Copyright, images, and mashing!

Last week, we learned about a neat way to share your work in public called creative commons. This type of copyright allows a creator of a work to share parts of it that they want other people to use. I loved the idea of this because it connects people together creatively allowing them to collaborate and expand on each other's works and ideas. Creative commons allows you to create your own free license for your work which could include a blog, a website, a song, an online piece of writing, and much more, and let the viewer know which parts of it they can use in their own work or expand off of.
We also explored Flickr, an online photo sharing website which allows you to upload personal photos and organize them, and also search for photos and download them to create your own personal gallery. Although I am having a rough time setting up my Flickr account, I am very excited to start using it to find photos that I am interested in and set up a gallery for many people to view. I love personal sites like this that you can create and be creative with, and I am very excited to post my pictures along with interesting ones that I find online.
One more thing we looked at last week was Google maps and Google earth. I really enjoyed using Google maps and I loved hearing about all of the different ways that a teacher can use it in their classroom. I especially liked the idea that was mentioned about using it to locate all of the places that Shakespeare has mentioned in his plays. Integrating Google maps into history and language arts would be a very effective visual for students. You can also type out a description to each location that you mark. I did a Google Map on my Study Abroad strip to London this Summer. It was neat to see my routes drawn out on a map and see where the countries that I visited were in relation to each other.
All of these technologies are very fun and useful, not to mention FREE! You might have to play around with them a little to get used to them(like I am still doing with Flickr and Google Earth), but once you master them the possibilities are endless.