MILI meeting

Today's meeting left me feeling that I am over my head in this online world. I will be checking out Atomic Learning to get some of my skills up to par. Jim's information on the music his students are using was really great to hear. It is really great to work with such tech-savvy & dedicated teachers as Jim & Eric. A long time ago, I was on several committees dealing with copyright issues. Problems with copied videos were the main problem then; this was over 10 yrs. ago & before Internet changed the world. I remember that one school district was sued because their classroom/library video collection consisted mainly of pirated copies. We were warned to not keep off-the-air copies longer than 1 year, which was the limit of copyright permissions. It seems to me that a district in the Twin Cities area was one of those sued over copyright infringement. Obviously, things have changed. United Streaming is something that many of our teachers use in the classroom now. It's great, because the quality of projection is so much better, and there is no problem with availability.
It's really sad that motivation of our students continues to be a challenge; students' lives are so complicated by poverty, over-stimulation, and the proliferation of negative influences (sex, drugs, gangs) on all media sources. Last night I watched an episode of "Law & Order" which concluded with the decision that a 14 yr. old boy was not responsible for raping 4 younger students (boys & girls) because he had been watching pornography on cable TV & thought it was OK for his victims to cry & scream in pain. It is so disheartening to me; we can't protect our students from this; how do we educate them when their parents are probably not paying attention?!!