Archive for March, 2007
Daily Diigo Snips and Comments 03/25/2007
Case for a Cooperative Studio Classroom: Teaching Petrology in a Different Way, The Journal of Geoscience Education - Find Articles Annotated
- Eric Hoefler organized this wiki for a “classroom studio” experiment he seems to be trying in his English class.
- post by cburell
World War I - Simple English Wikipedia
- “Simple English Wikipedia”–excellent resource for younger learners and non-native English-speaking readers.
- post by cburell
Social Bookmark Search | Infopirate.org
- For Firefox only.
- post by cburell
Search Engine For All Social Bookmark Services | Infopirate.org Annotated
- We’ll see how it works. Excellent idea.
- post by cburell
Yesterday I noticed, that there is no way to search all social bookmark services at once. “There must be something like a meta search for that“, I thought.
Nope, there wasn’t. I did a research but I found nothing except some dead links from sites who might have had this service but are offline now.
Google Co-op is a very nice way to set up a custom search engine, and although I like Rollyo and Swiki, Google is still the best: Fast crawling, huge index. And I like the easy way to integrate the co-op search within Drupal.
Easy said, easy done, here we go: My Social Bookmark Search Engine.
Collaborative Writing Annotated
Based on the results of the study conducted by Ede and Lunsford
[39], seven organizational patterns for collaborative authoring were
identified. These patterns are:
- the team plans
and outlines the task, then each writer prepares his/her part and the group
compiles the individual parts, and revises the whole document as needed; - the team plans and outlines the writing task, then one member prepares
a draft, the team edits and revises the draft; - one member of the team
plans and writes a draft, the group revises the draft; - one person
plans and writes the draft, then one or more members revises the draft
without consulting the original authors; - the group plans and writes
the draft, one or more members revise the draft without consulting the
original authors; - one person assigns the tasks, each member completes
the individual task, one person compiles and revises the document; - one dictates, another transcribes and edits. Results from the study
indicated that the percentage of writing groups that use these methods often
or very often range from 3% (method 5) to 31% (method 3).
- Interesting research on collaborative writing models. Obvious relevance to classroom wiki workshop designs and roles.
- post by cburell
Survey one, which was administered to a large group of writers
(approximately 800), provides information on the amount of time spent on the
various phases of the writing process. The results show that generating
ideas (14%), note-taking (13%), organizational planning (13%), drafting
(32%), revising (15%), editing (13%) contribute to the total writing
process. Ede and Lunsford [39] also examined co
llaborative authoring and the results
indicates that the level of satisfaction in the group writing process is influenced by eight items:
- the degree to which goals are articulated and shared;
- the degree of openness and mutual respect;
- the degree of control the writers have over the text;
- the degree to which writers can respond to others who modify the text;
- the way in which credit (directly or indirectly) is acknowledged;
- the presence of an agreed upon procedure for managing conflicts and
resolving disputes; - the number and types of (bureaucratic) constraints imposed on the authors–
deadlines, technical/legal requirements, etc., and; - the status of the project within the organization.
- Again, interesting for wiki-based projects. The percentages of total project time taken by each phase of the writing process is especially relevant to the student-created wiki textbook project I’m launching in my history class this week.
- post by cburell
- Good site focused on presentation skills and tools.
- post by cburell
- Excellent site focusing on virtual teamwork management, tips, and tools. Good for 1001 Flat World Tales, other Flat World projects, and faculty/team meetings.
- post by cburell
Digital Web Magazine - Capture a Screencast with a Mac Annotated
- iShowU sounds like a better program for screencasting on Macs than SnapzPro. And it’s about USD 50 cheaper.
- post by cburell
eSchool News online - Education 2.0: The next evolution of school software has arrived
- Great list of free software (I’m exploring, Gnuosphere).
- post by cburell
theSANDbox - This site is directed towards teacher…
- Good resource to train elementary students in tech skills.
- post by cburell
Preventing Your One-to-One Dreams from Becoming Nightmares
- Outstanding podcast from Gary Stager of Pepperdine U. and MIT. NECC 2006.
- post by cburell
- Collection of student-created videos using Macs.
- post by cburell
Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning
- Outstanding resource for info ranging from roll-out, teacher training, classroom integration, and more.
- post by cburell
Home: Irving Independent School District: Teaching and Learning in a One-to-One Classroom
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From Red Pen to Invisible Ink: Assessing Student Blogs with Diigo Groups
You are a young writer trying to experience what being a real writer is, because…your teacher is making you: sore spot one (but I can live with this one, for obvious reasons).
You are a young writer trying to have that experience by writing on a web-log (I’ve decided to outlaw the term “blogging” with students, and substitute the correct, grand old word: “Writing”), so that you can experience real audience, real feedback, real conversation based on your writing: blessing one.
You are a young writer who sees that someone has left a comment on one or your writings on your web-log (the word “blog” is a blighted thing as well, in the Language Arts classroom. From now on, we use “web-log”). What a delight–and a new one. You click the link, curious and expectant–how is the world responding to me as a writer?
But you see this:
You misspelled “frustrated.”
Is this a strong introduction?
