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.

Finding and using Images with Creative Commons

A few posts and tweets recently have discussed how easy it is to get caught using copyright images and the consequences that can follow.

This term I have been working with a few classes developing skills about how to search for and then attribute images. We have looked at what Creative Commons is, some of the dedicated CC sites and how you can use the right search with Google to find CC images.

Two tools that I have been using for the past few years that are very good if you want to attribute or embed images are:

1. ImageCodr works with Flickr images. I wrote about this tool back in 2010 and have used it many time to correctly attribute images I am using.
2. Wylio. This tool provides users with a very easy way to quickly search through the huge number of free images from different sources and then allows you to generate a code so that you can insert those images directly into a blog post. I wrote a how-to post last year. I also encouraged our students to use it for some of their assignments. Since last year it you login with a Google account but other than that it still works in the much the same way, with steps easy to follow.

I put a Creative Commons page on my wiki as well as our library site, listing some of the places where you can go to find images, with a second page explaining what the CC symbols meant.  HeyJude site also has a great list of sources here and the Creative Commons organisation has a good list here

Thanks to an RSS feed, today I saw a post on Richard Byrne’s Free Technology for Teachers site about a new tool that you can use when choosing a license for your own work.

It has been created by Creative Commons and is a great addition to this very informative site.

“Creative Commons licensing can be a good way to explicitly state the terms by which people can use and re-use your creative written, audio, and visual works. But selecting the license that is right for you can be confusing. “

I love how easily it steps you through the process. In less than a minute you can have the correct license for your work completed and ready to use. It also offers explanations along every step.

As Richard Byrne comments it is also a great way to explore what different features of the licenses mean, even if you are not going to use them for work. The tool allows you to choose different combinations and then check what this will allow others to do with something with that particular setting.

If I have something that might be useful for others I am always happy to share and a lot of students love the idea of sharing their work. Flickr made it simple to share your CC licensed images a long time ago (in owner settings) but things on other sites were a bit more of a problem. Now there is a tool we can use that will make it easier to understand and create the correct licenses to share with others.

Engaging reading responses from students

It is very close to the end of term. Reports have been written and for two weeks teachers have been trying to engage boys in their responses to reading without marks being an incentive. Yes, there are plenty of arguments about engaging tasks should be the norm and marks only a small part of the learning process in general, and then as a guide.

I have been doing some work with year 7 students in the last week or so. We have been working on some Facebook mock-ups for their literature circle book characters. (Information about what we do is on my wiki here.) There have also been some year 8 students creating some book trailers  as their last response to their crime fiction genre study. (Information here. ) We thought that this was a good time to introduce and discuss the use of Creative Commons images/sound and Fair Use in general. (List of sites we used here) The boys are all interested in the concept and are happy to follow the guidelines about what is fair and reasonable. They are still learning and did not always get it right but they are onside with it and want to do the right thing.

The final products are coming in. There were some great Facebook pages created for their fictional characters. The character profiles and conversations between friends were fantastic to read. I enjoyed the “voices” they used, the pictures they chose and the comments they made. I will put some of the example into the wiki.

In preparation for working with these groups I have been looking at lots of images, hearing lots of sound/music and looking at examples of interesting videos. The boys can be quite adept at discussing what works and what is less succesful in a video.  Some boys did not understand the concept of a book trailer until we talked about them in terms of film trailers and The Gruen Transfer (ABC) was also a good resource as it discussed advertising. There are some good examples of the advertisements they created for different shows by found by simply looking for “Gruen Transfer” on YouTube.

Lastly from mashable there was a post about the following video entitled Starry Night – Vincent van Dominogh. Recreating Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” from just over 7,000 dominos. I know it is not a crime trailer but it was amazing and certainly held attention.

Useful Links (Weekly)

by heyjudegallery

• Do students understand their ‘digital footprint’ and how it can affect their employability? – eLearning Blog Dont Waste Your Time    A good presentation that is given to tertiary students that end with… ” let us be sensible when we use any online service (Facebook, Twitter, eBay, LinkedIn, etc), think about how we want to be viewed by whoever may find the content (whenever they find it) as it may just come back to bite you”

• Recommended Resources: Digital Citizenship, New Media Literacies, Games and Learning | DMLcentral   ”Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World is nearly 500 pages of workshops and lessons plans dedicated to teaching youth ethics for a digital age. Produced through a unique collaboration of Harvard’s GoodPlay Project and Project New Media Literacies, it is all free online, as one giant download or as separate files”

• Survey Says Library Users Are Your Best Customers From Publishers Weekly “Library Journal released the first issue of a quarterly publication called Patron Profiles. Based on surveys and data collected from library users across the country, the first issue—on libraries and e-book usage—indicates that libraries are a powerful economic engine for the book business.”

