Research Tool for English Teachers

I don't usually use this blog to make a plug, but two days ago I was asked to review EasyBib.  Their representative signed me up for a Pro account, so I gave it a look.  I did not have to look beyond the free features to be very interested.  As one who has spent dozens of hours on bibliographies as an English major and then hundreds more teaching research to high school students, I was astonished to come across a tool that would provide enormous time savings.

The free version has an easy-to-use research guide, which is nice.  But the eye-popper is Autocite.  Paste the ISBN # of a book or url of a web site and the user immediately accesses and can customize the bibliography information.  There are fifty different options for Autocite sources.  The free version will then arrange all of your input into an MLA formatted bibliography and export it to a Word doc.  Yesterday I showed the following video demonstration to my professional development group and it was quite a hit.



The Pro version also will cite in APA and Chicago style.  It includes note taking features among other extras.  I can say this:  The English teachers I have shown this to so far, really like it.

Recent Reads

Over the Christmas holidays I took some flack from my family for-- as an English major and teacher-- not having read recent fiction.  But I have been reading and wish to recommend that you check in on a few articles.

Rethinking Advanced Placement - NYTimes.com
Fewer facts to memorize and more critical thinking?  It's about time-- the AP Biology and AP U.S. History exams are getting a makeover.

Review of Comparing Survey Applications
I have been using Zoomerang.  But based on this comparison I think I'll give SurveyMonkey a try.

After Strong Holiday Sales for E-Readers, E-Books Outselling Print - NYTimes.com
As I write this blog in a coffee shop, I see a couple of customers with e-readers.  But the only books I see are text books.  Ironically, these only made-of paper books I'd really like to see disappear, and they have the most staying power.

More Schools Embrace the iPad as a Learning Tool - NYTimes.com
The Detroit Public Schools just purchased $49 million of "computers" for students.  I'd feel much better if they had invested in iPads.  They could have more of them and the students and staff could figure out uses for them in minutes.


Research: The Educational BS Repellent | Connected Principals
This article reviews a book which convincingly challenges a number of common assumptions about education.

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"BeBook" Flickr CC photo by Nimages DR

CBL Research Tool

Since the ADE 2010 Summer Institute in July, my Challenge Based Learning team hascontinued to work on our projects-- building resources for educators who wish to earn more about or try CBL.

I decided to draw on my experiences with CBL last year to create a few short video modules on research and media management. My first endeavor was created using past blog & presentation material, Flickr Creative Commons photos, Voila, GarageBand, and Photo to Movie.

Suggestions for Group Research [Video]

Group research can be a tricky bit of business. What kinds of steps may be taken to encourage accountability, communication, and quality? I recently produced a short video for the specific purpose of helping out teachers who are venturing into Challenge Based Learning. However, the suggestions apply to other types of group projects as well.

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This movie was made with the following tools: Dragon Dictation (iPhone), Voila, Evernote, Flicker Creative Commons, Photo to Movie, and GarageBand.

AP Government CBL - The Research

This is the 2nd post in a series on my cbl project with AP American Government. Their challenge: Develop and Authentic Medium for Improving Our Democracy.

As I indicated in "Questions and Challenges", after witnessing several bursts of creative thinking on the part of my AP cbl groups, I more or less lost track of their progress. After listening to their presentations and examining their self-assessments, I have drawn the following conclusions about their research:

Strengths
Each of the five groups made genuine efforts to "think outside of the box" (as they were urged to do) in seeking meaningful research for their projects. Here is such an example from each group:

1. An interview with the campaign manager of Michigan's Attorney General, who is now running furiously for Governor.

2. An interview with the campaign manager of Georgia's current governor.

3. Original survey research of students at neighboring schools.

4. An interview with a local judge.

5. An interview with A graduate student from the U. of Michigan's Gerald Ford School of Public Policy.

Weaknesses
I saw very little evidence of research on the technologies that might advance their goals of improving our democracy. The research in other words seemed a bit scatter shot. Furthermore, as I noted in two groups' evaluations, the development of their solutions seemed only negligibly connected to the results of their research.

Conclusions
I am somewhat ambivalent about the research component of projects. While this was certainly not the most impressive aspect of these student-centered projects, poor research did not impede the development of some really impressive solutions. The next time around, I will require a more complete documentation of group research (including completion deadlines?). But I also must accept that research for these kinds of authentic projects will not follow conventional-- research for its own sake-- forms. My next post will be on group presentations to the class. And as you will learn, each group reported and demonstrated that they had learned a great deal through the process of developing their projects.

