Keeping up with copyright
If you’re doing any teaching online you need be aware of the copyright rules.
If you work in education in Australia the best place to go is the SmartCopying site. It’s been set up by the National Copyright Unit which provides the guidelines for Australian Schools and TAFE. It’s pretty safe to say it applies to universities too.
As a teacher you should be covered by a Statutory Education Licence which gives you a fair bit of protection and flexibility around copying images and resources and using them within your organisation. But if you’re in a Private college or RTO it would be worth checking the list on the site to see if you’re licenced.
It has a section on Creative Commons licencing which is probably the safest place to go for free images. CC is not foolproof. People can add a CC licence to images they don’t own, and there have been cases of people harvesting free CC images and selling them to commercial platforms, who have in turn sent cease and desist letters to legitimate users.
If you’re not sure about an image check it with TinEye.
If you’re commercial operator creating resources or delivering online courses then the Statutory Education Licence rules don’t apply. You need to follow the commercial guidelines – which basically means use your own images or pay for someone else’s. I see quite a few people who transition from schools to the commercial sector get tripped up by this.
For free images Creative Commons is the safest place to go, but always check the licence tags. Quite a lot are tagged “not for commercial use”.
How safe is your online teaching? Might be time to brush up on your cyber security.
With COVID we’re all now online to varying degrees. We have jumped (or been pushed) into trying new and unfamiliar things, many of which are now fairly routine parts of our lives. It’s a time when many of us feel safer and more comfortable with the technology. We’re happy clicking on whatever is put in front of us.
This time is a bonanza for people looking to make a quick dishonest buck.
Our organisations can protect us from many of the threats but there are also many ways we can let dodgy operators into our stuff. It’s probably a good time to revisit our security practices.
This article from Future Learn, Common cyber security threats and how to deal with them is a good place to start.
Warning for people with excellent battery management (Google wont let you sign in if you’re using a device with a 10 year old version of Android).
If you still have a device running Android 2.3.7 (the final version of Gingerbread) or older, Google won’t let you sign in to your Google account on that device starting September 27th
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/1/22605009/google-android-older-versions-2-3-7-account-sign-log-in-gmail-youtube-maps
So for those of you who have nursed your Blackberry or Galaxy 4 through the past 10 years and are users of Google docs and Drive you are going to find your device a little bit less useful. Actually the one issue you may have is the loss of Google photos and having to manually get your pics off the device.
Pearson have gone a bit “Netflix” with a subscription service
Pearson, the largest publisher of college textbooks in the US, has announced Pearson Plus, a new subscription service for digital textbooks. The Pearson Plus app, available in both mobile and desktop form, will be available on US college campuses this fall and is expected to roll out globally in the future.
There are two subscription tiers. Enrolled students can pay $9.99 per month to access one textbook at a time or $14.99 per month for access to the company’s full library (a selection of over 1,500 e-books). The app provides various other study aids as well, including flashcards, annotations, and customizable fonts.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22606423/pearson-plus-college-textbook-subscription-service-app-launch
I’m not even sure if this is news as most uni bookstores have had a digital rental schemes going for a few years and the real value of this scheme doesn’t really kick in unless you have multiple lecturers using Pearson texts, but it’s probably better than killing trees for products that are commercially redundant every 2 years.
The whole digital text book thing has been a bugbear of mine for a while. I still don’t know why more Australian unis aren’t using Open Education resources. Seriously, do your student’s a favour and go to https://www.oercommons.org/ to see all the free texts and resources.
Weekend Funny – Food to avoid in lockdown
Not so much funny, more of a public service post. I saw this headline in my feed “Dieting and Farting: Diets ranked by how gassy they make you“, and instantly thought of vegan nephew who has moved back home with the family.
Lesson plans for teachers using Ed Tech
I spotted this article on Tech and Learning. It covers plans for 4 different teaching tech applications used in Primary and mid Secondary School, but if you’re teaching at any level, using any application I recommend you have a read. Just ignore the specific app related information and look at the implementation strategies. It covers things like providing pre-lesson support resources, worked problems and demonstration of learning through student creation. https://www.techlearning.com/how-to/top-edtech-lesson-plans
Virtual Reality in Education
Future Learn (the university based online education platform) has put a useful Virtual Reality summary on their blog. If you’re new to the whole VR in Education thing it’s worth a read.
