Finding Copyright Friendly Images

A Tale of Two Fish, a set by yiibu on Flickr.

Adding images to your projects helps to communicate your ideas. Create some of your own from an array of tools -- draw and scan, take photos, use online tools or a Paint program (like Sketchfu) to make your own original designs for images and diagrams. Sometimes you'll need to borrow things from other creators too. This can be tricky because of copyright restrictions. Any creative work you find online is fully copyrighted unless stated otherwise.

Analyzing the Tale of Two Fish photo story has helped 4th and 5th graders understand the difference between strict copyright protection with 'All rights reserved,' and 'Some rights reserved' Creative Commons licenses. CC licenses have developed as a part of the worldwide trend of sharing creative work online, and have made it possible for us to find and use images without making copyright violations.

What search tools lead to copyright friendly images?

Nettrekker Image Search

World Book Advanced Image Search

(Citations already included with each image)

In Flickr, select 'Search Creative Commons Content'

Under Usage Rights, select 'Labeled for Reuse'
& Under SafeSearch, select 'Strict Filtering'

Nettrekker and World Book Online are excellent image search options. Pics4Learning is another copyright friendly image library with permission granted to teachers and students for use. Citations are included with each image too. FlickrCC and Google Images-Advanced Search are powerful image search engines, but students must narrow searches with strict filtering and select 'Images Labeled for Reuse.'

How should you cite images?
Of course, it is important to give credit to the original creators of the images you use. Most licenses include a requirement of 'Attribution,' which means you must credit and link back to the original author. 4th and 5th graders are finding that an online citation maker like Bibme or OSLIS Citation Maker can help to build correct source citations. These tools provide templates for all kinds of source types, including images, books, and websites. Simply fill in the required source information, and the citation is created and formatted for you. Then you can copy and paste the citation information as you build your list of sources.

Numerous  links to additional copyright-friendly image search tools are located on the ROE Library site. 

Further Reading: 

• Creative Commons: Spectrum of Rights
• 50 Stunning Images From Flickr Under Creative Commons
• Understand Creative Commons in 180 Seconds (view clip outside HISD network)
• FlickrCC bluemountains.net

Questions

'Once you have learned how to ask relevant and appropriate questions, you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning
what you want or need to know.'

--Neil Postman

'If we hope to see inventive thought infused with critical judgment, questions and questioning must become a priority of schooling and must gain recognition as a supremely important technology.'

-- Questioning as Technology by Jamie Mackenzie

Questions can move students beyond the surface-level of any kind of learning. Kids are full of curiosity, but they can learn to develop questions that lead them to dig down and reach for deeper thinking and knowledge building. Questions not only jump-start this process, but also fuel motivation to learn too. Essential to knowing how to learn in the 21^st century is this ability!

Students can learn to distinguish between different kinds of questions. What makes some questions easier and some harder to answer? Sorting and creating categories for questions is helpful to get kids thinking this way. Which of our questions are open-ended and which are closed?  Which will be quick  to answer and which will be more challenging? Why? What other categories of questions can we make? QAR (question-answer-relationship) is yet another way to analyze questions and strategically search for answers.

2nd graders collaboratively brainstormed questions about the cycle of
the moon as part of their Unit of Inquiry about cycles in the natural world
for 'How the World Works.' Then they analyzed, categorized, and
color-coded them as thick or thin questions. 3rd graders did the same
as part of their study of complex societies on the topic of the Inca
of South America for 'Where We Are in Time & Place.'
 (Question Cube template)

'Thick and thin'  is one way for students to categorize questions. 'Thick' questions demand deep thinking and making connections among new ideas. 'Thin' questions are important though too! Kids can't ask or answer those high-level questions without exploring some basic knowledge and comprehension questions about  Form and Function first. These lead to those 'thick' high-level questions later. 

As kids become aware of patterns and categories of questions, they begin to understand the kinds of questions they can ask in order to accomplish the thinking they need to do. As a result, they become better equipped to seek answers too. As researchers--students seek specific information that allows them to explore a particular topic. All information they find filters through their questions. Without the anchor of questions to guide them, they quickly become lost and overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information.

Interesting Reading:

The Question Mark: A an educational journal devoted to questions, questioning, strategic reading and quality teachingBeyond Cut & Paste: Engage Students with Questions of Import (fno.org)The Power of Questions: Angela MaiersCuriosity: M. Ross on Classroom Habitudes by Angela Maiers

Instructional resources:

• ReadWriteThink: Questioning: A Strategy for Guided Reading
• Into The Book: Questioning Video Clips
• Questioning Ideas to Use in the Classroom
• Reading Partnership Thick Question Form 
• Questioning Anchor Charts 

Blooming Questions on Storybird

IIM: A Framework for K-5 Research

Using IIM: A Framework for Research Skill Development

Our school was honored to host two groups of visitors during the past week. We presented our instructional programs to a delegation of school principals from the Haidian District of Beijing, China. 

Later in the week, we shared our implementation of IIM (Independent Investigation Method) with a large group of colleagues from several Houston I.S.D. schools. Embedded above are the presentation slides detailing IIM research.

Read this page in Chinese, Spanish, or another language of choice by selecting from the Google Translate options on the top left corner!

Resource Sharing: Wonderopolis

Wonderopolis is a site whose goal is to promote curiosity, questioning,and inquiry. New topics are posted each day to wonder about and explore. It's worth a daily visit for families to spark interesting conversations and learning opportunities at home:

"Our Wonders of the Day will help you find learning moments in everyday life, ones that fit in with dinner preparations or carpool responsibilities or a stolen moment between breakfast and the bus."

