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In his course English 210, The Literature of Drama, cross-listed as Theater 240, The Drama of Literature, and known affectionately by students as A Play a Day, Prof. Marlowe has for decades shown to his classes the scene from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in which Mercutio is killed. It helps students understand the profound difference between the play as acted and the play as written. When he started teaching many years ago he showed it from 16mm film, then moved up to VHS tapes and nowadays to DVD. These days he's using Zeferelli's version, produced in the 1970's.

Among her many duties at the college, Prof. Shearing manages a recruitment and support program for underprivileged students. To encourage them to apply, and to show them how to navigate the various support systems that the college offers, she had one of her students create an entertaining cartoon animation of the process. Like the silent movies of old, the animation was accompanied by piano music, in this case a jazz piece, Passing Through, composed in 1956 and performed by Errol Garner, who died in 1977. She shows this animation to potential students when she's out on the recruiting trail.

Each week, Prof. Daguerre prepares a podcast for his students that reviews the key concepts of the course. He voices over his PowerPoint slides and adds illustrations drawn from Images. Students love these concise, witty, and personal productions. They download them from Blackboard and play them on their various media devices. Daguerre's use of images is especially clever and creative.

In his lectures, Prof. Piaget makes good use of the video clips from the compact disc that accompanies the textbook, Child Development: an Experimental Approach. The clips match exactly with the topics in the book. The book (required) costs his students $95, and the CD (optional) is $30 extra, all at the campus bookstore.

Now that you have wrestled with the four case studies, you probably want me to tell you the right answers. But if I did that I would be destroying a teachable moment. Better for you to learn enough to provide the answers yourself. Here's how.

1. Understand that each case represents a balance between the rights of an author to protect his or her works from unauthorized copying and distribution, and the rights of teachers and students to learn without restriction on what works they can consider. To develop this understanding you might...

2. Review the relevant laws on copyright protection, and fair use of copyright materials. Here are your sources:

a. The founding phrase from the U.S Constitution: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

3. Try these cases with the Copyright Consideror. This online tool takes you through the process of thinking through the balance between the author's right to protect his work, and your right to teach with it.

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Your Learn Math You Yourlearnmath Your Learn Math You You Learn Math Power to Learn - The iPad as a Library

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The iPad as a Library
by Jim Lengel, Hunter College CUNY, 05/09/11

Can students and their teachers learn with a mobile device like the iPad?

How does learning with an iPad compare with learning in the library? With learning on a computer?

Educators all over the country are just now scratching the surface of the possibilities of using an iPad for learning. As we watch schools and students take advantage of iPads (and their pocket-sized cousins, the iPod Touch) we see them acting as a library, a teacher, an organizer, and a communicator.

The iPad as a Library

It fits in your purse, but it has more books and other resources than your school library. Or the town library. But it's much easier to use, and is always with you. And the built-in Safari web browser connects you to the reference resources of the world-wide web, from pictures of animals in the zoo, to the latest political candidates (don't confuse those), to the latest news, to databases of historical information. Just type your search words into the box at the top right of the window. The built-in Maps application helps you find places, see what they look like politically or geographically, and learn how to get there. The iBooks app opens the window to more than 50,000 free books, including most of those included in the canon for K-12 literature. The largest selection of free books is in the Project Gutenberg collection. The free Dictionary.com app lets you look up words and find out what they mean. The free pedia Mobile app is an excellent general reference work with more information than Britannica. And the free New York Times app puts the front page onto your iPad. Or if you prefer (see politicians, above) get the Wall Street Journal app.

The iPad as a Teacher

It can't evaluate your essays, but it can teach you some of the things you need to know, through educational podcasts on a variety of topics, and educational applications that target specific skills. Educational podcasts are created by teachers, publishers, professors, and even students. Most are available for free. You can find hundreds of them in iTunes U, following this path on your iPad: iTunes --> iTunes U. You will find at the App Store educational apps created by publishers and programmers to develop specific skills, from English grammar to fractions and decimals. Follow this path to see what's available: App Store --> Categories --> Education.

The iPad as an Organizer

Just as the grown-ups use their Blackberries and Palm Pilots to manage their schedules and contacts, their children can use the iPad to manage their academic work. The built-in iCal app can keep track of class meetings, assignments, events, and responsibilities. And notify you with an alarm just before they are due. The built-in Mail app lets them use email to communicate with teachers and colleagues. The built-in Notes app enables them to type their thoughts, or paste quotes from online sources. The built-in Contacts app keeps track of teachers and colleagues, their email, telephone, address and photo. And the Photos app keeps track of visuals that you download from your camera or copy from the web.

The iPad as a Communicator

The ideas you found in the iPad library, or learned from the podcasts, can be saved and presented with the same device. That's right: with the video adapter, you can make a slide show on your iPad, and present it with the projector in your classroom. The built-in Photos app can save images from Safari (with one click), and present them as a slide show. The built-in Voice Memos app can record oral history, research reflections, or oral communication practice. And play them back through the speakers. The built-in Notes app can organize text, and present it page-by-page on the screen. You can do a Webex meeting from the iPad, use instant messaging, and send a receive email. Even make a Skype call.

...and those are just the built-in and free tools. Thousands of two- and three-dollar apps can extend these four functions even further.

Your Assignments:

To help you think through how the iPad might serve as a platform for learning in your classroom, follow these steps:

1. Think about how the iPad can serve as a library and as a teacher for your students, as described above. Find in the App Store a set of free apps that you'd want to see on every one of your students' iPads, that would help them learn what you have to teach. Download these to your own iPad, and be prepared to show your choices to your colleagues.