• Voices for the Library» Blog Archive » More than just fiction? It’s unbelievable!   ”The web, online reference works and e-books anticipate reflect the library of today. Now amazing stuff can be had virtually as well as in every walk-in library. As ever, the library seeks and provides. E-resources are too unaffordable for most; a library’s info service is without compare; knowledge collections critical and free computers crucial. “

• Free Technology for Teachers: Ten Search Tools and Tactics Teachers and Students Need to Know Richard Byrne has compiled a list of search tools and tactics that every teacher and student should know  

• 2011 ITL Research Findings and Implications This report provides the findings from the 2011 analysis across 7 participating countries. From Innovative Teaching and Learning research site (sponsored by Microsoft Partners in Learning)    

• Buttersafe – Updated Tuesdays and Thursdays » Archive » Traps A simple little cartoon showing how easily some (all?) of us can get caught by scams on the Web. 

• Instant Wild – Live Wildlife Photographs ”Images of wild animals are sent to you directly from small automatic cameras placed in remote locations. When you identify the wild animal by matching the photo with the relevant image in the Field Guide you save conservationist thousands of hours by helping to sort the images by species group. This enables scientists to analyze the data much faster and assess whether the threatened animals are increasing or decreasing.”   

• Cybils: 2011 Nominations: Fiction Picture Books   

• Search by colour This is a demonstration of searching by colour across approximately 18,500 images from the National Library of Australia’s photographic collection. You can pick a colour from the colour chart or fine tune your selection using the colour sliders. As so much of the collection is made up of black and white images, not all colours will bring back results.    

• Steve Hargadon: The Kindle Fire – So Close… A Review with Education in Mind   A very well written review of many of the aspects of the Kindle Fire. He looks at what works well, what is available, what is limited and what is not there.

• Citation Wizard – Bibliography and works cited page generator The Citation Wizard is a free online utility that automatically generates citations according to MLA style speficiations. The site is simple to use: select the medium that best describes the work you would like to cite, type in the requested information, and click on the “view citation” button. Your citation will appear instantly, saving you time and eliminating the hassle of consulting style manuals. In addition to instant citation generation, the latest edition of the Wizard allows you to create an entire bibliography document from scratch! You will be able to begin a document, add entries to it, and save the document to your computer.    

• Children’s Books Forever Free children’s books that have become classics/favourites and you can use with interactive whiteboards, projectors, etc. Permission granted for non-commercial use.  

• SlimeKids – School Library Media Kids Free website for elementary/middle school-age kids with book trailers, educational games and literacy-related resources.    

• Citing Websites: APA Style A very simple but effective tool. Site also affers same type of tool for AMA, APA, Turabian, Chicago and MLA   

• Free Audio Books – Download an audio book in mp3 or iPod format today! Site offers free audiobooks to download tags:   

• This Week In Education Offers overview of news from mainstream sources and social medis and analysis of education policy issues     

• CorkboardMe Even simpler to use than Wallwisher. Paste virtual sticky notes on the virtual corkboard. One useful feature allows you to paste a url address for a link to an image and the image will then show up on the sticky note. You do not need to register    

• Monkey Machine – online drum machine Monkey Machine is a free web-based program that allows students to experiment with drum set sounds and rhythms. Using Monkey Machine students can customize the selection of drums and cymbals in their virtual drum set. Monkey Machine also allows students to customize the tempo in their drum tracks and the frequency with which each drum or cymbal is played. All tracks created using Monkey Machine can be downloaded as MIDI files.  

• WolframTones: An Experiment in a New Kind of Music  This tool is from the same people that brought us the great computational search engine Wolfram Alpha comes Wolfram Tones. Wolfram Tones uses algorithms, music theory, and sound samples to generate new collections of sounds. Visitors to Wolfram Tones can experiment with sounds and rhythms to make their own sounds. Wolfram Tones allows visitors to choose samples from fifteen different genres of music on which to build their own sounds. Once a genre is selected visitors can then alter the rhythms, instrumentation, and pitch mapping of their sounds. When satisfied with their creations, users can download their sounds or have them sent directly to their cell phones.   