It's a great classroom resource too. Take a look at this approach:  Wonderopolis and Question Writing from 'Teaching in the 21st Century' Blog. This is a valuable source of online non-fiction articles to build reading comprehension and inferential thinking.
Some recent 'wonders' to explore:

• Why are school buses yellow?
• What's a tsunami?
• How does a species become endangered?

Skype in the Classroom

Signing up for 'Skype in the Classroom' is a great way to connect with an online international community of educators. We can expand our students' international mindedness through building relationships and exchanging ideas with students and teachers all over the world! Teachers first create a profile that sets out their interests, specialties, and location. Then, they are able to browse the community for teachers who they can help or who can offer them help in making cultural connections and instructional exchanges, or even practicing a new language with native speakers! Register now and get started by clicking here.

Additional Reading & Technology resources:

Fluency (including many anchor charts and examples of fluency instruction)

• Having Fun with Fluency: A Bridge to Comprehension (Part I) 
• Having Fun With Fluency: Strategies Readers Will Enjoy (Part II)
  (via Scholastic's 'Top Teaching' blog)

Keyboarding

• Create a Keyboarding Learning Station using these downloadable practice cards from (ICT Teaching and Learning blog)

IBPYP Exhibition

Website by Elizabeth, Aarohi, and Maya about Service Animals

Exhibition is a demonstration of students' learning of key concepts within the IBPYP curriculum framework. It is an intense, multi-step, multi-layered process, and students' success provides evidence of every aspect of the Learner Profile. It not only shows students' development of transdisciplinary research and social skills but also their communication and self-management abilities too. It is a testament to learning that has happened not only in 5th grade, but in each grade level that has come before. 

Exhibition work is student-led and requirements involve research, writing, technology and taking action as an extension of learning. The role of mentors has been essential to ensuring student's receive much needed support. The quality of students' work is also directly connected to our teachers' ability to balance strategic guidance and intervention at the point of need while at the same time ensuring students' own what they are learning and are given the tools to steer their own course. 

Students designed lines of inquiry and investigated self-selected topics in connection to the central idea: 'Action impacts our community and our world.' Pre-search experiences gave kids the opportunity to choose topics they were truly passionate about. Working in collaborative teams, 5th graders developed questions and lines of inquiry through concept mapping. They used multiple sources to gather research information in the form of notefacts, and cited sources along the way. Organizing notefacts at the midpoint of research was key in order to identify gaps and unanswered questions, and then research resumed to address these. Students also brainstormed, developed, and implemented 'action' plans. Kids experienced first-hand that they could make a difference in our community in relation to their chosen issue.

To synthesize understandings from their research, students wrote essays to summarize what they'd learned and then began developing presentation ideas and planning products incorporating technology. Next, they transformed their gathered research information into a range of original creative products, a few of which are embedded above and below. They used BibMe to finalize their bibliographies, and teachers coached and guided teams in delivering their final presentations in ways that both engaged and informed their wide audience of families, community members, and students from every classroom throughout our school. 

Just a few examples of ROE Exhibition 2011 products created by students are posted here. Many links to other phenomenal work continue to be added HERE.

 An animated presentation about Parkinson's Disease by Jackson and Robby (created with Prezi)-Note: Click arrow to load and view presentation.

An e-Book to inform River Oaks students about Autism by Ilona and Alexandra (created with VoiceThread)--Note: Click on  students' avatars to hear voice recordings page by page.

A Multimedia Pop-up Book about Ocean Pollution including original illustrations by Corbin, Joann, and Warren (created with Zooburst)--Note: Click small ''show more' arrows above story text on each page for additional text & click exclamation points above images for thought bubbles.

Technology Timeline on Dipity.

An Interactive Timeline about Technology by Beckett and Stuart (created with Dipity). Note: Click any timeline label for more description of events. 

A Multimedia Poster about Alzheimer's Disease by Will and Sabrina (created with GlogsterEdu)


Find additional links to projects HERE . 

Ideas, Resources, & Tools

Here are a few ideas, resources, and tools that have recently captured my attention from Twitter networking, educators' blogs, and Diigo social bookmarks.

Diverse possibilities for learning with VoiceThread below come from Tom Barrett's 'Interesting Ways' series on EDTE.CH. View others on numerous additional topics including the iPod Touch, Interactive White Boards, Classroom Blogs, and Wikis. These are crowdsourced, or collectively created by users, so consider emailing him and having your idea added too!



The Writing Teacher's Strategy Guide:  
a downloadable e-book containing all kinds of writing strategies, many of which relate well to the research process and product creation. The Transaction-Action-Details chart (p. 40) offers a way to help kids craft more fluent sentences and expand on their ideas. More instructional eBook downloads can be found at TTMS.org

ReadWriteThink Printing Press:
Students can create a brochure, newspaper, booklet, or flyer easily with these simple publishing templates. Guides for the process are built into each one, and picture spaces are available in each type. A digital image cannot be added however, so students can create add their own original ones after printing their work.

It is so important for kids to create their own drawings, diagrams, photos and visual representations of their ideas, and not to use ready-made graphics too frequently! Jamie Mackenzie's article Beyond Clipart: Encouraging Children's Own Drawings is worthwhile reading on this issue.

Education Place
has a concise collection of graphic organizers students and teachers might use to organize and analyze thinking -- the following 3 may be helpful for students as they work though identifying main idea and details and also for research topic development.

E-Chart


Idea Rake


Tree Chart


Planning Chart

Book Fair: February 7-9, 2011

Book Fair: February 7-9, 2011

Grandparents Day: Wed., Feb. 9th (9-10:30 am & 12:30-2:00 pm)

Family Night: Wed., Feb. 9th (6:00-8:00 pm)