Field Trip to College of Education Technology Sandbox

Hi everyone,

Below is some information regarding how you can make use of some resources that the Tech Sandbox provides. Please consider enrolling in their Blackboard group to stay updated with the latest tools they have. 

It will be helpful for you to do several things before coming to the Tech Sandbox:

1. Register for a SMART software by going to https://smarttech.com/Support/Browse+Support/Download+Software, and downloading Smart Notebook (version 17) for a free 45 day trial.

2. Open a SMART Exchange account: To fully enjoy SMART resources, we encourage all students to open a free account at http://exchange.smarttech.com/#tab=0 and download lesson plans and other helpful materials.

3. Enroll in the Tech Sandbox Blackboard site. We maintain a Blackboard organization site “COE Tech Resources” where we collect and make available a variety of resources by media or subject area. All FSU students and faculty have access and can self-enroll by following this procedure:

• Login to Blackboard and click the Organizations tab at the top menu
• On the left, look for the Organization Search box
• Type "tech resources" and click Go
• Under "Organization Name" you will see "COE Tech Resources"
• To the left of that, look for "(SCD_19341_org)" and notice the drop down menu (2 arrows pointing down)
• Click those arrows, and select Enroll
• On the next page that opens, click Submit

You are now enrolled. This organization will be under the 'Home' tab, and it will immediately show up after you log in to your Bb. This Bb site contains many helpful tips, handbooks, links to tutorials, and suggestions for using technology in education.

4. Finally, please invite your students to “like” us on Facebook and Instagram! https://www.facebook.com/fsucoetechsandbox / https://www.instagram.com/fsucoe_techsandbox/

See you all on Monday!

Yasin

Copyright and Fair Use Web Tools

Deciding whether your use of copyrighted material is legal or not is not always easy. There are many parameters at play such as the nature of the work, amount of work to be used, setting in which the work will be used, purpose of the use, and so on. It is not possible to know all the copyright laws for everyone and make an informed decision based on these laws. However, there are tools to assist us with our decision to (or not) use a copyrighted work. Copyright Advisory Network (http://librarycopyright.net) has brought some tools together which will help individuals, instructors, and librarians to decide whether their use can be considered legal or within the fair use domain. For example, The Copyright Genie tool will allow you to find out if a work is covered by U.S. copyright laws. Another tool that is called Fair Use Evaluator, arguably the most useful tool, helps to establish whether your use of a copyrighted work is a “fair use.” In this tool, you will need to provide some contextual information about your intended use, describe how your use relates to each of the four fair use factors that are purpose, nature, amount, and effect. In each factor, the tool provides example situations that favor or oppose fair use, so you can make a more informed decision by selecting any situation that applies to your use. Finally, you can color code your entries as to how comfortable you are in terms of your use of a copyrighted material whether it is fair or infringing. Fair Use Evaluator tool seems like a very helpful assistant when deciding to use copyrighted work in educational settings.

The other tools available are Section 108 Spinner, Exceptions for Instructors eTool, and Public Domain Slider.

Welcome!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to EME2040 - Introduction to Educational Technology! This course will provide you with the knowledge and skills required to achieve a competency in the use of educational technology for planning and delivering instruction. Throughout the semester, we will explore various educational technology tools and learn how to employ these tools in our teaching practice. Everyone in this class, including me as your instructor, will keep a blog journal and share their insights and experiences with educational technology. While you will have blog journal prompts for each week to get you started with your weekly blog posts, I will use this blog as a space to communicate with you by sharing educational technology news & resources. Moreover, there will be a section soon on the right menu of this page which will include links to everyone's blog in the class. So, when you would like to check out classmates' blog, you can always visit this blog and go to your classmates' blogs using the links on the menu, of course in addition to checking out what is being posted on this blog.

We will cover blog journal assignment in our first class in detail. For now, just keep in mind that this is the course blog (there is a link to this blog on the course Canvas site) and make sure that you visit it frequently to keep yourself up-to-date with the course.

I will see you all soon.

Yasin