Friday Focus
A Few Resources
Why do we care? Well, there are a lot of reasons and this article in the Smithsonian Magazine explains why the public domain is important to artists of all types and how it can potentially impact classrooms. The great thing about following the Free Technology for Teachers blog is that you get handy cheat sheets like this one that are packed full of information and, probably most importantly, resources you can use right now. Bryne did a great job to round up the most user-friendly and legal places to find public domain works to use in the classroom!
Additioanlly, Google has a great how to found here!
What's in a name?
I started my undergrad degree at a small college in Nebraska. Doane College in Crete, Nebraska is smack-dab in the middle of Czech country where names like Ricebow (Rick-en-ba), Svehla (sa-vay-la), and Zajic (Zites) are common place. There was another young man by the name of "Justin Zajicek (Zi-Check)" enrolled as well; I actually think that surname is Polish which makes three obvious differences in our names. I would have thought two was enough to tell us apart. Even though it was a small campus, I didn't know him. I only actually knew a couple of things about him. He drove a black Chevy Silverado, at one point I knew the plate number, and he got a lot of parking tickets our freshmen year. In fact, the only reason I knew he existed was due to his parking violations. It seemed like he would be issued a ticket once a week. Why did I know this? The person sorting the mail read the envelope, but must not have realized that the campus had a "Justin Zajic" and a "Justin Zajicek" , so all of his tickets were placed in my mailbox. I actually ended up learning a lesson from this entire incident. In the world we live in today, it is important to know what is going on with your name!
Several years ago I set up a number of Google Alerts for "Justin Zajic" "Justin E. Zajic" etc., which simply means that I get an informational email with relevant hyperlinks anytime there is a news story, website post, or other random use of my name on the internet. It is not a fail safe and Google doesn't catch everything, but they cache the majority of the internet. If you are interested or curious, set one up for yourself. Directions here.