Bibliographies and CC – what are we teaching and why?

I have been in a lot of classes lately working with students. We have been focusing on using CC licensed material and acknowledging the sources used in assignments/research by attaching bibliographies.

The whole idea that whilst being safe – which has been a focus of the school this year – is paramount there are other considerations. One of these considerations means that anyone using internet resources is required to deal with the work of others fairly.

The students here have a very highly developed interest in what is fair and in fair play.  So tapping into the idea of fairness that we worked on improving their understanding of what they can use in their own work and how they should attribute what they have used.

After looking at sites that offers CC licensed material they were surprised that they can even use the Google search tool to find appropriately licensed material. As always it is very gratifying to see them all happily using the CC images options once they went ahead with their work.

This was followed up with how they should be noting the references they use and writing appropriate bibliographies. We have always taught them how to include bibliographies (but only occasionally and in a few classes) with various levels of success.

This year we have again been going through the steps of where they go to find the information they need and then how to cite the materials.

In the past, once they leave that particular class, they have often forgotten a few things and, if they are not reminded by the teachers, not being sure of the right way,  they often just leave out the something that might be a bit more difficult to work out. This seems to be preferred that rather than try to cite it and get it wrong, they don’t cite it at all.

So this time we have spent just as long looking at the online citation tools. These are becoming easier to use and they make citing references very easy. I have had a few conversations with some teachers who seem to think that it is cheating to use these tools but what is the reason for a student bibliography? In our school it is supposed to simply be a list of sources the students have used to inform themselves about a topic. The bibliographies expected in subject assignments have never been an end in themselves. The fact that many times the students are not marked down for having anything more than Google listed in the bibliography seems to defeat the purpose of even asking for one. Some of the arguments seem to be made along the lines of ”it was difficult/painful for me to do one so the current students should also suffer as I did”. Anyway getting past this has been useful and the students in year 7 ands 8 seem to have chosen bibme as their tools of choice and there seems to be a surge in longer bibliographies. The teachers also think that  now that the students find adding bibliographies easier, they will in some cases ask the boys to use the annotation option to indicate why and/or how each source was useful to them.

The seniors have been learning about the option of using the citation part of word. We are trying to teach them about using it as they take notes, even before they start their final document. A longer process this one I believe. I created a tutorial and then partly to have a go at some e-publishing tools I used the word document, saved as a PDF and uploaded it to make a Yudu document. I also tried creating another using the  SimpleBooklet tool. The Yudu doc is quicker to make from an already created document but to get the layout right you need to make it a PDF. The SimpleBooklet tool is probably almost more easy to use when you type directly into it.

To have a look, here are the links to my attempts.

The Simple booklet doc is here: 

or here:How to create your bibliography using Word

The Yudu Doc which was created first has a few things I must edit. I did this one on Friday afternoon and missed a few mistakes so I will replace it later this week ut the 1st edition is here: Read How to add citations and create a bibliography using Word
Publishing Software from YUDU

There is also a good video tutorial below.

My next task is to create a few such tutorials for our students to access at school.

Useful Links (weekly)

• CiteXplore ”CiteXplore combines literature search with text mining tools for biology. Search results are cross referenced to EBI applications based on publication identifiers. Links to full text versions are provided where available. “ 

• MapSkip – Places Have Stories! MapSkip makes the world a canvas for our stories and photos. It is an ancient human instinct to share our life stories with others, as the paintings and hand prints in stone-age caves show. And many of our stories are about places. Where we fell in love, had the dream vacation, took that great picture or, well, joined the rebellion. And then there are the many other places that anchor our lives – where we live, eat, work and have fun. 

• Letters of Note Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and even emails. Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at. Updated weekdays

• Welcome to CellStories: a daily dose of awesome stories for your iPhone, iPod Touch, or other mobile device a daily story delivered straight to your iPhone, iPod Touch, or other mobile device Whether on a lunchbreak, riding the train, or simply kicking back on the couch with a post-work beer, why not read something awesome. Like today’s story, “Dear Diary” by Khanisha Foster. This isn’t another eBook store–this is something different, something simple: a new story, every day. Free and surprising, CellStories strives to bring you writing that’s unexpected. Like all good stories, some are true, some are not, and many fall in that wonderful grey area between.

• Where can I …. search effectively? | Tools 4 Tassie Teachers 

• Kids Connecting With Adults Online ” If you haven’t read the new MacArthur foundation report Living and Learning with new Media (http:// bit.ly/SooSe), which discusses how our kids are using social networks and tools to connect, you might want to consider it sooner rather than later. In a nutshell, the study found that kids are using online social technologies in impressive numbers to stay connected to the people they already know and, more importantly for us, to connect to other people around the globe they don’t know but with whom they share a passion or an interest. via Will Richardson

• AudioOwl – Free Audio Books – Download mp3 and iPod format today! 

• AudioOwl – History – Free audio Books – Download mp3 and iPod format today! 

• Copy / Paste by Peter Pappas: A Taxonomy of Reflection: Critical Thinking For Students, Teachers, and Principals (Part I) 

• BBC News – Schools must embrace mobile technology 

• The Innovative Educator: Don’t be illTwitterate or aTextual Ideas for using Twitter with students ,

• Patrick Ness – Diary 

• VoiceThread – Group conversations around images, documents, and videos This is a secure VoiceThread network for students and teachers to collaborate and share ideas with classrooms anywhere in the world. Group conversations around images, documents, and videos Messages can be text-based (computer keyboard, phone text), audio (computer mic, telephone call, upload), or video (computer webcam, upload) Can be used to put “instruction” online.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Writing bibliographies – Using EasyBib

A perennial problem at our school. Although the boys are taught about how to write bibliographies, they inevitably forget how to do it correctly, especially for the web-based resources. A few years ago, after we had practised writing bibliographies I showed the boys the Citation machine. It is now  upgraded to Son of Citation Machine. I have not used this lately because I did not want to put in more information to another system.

Last week I found a new citation machine called EasyBib. EasyBib is an automatic bibliography generator that is very easy to use. There is a tutorial that might be useful to younger students but it is really easy to figure out. You can also subscribe to a professional account but it is not necessary to obtain a basic sitation. When you select the source for a long list you go to a screen that has fields that prompt you you to enter the data needed.

One great little option is to use the ISBN of a book to do an easy citation. EasyBib gets the information and when you click next it is ready for you to copy.

It takes away a lot of the worry students have about what infomation should be put in for what source. Some seem to think that, if they are not sure, the best thing is not to cite that information source. This makes it easy for them to do the right thing. I will add this link to my library page so the boys will always know where to find it, along with the other information about writing bibliographies.