Copyright and Fair Use

During our discussion on copyright and fair use in class today I started to think about when/how I might encounter difficulties using materials in my class. I realized that I have lived my entire life (almost) in the education world and almost everything I've done has fallen within the Educational Fair Use. In that sense, I've never really questioned what I've copied or how I've used it - I've always been a student and it always seemed OK. Was I right? In my almost 20 years as a student how many things have I copied or used that I probably shouldn't have? I'm certainly not regretful but it is something I thought about and probably will continue to think about as I prepare class materials and continue pulling things from the web...

College in 10 years...

In thinking about what the college classroom will look like in 10 years I think about mass increases in technology with everyone owning some ipad-like device and computers being so ubiquitous that students will go through several during their college career. Although the advances in technology will have clear advantages, I still appreciate the classrooms that are not based on technology at all. My discipline, psychology, stems from philosophy and our academic "ancestors" set the stage for us but just spending time engaging in critical thought. Our greatest learning, sometimes, comes from talking about ideas and considering why and how things happen. The nature lover in me also appreciates the classes I had in undergrad where we sat outside to listen to our professor talk. Being in Florida helped as the weather was always great! Will there still be places for these types of learning in the future technology-advanced classrooms?

Clickers? What about something else...

I'm a little late on my posting but a fellow student's blog reminded me about our lectures on clickers last week. Although a helpful classroom response system, I can't help thinking of another one I saw demonstrated one time. While attending a keynote address on undergraduate research, the keynote speaker brought up a website on the projector and asked audience members to text their area of research to a number he provided. Instantly all of the responses appeared on the projector for everyone to see. It was so cool! I believe the responses were anonymous with just phone numbers appearing (which may not be completely anonymous in a class with friends). A similar system can be found here. With this system students can use their cell phones (don't even need a smart phone) and can easily type in a full sentence (very similar to texting a friend!). I'm sure there are drawbacks but I just wanted to mention this as a way to get at similar processes as clickers.  

                                                         

Big day!

Today was a big day for the Bright house. First, I made the news in a UGA Columns article about a recent study I completed. The adorable mom-baby duo in front is my boyfriend's sister-in-law and nephew, Shirin and Kai.

Also, my dog Tank was selected as a volunteer for the reading program at the UGA Vet School Open house. On the day of open house he will sit and have children read to him. Tank and I both love kids so this was the perfect opportunity. Very excited!

My personal learning environment

When learning about personal learning environments (PLNs) this week I started to reflect on my own. When seeing the visuals posted from others I realized my learning environment is much less social networking focused than others. Many of the examples I saw included Twitter, Facebook, and a whole host of things I'd never heard of as ways for learning and finding new information. I think (based on my understanding of the concept) that my PLN consists of a lot of journal articles (pulled mostly from GoogleScholar), collaborating through Dropbox (maybe that is my social networking piece), and meeting face-to-face with colleagues to learn new stats methods or work through problems. Perhaps I'm wrong, it may be that my academic learning is less social-network based but other learning does lend itself better to such sites. As I look for places to live in Australia, for example, I am highly dependent on people's reviews and suggestions. Speaking of, anyone been to Australia and have recommendations for things to do/see?

Make a website?

In class this we learned about google sites as a way to have an electronic teaching portfolio. I'm not sure about just the teaching portfolio but I can see google sites as a nice way to have a professional website to house your CV, research interests, teaching info, etc. Although I can't quite picture a hiring committee looking up my website  for my information over the paper copies I sent, I can see hiring committee members googling me (apparently it's a verb now) and coming across a website that would have all of the pertinent information at their fingertips. The site didn't seem that hard to make but did look like it might require a good bit of my time to put together. Is it worth it?

Grad school balance, check!

Grad school is set up to be one of the most unbalanced times of your life. In my experience, to be a successful academic, you must devote roughly 85% of your time to school/work, maybe 10% to family/friends/significant other, and if your lucky about 5% to yourself. This past summer a few friends and myself decided to break this unnatural balance and spend some time doing something we absolutely loved - we made a zombie movie.  For about 5 months we spent roughly every Sunday either in production meeting (usually at a favorite bar) or filming. we recruited an all-grad-student cast and spent only about $50 on costumes, make-up, and props. We ended up premiering the film at Cine on Halloween and had one of the best nights of our entire lives. I am 100% confident that no school related activity would have been that much fun or felt as rewarding. If interested, check out our local film, Dammit Zombie. Enjoy!

Also, as an aside, we were still able to maintain some of a balance during filming. Shortly after completion 2 of us passed written and oral comps and the other defended her thesis and completed her masters degree. Maybe we should add extra curriculars to the grad school requirement?