This class has enlightened me on Moodles, news aggregators, Flickr, and photo manipulators. I already had a Facebook account but wasn't doing much with it. I'm glad to have a blog that I can do whatever I want with in the future. I'm looking forward to sharing book and movie reviews with my family and friends through this blog. It's also nice to have the news from a variety of interesting sources delivered to me instead of my having to go look for it. Flickr is a great place for me to post family photos and invite family members to view or download. I'm sure that I will think of ways to use this new knowledge in the future that I haven't even thought of yet.

RSS: Really Simple?

RSS is supposed to be Really Simple Syndication, but I'm still a little confused about how to use it. I have subscribed to my husband's blog, Front Porch Expressions, so I can keep up with what he's writing about his thoughts and our lives. Like most of us, he expresses himself on paper better than by speech even though he loves to talk! I also set up an account in bloglines, which can be visited from a link named My Blogs.

Sherry Roberts: Copyright Infringement

Daniel Nations is sympathetic to users of Web 2.0 tools in his article on About.com entitled "Copyright infringement--the Dark Side of Web 2.0". He understands how easy it is to take articles and images from the Internet which has allowed us to have collaboration on a global scale. But he comments that he wishes users would learn some basic etiquette. Without being critical he offers several possible solutions for new bloggers.

He recommends users and copyright holders use a website called Creative Commons, where users can check for copyright restrictions and holders can post their copyright restrictions and licenses. Users can locate the material they want to use and choose a license, offered by the author/artist, on an ala carte basis. He considers this to be a good solution but acknowledges that it is not commonly used.

For articles, he suggests that users take only a small portion of an article and give a linkback, the URL for the whole article. (Fair use is 10% or less.) He suggests doing the same for images. Good etiquette also dictates that users should use trackbacks to notify copyright holders that the user has quoted or used an image. If the holder objects, the text or image should be removed immediately.

Nations also offers bloggers websites as alternatives to taking articles and images from other peoples' posts. They are Creative Commons Search, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, and "Top 5 Sites to Find Free Pictures".

I agree with Nations that most people don't know they are violating copyright laws because it is so easy to take what you see. After reading this I will be more careful when I show students how to copy and paste text and images, encouraging them to do the same in their own web journeys. This will definitely be part of my copyright unit.

Learning Something New

I don't mind learning something new, if I can use it. Unfortunately, blogging my personal life doesn't interest me. I can't imagine anyone being interested in me, my opinions, or my activities. Obviously I wasn't born in the "me" generation. Anyway, here you are reading my opinions about blogging and wondering other boring stream of consciousness comments I'm going to post. Today's post: I didn't get much of my assignment done because I couldn't get into the class moodle because I left out a character in my username. I spent at least a half an hour trying to log-on with what I had written down. Unfortunately I didn't notice the dot (.) between my first and last names until I arrived at class tonight. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb! When I get home tonight I'll be catching up on my online reading, commenting, and posting!

Jan. 12, 2010

Here we go! Into a new year and learning something new. This is old hat to my family members but not to me. I can't imagine anyone wanting to read my posts. Since you are, thanks! I promise to make future blogs more interesting.