Virtual Reality in education in some ways reminds me of “Gamification of education” or “Virtual worlds for education”. Lots of hype, lots of gee whiz articles, and handful of expensive, one off, exemplars usually from big organisations. Perpetually the next big thing until quietly sliding into a logical niche.
Don’t get me wrong it is very cool tech. Amazing stuff. In the right niches (like areas of Medicine) it looks like a game changer. But it has massive overheads in content development, hardware management, tech support and staff training, so the idea that it has widespread application is, at the moment, a bit fanciful.
But there was a time when DVD burners were $10,000, and computers were only in special labs in wealthy private schools. Also, there is a growing community of organisations creating and sharing VR assets for free. The tipping point will depend on your field so it is definitely worth keeping an eye out for articles in your industry journals and presentations at education conferences.
To me, smartphone based Augmented Reality (digital information overlaying real world images) looks much more viable. If you want to try it out have a look at the apps in this article on Tom’s Guide.
A bit of research about student experiences during the pandemic.
Campus Technology have put together “15 Mistakes Instructors Have Made Teaching with Technology in the Pandemic”
It is a pretty good summary of the Educause research paper “Student Experiences Learning with Technology in the Pandemic“. Section 5 of the paper “Most effective use of technology” is worth a look.
There are no real surprises. The issues mostly originate from shifting a cohort of f2f educators into online teaching with very little preparation. It does provide a useful guide to future practice, in fact you could probably structure an online teaching course around the 15 points.
I think the more interesting research will be about how academics use the new skills and attitudes change their teaching and student support in the future. When I find some I’ll post a link.
Use Gmail Schedule send and Outlook Delay Delivery – don’t hassle people after hours.
I spotted this in the news and it got me thinking.
The Victorian Police Force Union recently won the right to disconnect. It “directs managers to respect leave and rest days and avoid contacting officers outside work hours, unless in an emergency or to check on their welfare. The aim is to shift the “always-on” culture so that officers can switch off from work after they have finished their shift.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-06/right-to-disconnect-gives-workers-their-lives-back/100040424
Many of us have got into the habit of sending an out of hours email for people to read the next morning or on their next shift. We might not be expecting an immediate response but they will probably get a notification on their phone or computer, putting them back into work mode when they should be focusing on important things like the plot of Bridgerton. This was worse during 2020 when the line between work and home was already blurred for people working from home.
But it’s actually very easy to knock up that email now and send it later using Gmail schedule send and Outlook Delivery Delay.
Gmail Schedule send
- In your new email click the up arrow next to the Send button (don’t click Send)
- Click Schedule send
- Select one of the presets (morning, afternoon or night) or manually set a date and time.
Outlook Delivery Delay
Delay delivery is a bit harder to find.
- In your new email, click on Options
- Click on …
- Click on Delay Delivery
- Got to Delivery Options
- Click on Do not deliver before, and set the date and time
Facebook Alternatives – FB is unreliable, try this instead
Facebook has a long history of dodgy privacy policies and can shut down any group at a whim. In Australia they blocked all news media (18/2/21) including non government political satirical pages (the kind who make fun of FB) like The Betoota Advocate and The Chaser. They have shut down the Bureau of Meteorology page and in blocking the national broadcaster (ABC) they have blocked a major Bushfire Emergency information source (remember last years monster koala killer fires). Time to look at Facebook alternatives.
Here is what I use:
- News Aggregator – Feedly – free and pretty easy. If your news site or group has a web page just use Feedly. Or just get the official app for the news source.
- Group chat
– Set up a group on your iPhone or Android text chat. (Instagram and Whats apps are also owned by FB so carry the same risks).
– Slack is also worth looking at.
– if there’s a geek in the family with a web site you can set up a Discourse page. - Online second hand markets – In Australia this is Gumtree or The Trading Post
- Free second hand online markets – Community Exchange, Freecycle.org, Buy Nothing Project.