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Screen Capture from AP cbl web site.

Web 2.0 Summer School (or Camp!)

This post is for teachers like me who generally plan some kind of "work" project for the summer, imagining how good it will feel to salt some big something away for the next school year, but vaguely dreading a tedious task. It's easy to imagine that "technology" might be such a project for a teacher who is anxious to bring a meaningful internet activity with his or her classes.

If so, I suggest that you relax, find something limited in scope, and explore areas that may have lifestyle benefits even if they don't work out for school.

I've put together some possibilities that are QRS- quick, rich simple.

* Open a Flickr account and spend a couple of hours collecting photos on a subject of interest. When I began to search for pictures to publish in my Dad's Ann Arbor Memories book, I became absolutely intoxicated with this resource for personal and/or classroom use.

* If you don't have a Google Account, open one. Go to Docs. Then spend a couple of hours uploading a handful of your most heavily used documents. After they are uploaded, "share" them by publishing them as web page. Be sure to check the "automatically republish when changes are made box". Now you have some options. You might want to book mark your documents. Better yet, link them all to a single table of contents which you also publish and bookmark. The publishing feature of Google Docs has probably impacted my work life more than any other tech application (with the exception of web browsers). I think the experience of playing with Doc htmls will open up your eyes to some great info sharing possibilities.

* Record a lecture with Audacity (or better yet, GarageBand). Choose a topic that is tried and true. If it is longer than eight minutes, plan to break it into parts. Audacity is a free download and if your computer has a built-in mic, all you have to do is press the red button on the application and record. Upload the file(s) to Moodle or some other storage site like box.net. When lecture time rolls around next school year, have the students bring headphones to class or listen to the talk as homework. You'll have discovered the joy of podcasting.

* I won't repeat my Why Twitter? post here, but I have a fast track suggestion if you want to jump into Twitter with both feet. Sign up for an account. Decide what kind of information flow you want. Identify a couple of heavily followed Tweeters in that area, and then "follow" who they are following. For example, I do Twitter for Web 2.0 teaching info. The majority of those I follow provide quality tweets on Web 2.0. If you poached my list, you would get the same flow of information to start and then you could tailor it to your interests. (You don't need permission to follow others on Twitter).

* Enjoy learning about religion, history, math, science, literature, etc.? As summer homework, download some courses from Yale, Stanford, Michigan, or Oxford. Put then in your iPod and listen to them while you garden or walk. Where do you get them and how much will this cost? These lectures are free and available by the dozen on any topic at iTunes U.

* Researching a vacation or prepping a new topic? The next time you complete your research try Diigo. Get used to using tags and enjoy the highlighting and sticky notes features. Better yet, see if you can collaborate with a friend or colleague on this project and have the experience of sharing bookmarks, highlights and notes.

* Many of my baby boomer friends have been bemoaning the demise of their daily newspapers. Have you tried setting up an RSS Reader, yet? Most of your favorite newspapers have set up some rss feeds for their columnists and bloggers. (Locally, the Detroit News has been most successful transitioning their writers to blogging). Of course a Reader has the advantage of pulling blogs from sources all over the internet. Once you start, it will be hard to resist the urge to overload. Educational uses? Hey, teachers deserve a few moments of quiet time with their "newspaper" in order to be at their best with their students.


P.S. If you wish to explore more easy to use tools, check out the Web Warriors.
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"Summer Relaxation" Flickr Creative Commons photo by Third Eye Studios

Watching that Old School of Red Herrings Swim By

The tech naysayers are once again in season, so it's time grant some Red Herring fishing licenses. Let's hook three more "issues" that are supposed to stop change in its tracks:

"How Can We Be Sure Students Won't Violate Copyright?" This one cracks me up, because I find that some of my teaching colleagues have developed selective sensitivity to copyright. I have a friend who adamantly opposes music sharing ("I buy CDs to support the artist"), yet she photocopies vast volumes of copyrighted academic articles. Since they are for her students, that's ok by her code of copyright. Another friend was fussing to me about possible copyright violations as his students posted media to their wikis. When I questioned him about his own classroom practices, he assured me that the VHS movies he recorded over the years (and still loves dearly to use in class) are OK because they are used for educational purposes. Hmn.

