Clean-Up Day

It's Clean-Up Day here at work; we do this periodically to get things in order, and this being the last day before spring break we figured it would be a bit slower than usual. It is, but only a little.

In any event, my office is really not in very bad shape; I have a small pile of things to sort, but that won't take long. The computer lab is in more need of work, so I'll go there presently to join Cheryl & Lisa who are cleaning the keyboards & monitors.

But first, I need to do a little mental housecleaning. I've been reading Doug Johnson's postings on "Changing How We Teach Copyright," which was very timely in view of the fact that I actually taught a class on copyright & intellectual property earlier this week. He has some great resources on this, and he really has me re-thinking how I should approach the subject in class.

The whole copyright thing gives me a headache, as I'm sure it does many other people. I'm not a copyright attorney; I don't know every legal ramification of every action (is there someone who does?), but the folks who come to my classes want clear answers of what they can and can't do. The best I can do for them is to refer them to Hall Davidson's chart on techLEARNING.com, which seems to please them, but there are so many grey areas in the whole issue that I still feel like I'm letting them down somehow.

There are SO many resources out there that I really need to organize them in some coherent manner. Maybe that's the kind of cleaning I should be doing today!

Getting My Thoughts Together

Haven't posted all week; I'm slipping! But it's been a busy week - after getting back from the SLMS conference last week it took a bit to catch up. Today is a little calmer, so time for a few words, I guess!

First, to recount the rest of the conference - after session 3, we adjourned back to our rooms to check email & all that (I managed to post a number of titles to the book blog), then we got dressed to go to the Knickerbocker Award banquet. We had a good group at our table, but alas, the setup of the hall was such that we couldn't see the speakers at all and we couldn't hear very well, either. It was a bit frustrating.

Saturday I went to see a presentation by Robin Pulver & Tedd Arnold, which was highly entertaining. I recommend them both as speakers! It was very interesting to hear how they approach their writing, and how they collaborated on the Axle Annie books. It's apparently unusual for an author and illustrator to even talk to each other; an author doesn't even usually have a choice as to who illustrates his/her picture book (unless he/she is also an illustrator!). That's determined by the publisher. Who knew?

Tedd showed some of his early sketches for several of his books; among them, The Twin Princes. It was fascinating to see how his original idea changed from having human princes to having chickens as the princes. It was also quite startling when he showed a picture of his real model for the original concept, because it turned out to be someone I knew! Not all that surprising, actually, as Tedd & I live in the same town...

So that's that for the SLMS conference. It was enjoyable and I learned some good things!

This week has gone by quickly; as I said earlier, I had lots to do to catch up, plus I had a couple of meetings, and had to prepare for a class (for administrators) on Intellectual Property and Copyright. Not the most inspiring of topics, particularly at 7:30 a.m. on a Friday, but I found some REALLY good resources in the process of preparing for it:

An article on Education World - actually, a five-part series. I highly recommend it to all educators!

A great copyright chart from Hall Davidson of the Discovery Educator Network. Love this chart. It's concise and clear, and really spells out what you can and can't do as an educator under Fair Use.

Speaking of Fair Use, I really like the Stanford site on this topic. Everything you ever wanted to know about copyright - or links to them, at least!

Guess that's it for now. It's almost time for lunch!