Students teach tech to superintendents

Last month at AASA (the American Association of School Administrators annual conference) in Phoenix, Arizona, several GenYES students from nearby Paradise Valley School District were invited to participate in an Apple itouch/ipod workshop for the attending superintendents.

Apple ipod Conference AASA from Debbie Kovesdy on Vimeo.

GenYES students from elementary, middle and high school presented the devices, circulated through the audience as the superintendents learned about educational uses, and provided help throughout the workshop.

And when you watch this video, notice that these students care deeply that these adults grasp how important using technology is for them. The good news is, there are students like this in every school, just waiting for an opportunity to put their passion about digital communication to good use to improve learning.

These students are part of a district-wide vision in Paradise Valley that students are a crucial part of integrating technology into every classroom. GenYES classes teach students technology, mentoring, and leadership so they can assist teachers and fellow students with technology.

As you can see, Paradise Valley is a leader in student-centered technology. They were the first K12 institution in the world to make content, lessons, and student work available on ITunes U/K12. Their pTUNES portal is now available to schools and districts statewide through a partnership with Apple, Arizona IDEAL, and Arizona State University (ASU). For this innovation, pTUNES was awarded the 2009 Cox Technology in Education Award. More about PTUNES…

Oh, one more thing – the video was (of course) produced by the GenYES team at Shadow Mountain High School in Paradise Valley.

Congratulations to the students, teachers, and administrators at PVUSD!

Sylvia

More on Fair Use and ending copyright confusion

Last week’s post, Fair use explained for educators announced a new resource, The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. In the comments, Kristen Hokansen, a Pennsylvania educator and tech coach added more support resources that deserved a new post all their own!

Kristen actually attended the announcement event in Philadelphia and helped create a wikispace called Copyright Confusion that will become a forum for educators. If you have time, watch the ustream and a live blog of the event that are archived here, there are some really great points brought up. Kristen also wrote about the event on her own blog The END to Copyright Confusion~and a new beginning that adds more explanation and nuance to this very confusing subject.

Kristen says, “I encourage folks to visit, and join, and share how they are dealing with this release and encouraging folks to exercise their rights as content creators under fair use. I also recommend checking out the Teaching About Fair Use page on Temple Media Lab’s site. There are all kinds of great lessons, examples, case studies and materials that can be used to help develop understanding.”

Sylvia

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