Florida Media Quarterly
Spring 2017 Volume 42 No. 3
FMQ Publication Disclaimer:
Florida Media Quarterly is the official publication of the Florida Association for Media in Education, Inc., and is published at least four times annually: Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer. Interested persons are invited to submit material for publication. For special information on articles and advertising, visit our website at www.floridamediaed.org. Text submitted becomes the property of FMQ and is not returned. FMQ is not responsible for the accuracy of material, including references, tables, etc., and for obtaining necessary releases. The opinions expressed in Florida Media Quarterly are those of the authors and not necessarily those of FAME. Articles are the property of the authors indicated, and any use rights must be sought from the author. FAME is not responsible for the accuracy of text submitted; contributors are responsible for the reproduced for non-commercial purposes provided full acknowledgements are given and FAME is notified. All members of FAME have access to the FMQ via the webpage of the FAME website at www.floridamediaed.org.
Nancy Mijangos, FMQ Editor
Kathy Lancaster, FMQ Contributing Editor
The National African American Read-In at The Library@GCHS
by Elizabeth Zdrodowski, FAME President
As librarians, one of our jobs is to create memorable experiences for our students that will stick with them long after they walk across the stage at graduation or pass a standardized test. Throughout my years as an educator, one of my favorite things to do is stage large-scale events and initiatives that have a specific purpose. Some of the events we’ve had in our library over the years include International Dot Day, All Hallows Read, Holiday Mystery Reader, Blind Date with a Book, April is for Authors, Read Across America Day, Celebrate Literacy Week, Teen Tech Week, and the NFL Hall of Fame Gold Jacket Series. Life gets crazy and not every one of these events happens each year, but I try to make sure we are providing opportunities for academic and personal growth as much as possible. One thing I have always wanted to do is celebrate Black History Month by holding an African American Read-In event. The National African American Read-In (AARI) was established by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in 1989 as a way to celebrate and promote diverse literature and African American authors.
“The African American Read-In (AARI) . . . is built on an ambitious yet confident premise: that a school and community reading event can be an effective way to promote diversity in children’s literature, encourage young people to read, and shine a spotlight on African American authors" (NCTE Council Chronicle, November 2014).”
An AARI event can be as simple or elaborate as one chooses. It very often involves public readings of works by African American authors. It can also include guest speakers, viewings of plays or movies, or simply getting together with a few friends to share about works or authors of great renown.
This year, I was tagged in a tweet by Diana Fedderman, Palm Beach School District’s Director of K-12 Curriculum, that focused on the AARI.
Her tweet linked to an article (http://readingwhilewhite.blogspot.com/2016/04/why-host-african-american-read-in.html?utm_content=buffer5d70f&utm_medium= social&utm _source= twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer) by Angie Manfredi, which inspired me to FINALLY make this event happen at our school. As soon as the testing schedule was released, I put the event on the calendar for the last day of February. It seemed like a perfect way to culminate our celebration of Black History Month.
I would love to tell you that I spent weeks planning this event and pulled it off without a hitch, but, here in the real world, that kind of time doesn’t exist. So, I grabbed a group of dependable students, a few adults I knew would collaborate with me, and jumped in with both feet, crossing my fingers it would be successful!
Remember, that this event can be tailored to your specific school, library, or classroom, but here is how it went down at The Library@GCHS:
We held the event on February 28th during both lunches. Selected students were assigned to read selections from African American books, poetry, plays, and speeches. We also had students introduce video clips with dialogue written by African American writers. Some of the writers we featured included Langston Hughes, Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Shonda Rhimes, Countee Cullen, Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Walter Dean Myers, and Alice Walker. There were some powerful performances. The performance of Ain’t I A Woman? by one of my seniors introduced students to the work of Sojourner Truth, who was born into slavery. Another performance, Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman, was carried out by a group of five girls and brought the house down! If you would like to see photos and videos from our day, search Twitter for #AARI17AtGC.
One of my favorite things about the day was the fact that we shared this experience with Suncoast High School via Google Hangouts. To have our two libraries connected for this remarkable event warmed my heart ten ways from Sunday. Their magnificent librarian, Amy Armbruster, was infectious in her excitement to collaborate with us for this special day! The principal of Suncoast, Karen Whetsell, joined us, as well. We shared greetings, performances, and a few technical glitches, but most of all, an experience that I’m sure none of those students will ever forget! We had great support from our administration, teachers, district leadership, and NCTE, who showed us some Twitter love!