One way to avoid this issue altogether is to urge students to select from the millions and millions of photos, slides, audio files and videos licensed under Creative Commons. You might also encourage them to license their own creations as such. If you are unfamiliar with Creative Commons, click this video link for a brief overview. (I'll be blogging about some great CC sites for audio, next week). Copyright law lags far behind the realities digital technology. In the mean time, the CC provides a convenient way to avoid cognitive dissonance over copyright.

"We still must teach [fill in the blank] because the students will need it in college." This objection is always raised whenever I rail against the traditional "research paper" (see Hyperlink Heaven). But college prep cannot be played as a universal trump card against innovation. Consider a comment posted to my last blog. The author is a senior at the University of Michigan, and recently completed an internship with the New York Times:

At Michigan, the computer labs are constantly being upgraded with the latest software. I'm not saying the technology environment here is perfect, but other students and I have really benefited from professors forcing us to use these tools in projects. In one of my classes, for instance, my professor makes us blog. It's a good exercise for students looking to write for the new web.The fact that we can use a lot of expensive software programs for free (i.e. Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, etc.) also lets students experiment with these new tools.

We would be remiss if we failed to give students training in traditional conventions of academia, but we can't focus solely on showing students the old tricks that please tenured professors (who may be among the last hold outs against change). I think we have to give basic web literacy a much higher priority.

"Students Need to Learn the Basics" When I hear any variation on this assertion, I think, "Well, yeah, your point?" I can grant this point but still insist that we recognize that methods for accessing information and generating communication have changed so convulsively in recent years that a new set of basics is called for in addition to the traditional tool set. The curriculum needs to make way for these skills. What exactly they are is an important question. Fellow ADE, Tom Woodard, offers a very insightful reflection on this very issue in "....Old Skills, New Applications....".

After reading the above, one might reasonably ask where we can find the time to teach the new stuff. This question leads us logically to a greater point: It's time to rethink how school time is structured. Certainly, how and where people work has changed significantly by technology. Correspondingly, how and where we are all learning is shifting at a terrific rate. Yet we somehow assume that tradition schedules and subjects will accommodate this shift. If we wish to create optimal learning experiences for our students we have to reimagine the school day. I'm ready when you are.

Whew! It felt good to get these last two blogs out of my system. I'm looking forward to going in a different direction with my four part "Faculty Lounge" series, starting Thursday.

As always, your comments are valued.

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There are now over 100 millions Creative Commons photos on Flickr. The "Red Herring" photo on this page was licensed under CC and chosen from 'No Matter" Project.

Film Tech

I have always absolutely loved teaching my Literature into Film class. The opportunities for variety are endless, and it's hard to make a really bad choice of film. Through recent years, technology has had a dramatic impact on the course, and always for the better.

Switching from VHS to DVD format totally changed my teaching approach as did the proliferation of data projectors in the school. Now most class discussions are based on watching an array of film clips, something that was impossible to a significant degree with the video tape that required so much time to wind forward or back. The data projector allows us to examine the frame in outstanding detail.

When I updated my study guides for this school year, I embedded them with hyperlinks. Now they pop out with YouTube and jpeg examples of film techniques that were merely defined in prior semesters.

I have also decided to overhaul the big course project, a comparison of two films. This year students will be required to compare a film and a later adaptation. The project will be composed of three components:

1) Detailed notes on both films

2) A comparison / contrast paper

3) a review of one of the films.

For 2009, I will introduce two major 21st centruy components to the project.

For the paper, students must do some research on the director of each film and use it in the introductory paragraphs. In the past, I have encouraged online research cited with the use of the usual MLA format. This time, I am urging them to opt for the alternative of turning in their paper electronically in a Word, Page, or Google Doc format with hyperlinks to the sources. As I have indicated in Hyperlink Heaven, I think that this is the research model of the future.

Encouraged as I have been by my AP Gov vlogs, video will now be used as well in this class. Students are now directed to make a three minute video critique of one of the films which will then be posted to MobileMe (Thank you, Apple, for the free subscription). The class will be able to see each others' videos at this site.

Finally, I have invited one of the other film teachers to collaborate with me in posting some of our film students' most inventive works (such as the best videos) on a special web gallery space that I create for the purpose. This is my little way of furthering one of the goals for our school that I suggested in Staff Development, Part Three.

