Playing with edna and and getting creative, perhaps a little common!

edna (Education Network Australia) is an online service that supports and promotes the benefits of technology for education and training in Australia.

It provides heaps of information for VET providers and is well worth a visit if you have not already done so (just click on the link below)

A good way of keeping up with what is going on in VET is to check out the VET specific part of their website As part of my PD in the last couple of months I attended an edna national ICT workshops tour for educators. (Click on the edna workshops logo below and that should take take you to the website that has most of the presentation handouts and slides.)

How many of us are aware of the copyright issues that affect us as educators?

Whilst most of us recognise the importance of copyright and ownership of images etc when it comes to our use in our usual teaching environment (or do we?), how many of us ensure that our students are aware of these issues?

As we venture into the realm of e-learning the confusion becomes greater! What is legal to use in a classroom may not be legal to make available to the wider internet, despite an educational use or context. If you want to share something you’ve created as an educator, you might not be able to do so legally.

Can you just rip off that great photo you found on flikr (or wherever) and put it in your webspace?

Creative commons licensing is a move to make this all a little less confusing.

There is a very amusing video (click on the link below) on copyright and fair use –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

On a more serious note there is also a podcast where these issues are discussed – this can be accessed by clicking the image below (sorry you will have to download it as an mp3).

Other interesting places to go for information regarding copyright are –

http://www.smartcopying.edu.au

http://copyrightkitchen.flexiblelearning.net.au/main.php

Hope you are all enjoying yourselves! I have some great news that I have to share – the RTO that I have been working on just got through it’s initial audit – with zero non-compliances – and so is now registered – Yeah! Now just have to get bums on seats – now there’s a topic for discussion …….

Sandy