FlickLeech now with Creative Commons

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

I have been a big fan of Flickrleech for more than a year.  The site uses the Flickr API to search photos on the Flickr site.  The draw is the interface.  Instead of showing ten pictures per page, Flickrleech shows 200.  It makes scanning for a picture much quicker.

Now Flickrleech has added the ability to isolate only picture licensed as Creative Commons.  The feature isn’t obvious on the main page, but once you find it, it’s easy to use.

Do a normal search and then click the advanced search link.  This will open a window with a list of options.  Licenses are at the bottom.

There are six different Creative Commons licenses offered on Flickr.  If you would like to select more than one, hold down the CTRL key while making the selects.

After the search is complete, clicking any photo listed will open that photo on the official Flickr site.  That makes it easy to grab attribution credentials and other information.  The best Flickr search tool just got better.

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Things are about to change.

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

Today eSchool News published an article about the nation’s first tech-literacy exam.  In four years, the Nation’s Report Card will include technological literacy of students.  This means schools will be forced to assess student technology competencies.  If it is being assessed, it has to be taught.  I predict a jump in the number of technical courses offered in schools.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this is the answer.  We need technology that is used in the context of every subject, not technology for technology’s sake.  Take a look at the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S)

Here are the main categories:
Creativity and Innovation
Communication and Collaboration
Research and Information Fluency
Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
Digital Citizenship
Technology Operations and Concepts

Only the last one (and it’s at the bottom for a reason) easily fits into a technology course.  All the others beg to be integrated into non-technical courses.  For the first time, teachers may be forced to incorporate technology into the curriculum.  This will certainly fail if teachers are not prepared to take on this task.  Read the NETS for Teachers standards.

Technology Operations and Concepts (last on the student list) did not even make the teacher list.  This is because teachers are supposed to be technology literate.  Look at some of the items in these standards:

1a. promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness
1b. engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources
3b. collaborate with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation

Here is a good question for an educator.  “What digital tools are you using to collaborate with students, peers, parents and community members?”

Very few teachers have arrived in the “web 2.0” world.  I continually introduce teachers to sites like Delicious even though it has been one of my main digital tools for more than three years.  Few teachers use blogs, social networks, wikis or podcasts.  In fact, many teachers don’t know what all these things are.

When our students are tested for technology literacy, things will have to change.  It is an exciting time to be a teacher.

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Excel Exercise

Posted on September 23, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

I needed a picture to explain this to one of the kids, and Excel worked out perfect. Can you see that one piece of the pizza on the left is the same amount as two pieces from the pizza on the right? 1/4 does equal 2/8.

These are pie charts in Excel. It took less than a minute to make the two charts. Can you duplicate them?

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Nailed by Digital Photo

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

Coming back from lunch today, I noticed a campus security guard taking a picture of the car parked next to me.  I had to ask why.

The car was registered in the computer system, but there was no parking pass hanging from the rear view mirror.  We have transferable tags at UF.  Sometimes people try to share them between a couple of cars and end up on campus with a car and no tag.

Apparently, a few people have tried to pull one over on security.  After getting a ticket, they switch the tag back to the ticketed car and show up at the security office acting puzzled.

“I have a tag.  Why did I get a ticket?”

Now security provides visual evidence when this question is asked.  All the photos are digitally connected to the tickets to provide visual evidence in a dispute.

“Why?  Because this picture of your car shows you did not have a parking pass when we issued the ticket.”

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Legitimate Takedown and Fair Use

Posted on September 15, 2008 by Alvin Trusty

If you haven’t seen the Sarah Palin parody on Saturday Night Live, don’t go to YouTube. Here is the YouTube page where the video was.

As you might expect, content created on Saturday is still protected by copyright on Sunday. You can find the video over at NBC, although the link did not show up when I searched Google. It is posted on NBC’s main page right now. There are even embed codes so the video can be placed on my site (below).

The version on the NBC site had a pre-roll advertisement. I can embed it on my site, but NBC is getting the ad revue from the commercial (which seems to be gone from the embedded version of the video).

Here is something just as interesting. The one place you can find part of the video on YouTube is on Fox News’ reporting of the video. Fox News did not show all of the SNL video during their news show. They only played a small segment of the SNL broadcast. Because of the shorted duration, the Fox News version is protected by fair use. NBC may ask for another take, but it will be more difficult because Fox “played by the rules” when they showed the clip in the first place. So it will be up to Fox to decide if they want the clip taken down. The copyright protected commentary belongs to them.

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