Last month, one of my students, who was cheesed-off about some comments I'd made on his progress report, stomped up to another teacher and announced that "that old coot Mr. Fladd is getting senile!"
While I'm not all that worried about senility yet, the fact remains that I tend to forget... um... stuff... and...
Um, what were we talking about?
Anyway, I've been making an earnest effort to model ethical internet use for my students. One of the areas where they (and I) tend to cut corners, ethical-use-wise is citing picture sources. In the past, I've tended not to cite photographs in my PowerPoints because I didn't like the way the citations cluttered up my slides, but since I found my solution to that, I've been pretty good about citing my sources.
If I can remember where I found the pictures, that is.
Here's how I address the "where-the-heck-did-I-find-that?" problem:
When I save a picture to use later in a PowerPoint or on a worksheet, I copy its URL (its web address). I do this by highlighting it, then right-clicking it and choosing the "copy" command.
Next, I open the folder I've saved the picture to and right click it. When the menu pops up, I choose the "Properties" option.
The window that appears will tell me a lot of less-than-riveting technical information about the picture file I've just saved. The particular information I'm concerned with is located in the "Details" section, so I click on that tab.
I click on the heading labeled, "Comments" and paste in the URL that I copied earlier, by pressing Control-V.
Next, I click on the heading labeled, "Date acquired". The neat thing about this is that I don't even have to actually remember the specific date. (As you will recall, I'm losing my mind and have memory issues.) All I have to type in is the number of the month and my computer fills in the rest for me. I click on the little calendar to the right of the date. This will bring up an actual calendar. I select the current date, then click the "OK" button at the bottom of the window.
Now I've saved the date and location where I found a given picture that is attached to the actual picture file, so it will be much more difficult for me to lose. (Not impossible, mind you, but definitely more difficult.)
Last year, I tried to show this trick to some of my students who were working on school computers and it did not work. Our version of Windows XP does not have this feature, apparently, so this may be a trick that will only work for you at home.
Or maybe just for me.
At home.
When I remember to... um... er...
Uh.. what were we talking about, again?
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