"My students loved the Google Hangout experience! They loved performing for students at GCHS and watching their students' performances. I love that they were able to share their love of the same African American poets/authors as GCHS students and appreciate some new pieces from different perspectives. The Read-In fostered a common appreciation for African American authors and demonstrated common interests of our students from different schools. We will definitely do that again and again!" -Amy Armbruster, Library Media Specialist, Suncoast HS
I would recommend holding an African American Read-In at your school next year! I know it is going to be an annual happening at The Library@GCHS. If you need ideas or more information, go to: http://www.ncte.org/aari.
About the Author:
Elizabeth Zdrodowski, MA Ed., has been the library media specialist at Glades Central Community High School in Palm Beach County since 2010, where she is the full-time librarian and social media manager, teaches Social Media an elective, administers the school's iPad project, has created an Apple lab for project-based learning, and uses Cranium CoRE to teach reading comprehension in all content areas. Elizabeth has been an educator since 2003 and has worked for the School District of Palm Beach County and private organizations, serving in both instructional and administrative roles.
Elizabeth has been active in Palm Beach County's Educational Media Association (EMA) and was their President for 2014-2015. She is a member of Team TLC, an organization whose mission is to mentor and empower library media specialists to embrace literacy, media literacy, and information literacy by creating an engaging and collaborative environment. She has presented at various county, state, and national conferences and has also been active in FAME (Florida Association for Media in Education) since 2011, presenting on Cranium CoRE, iBooks Author, Vocabulary.com, BrainHive, using Minecraft in the Classroom, and most recently, on makerspaces. Elizabeth is also a member of the Florida Teen Reads Committee. In October of 2016, Elizabeth was inducted as President of FAME.
Follow Elizabeth: @ezdrodowski
Follow The Library@GCHS: @LibAtGCHS
Follow Glades Central HS: @GCHSRaiders
Follow Suncoast HS’s Library: @SuncoastL
#AARI17
#AARI17AtGC
Florida Author, Marian S. Tomblin
Marian Tomblin
The Mystery at the Hotel Ormond
Hidden History
“Can you present Florida history in 15 minutes—or less?”
That was the #1 request from my teacher friends when polled about what I should write next. (For the past decade they had been able to integrate my YA historical novels into their ELA curriculum, but with increased testing pressures, there was less and less time to devote specifically to history.)
"And can you include STEAM components?”
“Steam?” I asked.
“STEAM,” was their patient reply. “’S’ is for ‘Science’, ‘T’ is for ‘Technology’, ‘E’…” (You know the rest.)
"And make it multimedia?”
“Hmmmm… Sounds really complicated.”
"We’ll help you!”
And they did. Seven years later, through seemingly countless standards changes and tweaks, Hidden History, Florida (a multimedia, ELA and SS standard-satisfying curriculum piece with STEAM components) arrived in all its over-sized glory. Printed on 17” x 22” newsprint, the adventure comes with a professionally recorded audiobook. Each chapter takes less than seven minutes to listen to or read, so, YES! Florida history can now be presented in 15 minutes—or less!
Hidden History, Florida actually begun forty some-odd years ago when my third grade teacher at Osceola Elementary School (Volusia County) scrawled at the top of a composition, “Marian, you should be an author!” It was my third grade daughter, however, who made me actually do it—my writing career began out of self-defense.
Raise your hand if you’ve had to move a child from one state to another. That was our situation in 2000 when my husband, tired of shoveling show, announced we were moving from Maryland to Florida. This declaration was met with great distress from those of us who were old enough to understand what it meant: Leave our farm!? Leave our friends!? Upon arriving in Florida in the middle of summer, 9 year-old Elizabeth promptly shut herself in her new bedroom, flipped on the ceiling fan, and tried consoling herself by reading Nancy Drew mysteries.
After repeated trips to and from the public library to replenish my child’s supply, I hearkened back to Mrs. Walsh’s affirmation, and decided to see if I couldn’t write a Nancy Drew-type mystery. But with a twist. Instead of a fictional setting, my mystery would take place in Volusia County. Maybe, just maybe, I thought, constructing an adventure around names and landmarks just becoming familiar to my daughter would help her feel at home. I self-published my novel, and on a whim, dropped a copy off at the mayor’s office. I about dropped dead when, for the "One Book, One Community" literacy campaign, the mayor selected The Mystery at Hotel Ormond. Since then the story has welcomed thousands of young detectives to Florida.
If members of FAME would like a free copy of either Hidden History, Florida or The Mystery at Hotel Ormond, please contact me through my website. All my adventures come with teaching guides and contact information, if desired, of educators who have used these materials in their classrooms.
A Question of Copyright
by Gary H. Becker, national Copyright law consultant
A. In response to your question, what is unknown is whether the posters found on the blog were copied from a source, for which permission had been obtained, had been copied without permission, or were created by the person who posted them to the blog. No matter which of these options turns out to be correct, the posters would be copyright protected. If it turned out that the person posting created them, it would then be possible to request reproduction/distribution rights from that person.
