-box persona. They stayed in their little rut (their box) and periodically would jump out and interact with their students only to go back in. I put up a poster in my room that says “Think Outside the Box”. When I get into a little funk, I look at that poster and think OK how can I turn this situation in to a positive. And you know what? It works! The green fog funk blows away and I see clearly again. I also looked at my colleagues and made some observations. One very important one that I found in the naysayers was that they weren’t willing to find out what makes our student body tick. They were letting their observations of the gangbanger style cloud their perceptions of these young people. So, again I found ways to get to know my students. And you know what I found out? Under all their brave bravado were a bunch of scared young people (did you know scared, as in I’m afraid, and scared, as in I’ve been hurt and I’m not going to let someone else in that will disappoint me again, are the same spelling. How apropos is that!)? .

So, now we look at the possibilities. These children are our future. Do we nurture them as creative, beautiful individuals or lump them into one group? I know what it’s like to be lumped into a group- the teenagers. I choose to look at each one of my students as an individual. So, when I have this student that is always thoughtful, respectful, do anything he can to help stand up in class after an assignment has been made and tell me in no uncertain terms where I can put that assignment I can look at him and know that he is hurting and lashing out at the one person he can count on to love him unconditionally. I could have chosen to call security or given him the understanding that he needed. I choose the later. BTW, that student came to me the next day and asked to talk to me. We went out in the hallway. He started crying (this young man is nose guard on the high school football team) and telling me that the night before, he was trying to protect his mom and little brother from the mother’s boyfriend who was beating the mother. He didn’t know why he lashed out at me but he was very sorry.

@ Ali:

http://aliweinreb.blogspot.com/2011/06/wk1-reading-copyright-issues-part-1.html?showComment=1307074032211#c2612744007404737331

Ali,
I'm a bit surprised that you don't have a problem with people pirating music but you do with branding. Isn't it the same thing? You talk about the problem in NYC about the purse/wallet ripoffs and how you can understand how the designer and the branding company should go after the street vendors. I guess that's your graphics background coming in to play. I wonder how someone like Charlie would feel if someone pirated his music without attribution or restitution.

@ Megan:

http://hippiemii.blogspot.com/2011/06/week-1-reading-copyright-issues.html#comments

Megan, I agree with you up to a point. However, there are people out there that are remixing and using bits and pieces of movies and images for a profit without giving proper attribution. I describe it like this to my students. One of my students makes a really awesome piece in Illustrator and I put it up on a site. A Creative Director is surfing and finds this piece and decides to use it in an ad campaign. After all, it's just a lowly high school student that created it who would believe the student vs a successful CD. Then you have the remixing going on in Brazil. They say the "artist" doesn't make a profit. I don't know to many people that are going to spend that much time on something just to share at a concert that has 5,000+ people attending.

Wk1 Fair Use: When, where, how????

As a teacher in the CATE area of Graphic Design and Illustration and Print Imaging, Fair Use is a subject I've always wanted clarification on. And the summary of "Fair Use, if you are teaching a unit, can you teach the unit without the copyrighted material" was an eye opener.

One of my student's favorite projects is an introduction to Adobe CS5 Photoshop and delving in to possible career paths within the visual arts industry. For this unit, I take a head shot of the student. The student has to find a picture of someone doing what he/she would like to do within the industry and find another picture where they would like to do this career. They have to combine all three images in to one single seamless image. One that the viewer would look at and not be able to tell that someone didn't just happen along and take the picture. At first glance, a copyright advocate may look at this unit and say that the two pictures the student finds on the Internet are infringement. In my mind, I think that I can not send the student on a scavenger hunt to find a person doing what they would like to do when they graduate. Nor can I send a student to wherever they would like to do this career. So, am I safe? The student is using a partial of two different pictures plus one that I took. AND it is for a teaching assignment where the student is not going to make money off of it.

One of the resource videos that we watched really made me sad. It also brought home the point that some Fair Use, specially in the preservation of historical events is necessary!

Wk 1: Free Flow

What an amazing journey! I have made it to month 11, almost unscathed. It has been a hugely fast paced, eye popping experience.

What I have been truly amazed at is the way each of the Course Directors has maintained a sense of community in an online class. Part of my CBR project is looking at ways I can use long distance learning (LDL) to promote engagement and motivation for my students. Some my wonder why would be a viable option in high school. My thought is, they have never been involved in the lives of Title 1 students. For clarification, in Texas, a Title 1 school is made of high risk, minority male and females where at least 70% are on free or reduced cost breakfast and lunch. For most of my students these are the only meals they get each day. On the weekend, I shudder to think/know what/if they are eating. I have approximately 90 students in my program. Of those 90, some are mothers and fathers. Some work from 10:00 pm - 6:00 am then come to school. Others are in jail. I view LDL as a way to keep those KIDS, yes they are still 14-19 year old young adults, connected to me which equates to being able to engage and motivate them to graduate from high school.

I really look forward to taking what I have learned, the experiences I have had and incorporating them even further in to my curriculum.

MAC wk 1 reading: To Copy or Not To Copy?

That is a big question in today's society. Teaching the "instant gratification, I'll-take-what-I-can-get-without-ramifications" generation Graphic Design and Illustration is an interesting task. And Copyright Infringement and Fair Use is a big part of that equation.

One of the first units I teach my students is about Copyright, Fair Use and Plagarism. My students come to me with the idea that it's already been done so I'll just take it redo/remix it and call it mine. Which sedgeways' into an eye opening discussion that starts like this. Pedro, what would you do if Luciano pirates $1,000.00 from you? Pedro says Luci wouldn't pirate from me. And I tell him, you know that flow you came up with in class the other day? Pedro says yeah. Man, that was some nice work. And I told him you know I was surfing on YouTube and I saw Luci and his posse doing the same flow but added a couple of beats to it. Your name isn't anywhere on the video as the original musician. Now, Luci tells me a record producer saw it and wants him to do it on a CD. The Producer says he's going to make Luci rich. Now, did Luci pirate $1,000.00 from you?

This takes us down a journey of understanding by determining who owns what. If we create it we can protect it. Why do we want to protect it? Because it’s money in our pocket! It doesn’t matter if it is a flow made in class, an illustration made on the computer, a play written for English class. If you create it and someone wants to publish or buy it, you should get compensated. I then ask my class, how many of you have CD/DVD’s you got off the Internet? Naturally, most raise their hands. I then explain that by pirating that piece, you have now committed a crime. You have stolen money or the livelihood of that Artist.

Dan Glickman of the MPAA boiled it down to the idea that the founding fathers of America wanted to protect creator’s rights. If you create it, if someone else wants to use it, you should get compensated for it.

The Internet has opened up a whole new arena for theft. The Pirate Party in Sweden would have us believe that the sharing of information should be unrestricted. That this sharing of information doesn’t hurt anyone. I can agree with that mantra to a degree. However, when that information is a piece created by someone else AND the hosting site is making money off of it then restrictions should be in place to protect the creator and the production company. The bottom line of piracy is that it is affecting the bottom line. The video “Good Copy Bad Copy” really brought this home to me when they stated that annually, $7 billion dollars and 1,000s of jobs are lost because of piracy. I think next year, I will add this little tidbit of information to my discussion. Of course giving full credit to the video.