2. Design an assignment for your students that can be completed on the iPad. Following the model of the sample iPod learning simulation, combine the library, teacher, and communicator functions of the iPad to put your students through a learning journey in your own subject area. Write the directions for the assignment. Practice it step by step to make sure it works. Then you'll give the directions to a colleague to try.

The iPad is just beginning to find its way into the academic lives of our students. Try one yourself to get a feel for its possibilities.

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Your Learn Math You Yourlearnmath Your Learn Math You You Learn Math Power to Learn - The iPad as a Library

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by Dr. Merle Marsh, Guest Columnist, 03/03/11

When you assign papers, reports, projects and presentations, your students probably head right to to search for information. It's just too convenient. What they find, as you know, is not always the most reliable information and sometimes because of the number of sites that come up in their searches, their so-called "quick "searching can take forever.

Although your students probably like searching on their own, you should remind them that there are people out there-librarians-who are overflowing with knowledge about finding reliable information. Unlike and other search engines, they can direct your students to the best information available for their schoolwork. There are also a number of online libraries, like the Internet Public Library, that may work better for your students than a search.

Filebusters
by James G. Lengel, Hunter College School of Education, 01/28/2008

Vignette #1

The students had completed their slide show tracing the dissemination of Islamic art forms through areas of Spain and France in the 11th - 13th centuries. Replete with animated maps and photographic examples, the slide show supported their well-researched spoken narrative on this topic. Now it was time to post the PowerPoint slide show to the class web site.

With the help of their professor, they uploaded the slide show...but it did not make it. The system told them it would take six hours to upload the file! (And so, of course, it would take anyone wishing to view the file the same six hours to download it.) This was not what they were aiming at.

Vignette #2

The kindergartners' beautifully-published books on animal habitats were a big hit at the PTA Curriculum Fair. Printed in full color on glossy paper in a hardback binding, they told the story, in words and pictures, of adaptation, predation, and protection. The students used iPhoto to create the book, based on extensive online research, original photography, group discussion, and serious composition. Now it was time to provide a copy for each student.
But not every family had the iPhoto application on their computer at home, nor did the school have a .Mac account that would have allowed easy uploading and viewing of the book over the Web.

Vignette #3

The three faculty members had worked long and hard to prepare the grant proposal. They each sent their narratives, supporting research papers, and curriculum vitae to the grants manager, all in the form of Microsoft Word documents. As the grants manager compiled the final copy for submission, he noticed that some of the tables looked a little odd, and he remembered seeing a pop-up window warning of some missing fonts. But he'd learned to ignore all those pop-up windows, and so thought nothing of it.
Their proposal was rejected, on the grounds that two crucial data tables were indecipherable to the grant-review committee. The main ideas on the proposal were quite sound, remarked the committee, but the garbled tables did not allow them to see the results of the previous research.

Who are you going to call?

All three of the educators described in these vignettes have problems with their files: they are either too big, too strange, or too messed up to be useful. What they need is the digital equivalent of Ghostbusters, perhaps called Filebusters, to come in and save the day. Most computer-using teachers and students have at one time or another confronted issues such as these, where the files just don't work for the intended educational purpose. And a few have discovered a solution that applies in many similar situations, called Portable Document Format, or PDF.

The PDF format was pioneered by the Adobe company to make it possible to publish a document that would be eminently readable, and nicely printable, no matter what kind of computer you displayed it on, or printer you printed it on, or software you used to view it. And once published by the author, a PDF document could not be altered by the reader. This format was based in part on on Adobe's patented PostScript technology, which is used in many printers and some computer displays.

Here's how PDF could have helped our three disabled digerati:

Had the students of Islamic art saved their slide show in a properly compressed PDF format, it would have been small enough for posting to and downloading from the school web site. That's because the PDF format saves only the information it needs to display the slides on a computer with standard resolution. PowerPoint, on the other hand, saves the full resolution of each image in the slide show, which can amount to many megabytes of unnecessary pixels. And just about everybody has a PDF reader on their computer -- most are free or built in. But not everyone has the latest version of PowerPoint, which must be purchased. So PDF is concise.
Had the kindergartners exported their iPhoto books in PDF format, they could easily have been distributed over the web or on CD, and displayed on any type of computer, with or without iPhoto. From the PDF file, the books could be printed at home, or read directly from the computer screen. In full color. Or emailed to grandma in Texas. PDF is compatible.
Had the faculty members submitted their grant application in PDF format, it would have been much less likely to become contaminated by subsequent reviewers, and much more likely to display exactly as desired no matter what kind of computer or printer was used by the reader. That's because PDF files are not alterable by most grant mangers or reviewers, as Word files are. PDF is consistent.

How to save in PDF

You may need to save your own publications in the PDF format. Here's how:

On Apple Macintosh, it's easy and built in. No matter which program you are using, choose from the menubar File --> Print. Then, in the Print dialog box, click the PDF button in the lower left corner. You'll get a choice of dispositions: Save as PDF, Compress PDF, and so forth. For the situations described above, Save or Compress would have been the best choices. This process creates a new file on your computer, in PDF format.
On Windows and Linux, you'll need to install a PDF-saving utility on your computer, and then follow its directions to convert your documents to the Portable Document Format. A search on PDF utilities for Windows will point you to several free and paid programs for this purpose.

Once saved in PDF format, these files can be distributed by all of the means at your digital disposal:

You can attach the PDF file to on email, and end it to your correspondents with the confidence that it's concise enough to pass the email file size censor, compatible enough to be read by all, in a consistent format.
You can copy the PDF file to a compact disc, or flash memory stick, and let your public copy them from there to their own computers with the same confidence.

You can post the PDF file to a web site, knowing at all web servers know how to send out this format, and all web browsers know how to send it to the PDF reader to display it. Just as you published it.

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