If a teacher, in a face-to-face teaching situation, was to make one copy of the poster to use in the class for direct instruction, this might meet the criteria for Fair Use. However, guidance counselors, unless they are teaching a formal class for which the students obtain credit, are normally not seen as falling under the teaching exemptions provided in the Copyright Law.
In terms of just copying the words and creating an original poster, the key to whether this would be permissible or not would be based on how common these words are to the guidance field and are these same words found in many sources, both print and non-print. If the words are in common use, and not the result of a specific person's research that has been shared with others, then it may qualify as Fair Use to use the words and create a totally new poster utilizing those words.
Q. Our school’s music teacher has rewritten the lyrics to a popular song. Our students performed this new version at our school assembly this morning and we recorded this event. We would like to post this to our school’s website and to YouTube. Is there a copyright issue involved in doing this?
A. In terms of Copyright, as related to music, it is not permissible to replace, modify or add lyrics to a musical work without the prior permission of the copyright owners. For strictly instructional use, in the classroom, an argument can be made for modifying lyrics if such modification results in using the music in a creative way, different from its original use, for instructional purposes. However, placing a modified, copyrighted work on your school website and on YouTube would be considered forms of publication and distribution, rights solely reserved for the copyright owner. In addition, such use would generally not fall under instructional use, the one and only situation where modification of lyrics might be permitted. There would also be the chance of greater discovery of such activity by placing the music in a publicly, distributed setting.
A “Question of Copyright” is an ongoing column authored by Gary H. Becker, national Copyright law consultant and retired, public school system, technology administrator. If you have a question, pleased send it to gbecker@beckercopyright.com. You will receive an individual response and your question may appear in a future edition of FMQ. Requests to withhold names will be honored.
A Letter from our President:
Can you believe it is March?! I’m ashamed to say that I don’t even know where the time has gone! However, I can say this: I have seen some amazing things from my Florida colleagues during the first few months of 2017. I LOVE keeping up with all of you on Twitter! Remember to tag @FloridaMediaEd when you are posting about the exciting things happening in your libraries! I know we are in the “stretch to Spring Break”, which can be challenging, so I want to encourage you to keep up the good work! Continue to make a difference in your libraries and in the lives of your students! Libraries and librarians are more vital than ever!
As you’re planning for the Spring and Summer, consider putting these two events on your calendar:
FAME@AIFA
April is for Authors will be on Saturday, April 29th, at Palm Beach Gardens High School, from 9 AM - 4 PM. Some of the authors attending this year are: Jason Reynolds, Cory Putnam Oakes, Erica Perl, Stacie Ramey, Paul Griffin, SJ Kincaid, Lynda Mullaly Hunt, and Aaron Hartzler. To see the full list of authors, go to www.aprilisforauthors.org. FAME members are invited to join us the night before for a special cocktail party with the authors. Hotel rooms at the Embassy Suites for the night of April 28th will be available to FAME members for a discounted rate of $132 (Find a buddy and split the cost!). Rooms must be paid for no later than the 29th! You can pay in advance by check or use your credit card to pay on the 29th. To reserve a room, contact local arrangements chair, Margaret Schuemann (schuema7@comcast.net). We would LOVE to see you there! It’s an event you don’t want to miss!
FAME@EdCampMagic
EdcampMagic has grown out of a love for edcamps and the innovation and creativity of Walt Disney. Our plan, simply put, is to have an AMAZING time making connections with educators in one of the most magical places on Earth.
Saturday, June 10th, from 8 AM - 4 PM, join us for Ed Camp Magic at the beautiful Windermere Preparatory School. Nobody will be surprised that I had to find a way to partner with Disney at some point during my year as President! Admission is free but you must register to attend. There are less than 200 spots available so I suggest you register as soon as possible! There is more information on the EdCamp Magic Website (http://edcampmagic.com) regarding accommodations.
Register Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/edcampmagic-2017-tickets-28306895687
Once you’ve registered, let us know you’re coming so we can plan a FAME social event following the day’s professional learning activities. Let us know here: https://goo.gl/forms/Ool4Ek5YlDRn2F932
Can’t wait to share the magic with you!
Thank you all for being members of your professional organization! Let your FAME colleagues be a reminder that you are not alone in your plight to make the world a better place!
XOXO, Elizabeth
FAME
Email: FAME@floridamediaed.org
Website: www.floridamediaed.org
Location: PO Box 941169, Maitland, FL 32794-1169
Phone: 863-585-6802
Facebook: facebook.com/FloridaMediaEd
Twitter: @floridamediaed