Nice use of the appositive in Sentence Pattern 4, but your compound sentence in SP 3 is a comma splice because you forgot to include a coordinating conjunction after the comma.
B+.Your teacher.
“Well,” you say, “It was interesting. Thanks, but no thanks. Back to MySpace for some real conversation.”
Luckily, Chris Watson sparked an idea in one of our podcasted conversations about this problem: Somehow find a way to use Diigo to assess student web-log writing without defacing the students’ “intellectual property” and turning writing into “schooliness.”
So here’s my latest experiment, with thanks to Chris (and to Diane Quirk, who suggested this much earlier): using Diigo Groups (with a separate Diigo login for me, to keep my own bookmarks separate from my classroom bookmarks).
My students have joined the Group. Now when they go to their web-logs, after logging in to their Diigo account and setting “Show Annotations > Show Group Annotations” on their Diigo toolbar, they will see the highlights of specific passages from their writing that I have left (and I can start students doing this too, it occurs to me in a very attractive flash), and my annotations will pop up on their screen when they hover their mouse over the highlights.
Also good, our Diigo Groups Bookmarks page records all highlights and annotations I have made on one page. Students can use that to see all feedback I have given to specific strengths and weaknesses on all students writings.
And since they’re using anagrams instead of first-name usernames on their blogs, there’s less of a chance of any embarrassment resulting from this “public feedback”–with “invisible ink.”
The screenshot below is an example of what one student will see when she visits her blog with Diigo turned on.
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Call for Crowd Wisdom: What Video, Photo, and Audio Archives Can Students Use for Mash-ups?
Real quick: I know about Archive.org, but what other online film, television, video, photo, and audio archives are there that give permission to students to use and edit for their own “digital essays,” a la Humanity Lobotomy?
Any specific sites, or lists of such sites on a wiki, that you can recommend?
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The "Blogging as Conversation" Conversation
Barbara has alerted me to Jeff Utecht’s recent post about “blogging as conversation”–and made me feel a bit guilty about my own absence in many “comments” boxes to other edubloggers. (In my defense, I’m running at 1000 mph, but the world right now seems to be going at about 1010. My plate will get emptier soon–lots going on behind the scenes that I can’t wait to write about!)
Anyway, that “blogging as conversation” discussion intersects with my own recent concerns about how not to be a teacher who ruins the blogging experience for students by turning it into “just another way to turn in homework.”
I read Jeff’s article after setting up a class history blog that is unit specific — World War I to World War II only — and assigning students to write a weekly reflective post about whatever strikes them about the content for the week. I’m still learning how to set-up multiple authors on my school’s new WordPressMU blog site, but think I got it right. So the students will start writing their reflections next week, and commenting–”conversing”–on others.
My goal as the “teacher” is to refine my Sumo skills (SUMO: “Shut Up and Move Over”), and not write my own posts on this blog. I want to create those “conversations” by having all students write, read, and respond to each other on this unit blog. I hope to limit myself to the role of commenter.
This represents a further evolution of my quest for the student blogging Grail. I like this unit-specific idea. I like the collective student authorship on one blog, and the absence of the teacher. I think students might be attracted to the site precisely because I’m not dominating it. And I can’t wait to see what happens.
As I write this, it occurs to me that I might need to scaffold the assignment to help the students find entry-points into ideas to write about. Chris Watson’s use of side-bar positioned essential questions to guide student blogging on his English class blog might be the thing.
Anyway, interesting times. Any crowd wisdom is, as usual, very wanted.
(Photo: “conversazioni domenicali” by pupanna on Flickr–wonderful photo!)
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Daily Diigo Snips and Comments 03/23/2007
cac.ophony: Aristotle and Powerpoint Annotated
- Anthony’s comments about lending narrative structure and “juice” to Powerpoints is just what my students need to hear. I’ve been coaching them on their oral presentation skills, and trying to get them not just to transmit information, but to find the “wow” in the subject they’re presenting so that the audience enjoys it. Aristotle to the rescue?
- post by cburell
The problem with bullet points and slide headings, says Atkinson, is that they typically do nothing more than establish dry, lifeless categories of information. What is usually missing is a story, something “juicy, coherent and full of life.” Hence, “some of the world’s largest organizations have adopted the word ’story’ as their new mantra for corporate communictions.”
Atkinson cites Aristotle in his definition of ”story”: it should include “action, a plot, central characters,” and even “visual effects.” He adds that classical notions of rhetorical persuasion should also play a part in the formulation of presentations. PowerPoint slides should thus articulate a story, an old-fashioned narrative incorporating ancient ideas of how to be persuasive.
Writing Strategies (6Traits pdf’s)
- Some very nice 6 Traits writing rubrics here that include activities for each trait. Very handy for writing workshops and the 1001 Flat World Tales especially, since classes around the world could use the warmers and activities on the 1001writers blog to see each others’ moves. (Right now we share 6 Traits rubrics, but not exercises and warm-ups. This might remedy that.)
- post by cburell
Literacy is All: Homework Debate Heats Up, Again Annotated
- What a pleasure it was to stumble upon this blog today. I love the concluding lines, and, if you read Pat’s entire post, the evidence she musters to call for less homework for our students.
- post by cburell
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