I'll report back on the success or failure of these innovations in a couple of months.

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"Sanjuro" Flickr Creative Commons photo courtesy of p373

Staff Development, Part Three

Final of Three Parts

In part one of this commentary I characterized a typical teaching staff by their receptiveness and integration of new technologies: Pathfinders, Jumpstarts, Too Old / Too Lates, and Naysayers. The research I have down bears out this divisions as typical within any organization facing significant change. In part two I presented a proposal for moving from a scattershot approach to staff training to a more structured emersion in order to create a greater number of Pathfinders.

As Theodore Creighton asserts, "For any movement of change to . . . positively impact teaching and learning, a large number of faculty and staff must be involved in the movement." My school has reached this crossroads. In 2009-10 all students in the school will have immediate access to extremely powerful information gathering and networking tools throughout the school day. We have the opportunity to be in the vanguard of educational change. But a recalcitrant staff has the ability to undermine the best attempts at curricular change, marketing campaigns, and even retention of younger more technology savvy staff. I think all but the least resistant could be enlisted in a team effort to provide better resources for the entire school. After a modicum of training we could participate electronically in building these valuable projects without creating special meeting times and schedules. Staff would engage in the same kinds of collaboration experiences we wish to provide our students. And really, if the school is committed to the program, no one should be exempt through special pleading of being "too busy." I suggest that after we have reaseched tipping point of pathfinders (see part two) a set of interdepartmental projects be initiated. The possibilities are limitless:

* Creation of a virtual exhibition space for student performance / exhibitions.

* Create a virtual media center of video and podcast resource material collected from "experts" in the school and neighborhood community.

* Collect virtual museums of hyperlinks/videos/photos on subjects which cross department themes.

* Compile social bookmarks and Dyknow best practices for types of class (e.g., AP) or teaching styles.

* Build a directory of school blogs and blogging resources.

* Create 21st Century research guides and resources.

* Design independent study modules for students with unique interests or needs

* I read with interest "Well Connected Parents" in the 1/30/09. Washington Post. A 21st Century school should be interested in getting ahead of the curve with a social media design which includes parents.

As I reflected in Tinker Toy Playland, educators must deconstruct old concepts of curricular subjects and units. The interdepartmental projects I suggest could advance meaningful dialogue about research, learning styles, and digital literacy as they apply in a world where Everything is Miscellaneous. Craig McLeod takes his IT blog title, from the following quote: "Our intelligence tends to produce technological and social change at a rate faster than our institutions and emotions can cope with. . . . We therefore find ourselves continually trying to accommodate new realities within inappropriate existing institutions, and trying to think about those new realities in traditional but sometimes dangerously irrelevant terms" (War: The Lethal Custom). With a relatively small investment in human resources a school could guide its stakeholders toward some to some extraordinary experiences.

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"Bruno e Sandra com seus MacBooks Pro" Creative Commons Flickr Photo by Marco Gomes
Thank you, Theodore Creighton for reviewing the full document from which this post is adapted.

My Friend, Flickr

As noted in At Long Last..., my brother's interest in geneaology sent me a-googling. Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon a gorgeous 1914 photo of my Grandfather Walker's Ann Arbor taxi company with his dad posing in the driveway.

This discovery formed a notion of collecting enough old and new photos of Ann Arbor to make my dad (an Ann Arbor native) a calendar for his January birthday. But when I moved to Flickr searches, the whole nature of the project changed. I accessed the collections of thousands of photographers and uploaders. With so many options, I ended up compiling and publishing an iPhoto hard cover book that, modesty aside, is really pretty cool.

The most unexpected pleasure of this project was the social interaction I had with the photographers. Over thirty conveyed well-wishing permissions. Some like Jeff Lamb, and Bonnie Reardon, and Gary Priest took the time over the holidays to look for high resolution jpegs and send them by email so that I could print the best photos available.

Flickr has terrific potential for the classroom. Many of the photos are in the Creative Commons, so students and teachers can freely use them, sometimes even for "mash-ups". The Library of Congress has just added a fabulous Photostream that I have only just begun to explore. I use Flickr to decorate my blog and Twitter pages. For school, Flickr photos now supplement a Third Man Slide Show and appear in a new wiki I have started.

I would love to hear your idea for tapping into this vast treasure trove.













The Grad" Phil Dokas

Oh How I Miss ibid. and op.cit. . . .Not!