• UJAM – Make your music. Be heard. This site is easy o use and helps make your singing sound better. You sing or play an instrument while recording to UJAM. When you’re done recording, use UJAM to alter the sound quality of your voice, turn your voice into other sounds, adjust the tempo of your song, and or remix a song to include your recording. UJAM is essentially an online, light weight version, of Garage Band. Watch the video below to learn more and see UJAM in action.    

• beatlab – make music together Beat Lab is a free service through which you can experiment with thousands of sound and rhythm combinations. Using Beat Lab is easy. Beat Lab provides a grid on which you select the sounds you want to have played. You can specify how often you want each sound played and how quickly you want the sounds played. There are twelve default sounds provided in the Beat Lab grid. You can add more sounds by selecting “add more sounds” and choosing from the huge catalog of sounds. If the sound you want isn’t available in the Beat Lab catalog you can upload your own sounds.  

• Free online Music Creator – Aviary.com’s Roc Using Aviary’s Roc service you can create your own music loops or samples. After you’ve created your music samples you can download them, reuse them in Myna, or embed them into your blog. Below you will find a brief tutorial on how to create sound loops using Aviary Roc.   

• Historic Map Works, Residential Genealogy ™ Historic Map Works is an online gallery of hundreds of historical maps. On Historic Map Works you can browse for maps by continent, country, state, and province. Note: Downloading the map images is not free. But, you can view more than half of the maps as Google Maps overlays using Historic Map Works’s free Historic Earth Basic.   

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

Useful sites (weekly)

  by  gcouros 

• How Online Education Is Changing the Way We Learn [INFOGRAPHIC]| The Committed Sardine An infographic posted by Jolie O’Dell on Mashable concerning the effects of online education’s development on today’s (2009) learning. Still a valid source although now 18months on.   

• The Best Web 2.0 Applications For Education – 2010 | Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…An annual post from @Larryferlazzo that summarizes the best tools. Links to earlier posts as well  

• Libraries and the Future of Electronic Content Delivery | American Libraries Magazine “Libraries are about content plus community,” says Michael Porter. “What does that mean in a world where in 5, 10, or 20 years the vast majority of content is electronic?” Porter draws on two decades of experience as a librarian, speaker, and writer to envision an organization that will take a leading role in charting the future of electronic content delivery for libraries, with expert information professionals and industry leaders at the helm   

• Space Shuttle Discovery – 360VR Images A 360 degree view/tour of the Space Shuttle   

• 50 Informative and Well-Designed Infographics These brilliant and informative infographics have been created by various talented individuals. It is a collection of 50 infographics that are creatively designed, colorful, lively, shocking and educational.  

• Ebook Developments Were HOT at ALA  Looking over the program of presentations and panels and at the vendors exhibiting at the recent American Library Association Annual conference, it’s clear that librarians are focused on embracing the expanding digital world and specifically on providing ebooks as part of library services. Along with that, of course, come all the issues and considerations involved: copyright/DRM, rising costs of digital collections, format issues, and the rapidly evolving publishing market.   

• The Power of Open The Power of Open collects the stories of those creators who took advantage of that infrastructure to share work that enriches the global commons for all humanity. Creative Commons began providing licenses for the open sharing of content only a decade ago. Now more than 400 million CC-licensed works are available on the Internet, from music and photos, to research findings and entire college courses. Creative Commons created the legal and technical infrastructure that allows effective sharing of knowledge, art and data by individuals, organizations and governments. The breadth of uses is as great as the creativity of the individuals and organizations choosing to open their content, art and ideas to the rest of the world. 

• PLN Challenge #5: Using Blogs as Part of Your PLN | Teacher Challenge 

• Animaps Animaps is a new service that was built for the purpose of allowing users to create animated Google Maps. The basics way of creating maps in Animaps is very similar the process for creating maps in Google Maps. The main benefit of using Animaps over Google Maps is that you can create a tour of your place marks that plays through according to the timing that you specify. Another benefit is that you can build in coloured shapes to expand and contract to demonstrate patterns. You can also import images to your map from Flickr, Picassa, and Facebook.    

• 15 Useful Online Mind Mapping and Brainstorming Tools – tripwire magazine Concept mapping and Mind mapping software are used to create diagrams of relationships between concepts, ideas or other pieces of information. It has been suggested that the mind mapping technique can improve learning/study efficiency up to 15% over conventional note taking. 

• Google Plus: Is This the Social Tool Schools Have Been Waiting For? ”Google+ could work well. There is a lot of potential with Google+: better student collaboration through Circles, opportunities for blended learning (a combination of offline and online instruction) with Hangouts, project research with Sparks, and easier school public relations with targeted photo-sharing, updates, and messaging”

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