How can fair use benefit you as a teacher?

After the little reading I did, it seems like fair use is fairly ambiguous. There is no set of rules or even any real guidelines for what I can and can't use in the classroom. From most my reading, they suggest that as long as you cite the source if available and don't use too much of it and don't then publish it under your name (or essentially plagiarist) than you are ok. I think that the fair use regulations can benefit us because first, the likelihood of getting caught is slim to none, and second, there seem to be so many reasons you can get out of a lawsuit, it just depends on the situation. I think if you can prove that it is enriching your classroom and not harming the quality or monetary value of the work, than it probably won't be a problem. I think this opens up all sorts of information venues to us to help make the classroom a more exciting place.

Class Website

Oops...I forgot to post my website up here!

http://sites.google.com/site/mstheisbiology/home

Blog Post #5

Videos in the classroom are a great way to liven up your teaching. They can present material to the class in a way that is more exciting than just listening to the voice of a teacher. In science, they are especially useful because they allow the students the chance to see parts of science they could not see otherwise. I think that too much use of video is not good, a teacher who puts on Bill Nye every day is probably not teaching their students in the ways they need to. But I think video is a great supplemental teaching tool. I also think videos can be used as a reward, not only for the student but for the teacher. I also think that they help students that struggle with learning from a lecture because it gives them something visual as well as auditory to learn from. Videos also offer an opportunity to incorporate things that you cannot to in the classroom, such as dangerous experiments or traveling to Timbuktu or something like that.
I have never made a video, unless you count music videos that i recorded with my friends to our favorite songs when we were little. Learning to make one may be challenging, but I think it will be helpful for the classroom.

Personal Learning Networks

I had never really looked at my Personal Learning Network (PLN) as being such an interactive web. I have had the thought in the library before that I click on a picture of my friend on facebook, but the picture is taken by someone I don't know and soon I'm looking through this stranger's pictures and I feel really creepy. I guess thats just one way my PLN is overlapping into other's lives, even those who I have never and probably will never meet.

I think some of these PLN ideas are great. We learned about teacher share in one of my classes and I love the support it brings to first year students. Any teachers reading this, check it out at http://teachershare.scholastic.com/. I'm excited to sign up for more of these once I get closer to my student teaching and I know what grade I will be working with and where I will be.

I also signed up for Nike+. I got new running shoes for Christmas from my work and Santa kindly brought me the Nike+ technology for Christmas. I've been waiting to get some free time to sign up for this service, and now that I have I'm super pumped. I can even add friends and we can share workouts, and motivate each other to run more. I can also track my progress on my runs and find local events in my are to help me set a goal to train for. This is a really great feature, and so convenient to use. I also looked at the nike running blog to help assist me in my running endeavors. They even have "challenges" I can sign up for. I think it will be a good supplemental tool to the Nike+.