Downloading

Downloading music and movies from the internet is considered stealing which is highly unethical.  The people who make the music and/or movies are living off of the money they make from those things.  If people continuously steal the music and movies, they might as well be stealing the artists money.  It's important to explain to students how siting anything they use is a key point in learning.  You must ask them as an example, "how would you feel if you made the number one movie in America and it was being downloaded illegally online? You would not be getting credit nor would you be making money".  The students must also understand deeply what copyright, public domain, and creative commons means so that they are able to correctly use images, videos, etc.

Copy Cat

After reading the scenario about being a teacher at a K-12 school preparing a lesson on the rain forest, I feel as if the Google images would be okay to use as well as the rain forest background music.  The Google images would be for an educational purpose and since they are searchable on Google, they're most likely for the public to use.  The background music is also known for educational purposes, or for children, and it was downloaded legally because it was purchased, not borrowed.  The YouTube video on the other hand would be going against the copyright law because the video is not the teachers original work, it was borrowed without permission.  Similarly to the YouTube video, the presentation would by copyrighted because most of the information is not the teachers original work, it is all borrowed and not made by said teacher.  Passing out the bookmarks with the poem on it, however, would not be copyright as long as the authors name is somewhere on the bookmark indicating that he wrote it.     

What does your future look like?

Open access can lead to opportunities that a person or child have never had before.  In an open access or open learning classroom, you might find open mobile access, collaboration, accessing of different resources, and open feedback from students to other students and even to the teacher.

I hope to see the future of education where children can be taught and teachers can teach anywhere and whenever is desired.  If this is to happen, I believe that teaching and learning will be at a whole new level.  Teachers will have resources and lessons that have been shared and edited to make it the best it can be while students will have an abundance of resources to learn from.  Students from Africa for example could go online and chat with another student or teacher that is from Hawaii and get the help they need or further their learning by teaching each other.  It would be an amazing thing to have children and adults all over the world be able to study and learn anytime, anywhere, and with anyone.

In today's society, anyone can go online and look up something and it would take less than five seconds.  If you're looking for a definition in a text book for example, you would have to search the back of the book from A-Z to find the word to be able to define it.  This could easily take a couple of minutes.  All in all, it takes a shorter amount of time to use technology to find an answer, problem, definition, etc. than it does when using a textbook.  I believe that in the near future, textbooks will become obsolete.  Students do not want to spend hundreds of dollars on a book when they can just search and study from a computer or even their phones in half the amount of time.  Smart phones are literally at the tip of your finger the majority of your days, how often is a textbook?

We've Got Spirit, Yes We Do

It is extremely important that communities come together to share and network our educational and/or technological ideas with one another.  As far as how to capture the spirit, well, that is completely up to us as educators.  We have to come together to find ways to encourage others to use Open Education Resources because what it all comes down to is the students and how they're learning as well as what they are learning.  Many educators do not realize that if they have an idea and are able to spread it all over the world, the idea can only get better from there! How amazing would it be to say you thought of an idea, shared it, and now it is being taught to children all over the world?

Sharing is Caring

After viewing the videos and reading the articles/blogs about sharing, I thought how perfect videos, articles, and blogs all are when it comes to teachers and leaders sharing their ideas with others.  With a blog for example, other teachers or leaders are able to read it at any time, view it more than once, and are also able to comment on it if they feel as if they want to share something back.  When it comes to deciding what to share and what not to share, I feel it's very important to ask yourself, "Will this help others? Will similar teachers and leaders benefit from this? Will I be able to get positive feed back with added ideas to it?".  If you can answer yes to all of these questions then I say share it!  If you are hesitant and can't confidently answer those questions I say share it anyways!  It's all about putting ideas out there whether you think they are amazing or awful, you never know unless you try.  Sharing does not always have to be an online thing, ideas and thoughts can be exchanged through face to face interaction.  Face to face interaction can make sharing more difficult for the fact that what's being shared is only being shared with one or a few people whereas online it can be shared with hundreds or thousands of other educators.  The value of sharing everything is the feedback.  If you share absolutely everything there are chances you receive positive but also some negative feedback.  I feel it's important for people to receive praise but it's important people receive criticism so they can learn how to take in and process negativity.  You're not expanding your learning if you never make mistakes along the way.