Research book notes

I like the research book's emphasis that research is not just collecting information, but rather it must include the interpretation of data, and I like the notion that it begins with a question or problem. There's a nice checklist at the end of Chapter 1 (pp. 13-14) for questions to ask when evaluating research in a journal article or elsewhere.

At the end of Chapter 1 is also a set of guidelines for keeping a research journal. This is similar to the summary/comments on articles that you did last week. One difference is that it has you determine "keywords that capture the focus of the article." That's a good idea as it not only helps you understand the essence of the article, but it will also help you later when you conduct searches for articles.

Chapter 2 has a good checklist for defining and setting up your research problem (pp. 23-24) and another good checklist for evaluating your research plan (pp. 33-34). Usually when we use guidelines like these, we end up with a much better idea of what we need to do for our research.

Finding photos

Most photos on the Internet are copyrighted and cannot be used without permission. One place to find photos you can use is Flickr's Creative Commons, where you use the photos as long as you give credit to the owner. Another place is Yotophoto. Yotophoto has both creative commons photos and also public domain photos, for which credit need not be given.

Blogs in disciplines

In looking for topics for research, blogs may be a good resource. Go to Google's blogsearch and type in the word of your major or discipline, along with the word "blog" and see what you can find. For those interested in science, I found a group of blogs at ScienceBlogs.

Text-messaging

Charles McGrath, a writer for The New York Times, in his article "The Pleasures of the Text" covers the nature of text-messaging, giving examples of how users achieve efficiency and style, and he writes about its greater use outside of the U.S. Moreover, he argues that text-messaging is

a kind of avoidance mechanism that preserves the feeling of communication - the immediacy - without, for the most part, the burden of actual intimacy or substance.

That is, text-messaging lets people feel that they are connecting to others without actually doing it.

The article is short but informative. The claim about avoiding intimacy and substance is interesting. Is this a byproduct or a subconscious desire? Is it even an accurate description? I can imagine that when one is constantly text-messaging, not much is new, and so not much is of substance. In fact, when I ask my 6-year-old son what he did in school today, he almost always says, "I don't know." Is he avoiding intimacy? Certainly not when he climbs all over me, trying to get my attention. Similary, when someone asks me what is new, I generally respond, "Not much." Rather than an avoidance of intimacy, I imagine it's simply the reality of much being the same. Yet people ask the same questions every day as a matter of keeping social contact. It's not clear why text-messaging should be considered different from normal conversations.

2nd day of class

The 2nd day of class has finished, and we've set up accounts with blogger, netvibes, and del.icio.us. Actually, about half of the Mon-Wed class had trouble setting up the del.icio.us account. I'm not sure why. We'll just need to email the support staff if we continue to have problems.

These accounts will be used for us to record what we're learning, to keep a record of what we're reading, and to see what other others in the class are doing, along with other possibilities. Next, we begin to look at what we'll soon be writing.

College students lack literacy skills

CNN News reports that "College students lack literacy for complex tasks."

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories
and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed
for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

Well, we won't work on our math skills, but we will read a lot, analyzing a variety of articles, and we will write a lot, integrating points of the articles into our essays. Definitely, by the end of the semester, we will be able to pass this literacy test.

Science blogs

For those interested in blogs on science, go to Science Blogs (via Otto Khera at Elgg).

"Chit Chat" on the Internet

Amanda LaBonar, a university student and on the Marquette Tribune staff, in her article "Chit Chat" asserts, "Personal responsibility [is] needed when blogging." She provides several examples of students who have been penalized for their online comments. Although noting that some people assert their right to free speech, she wonders about "how stupid and irresponsible people are being."

Definitely, most in the U.S. are on the side of individual freedom and free speech. However, practically speaking, people don't say anything in public that they want to at work, at least if they want to keep their jobs or unless they're the boss. And the Internet is very public. Saying something at work might reach only a few people. Writing to the world potentially can reach millions. Americans demand the right to privacy but, as LaBonar comments, give it away on the Internet. Ironical?

Bleezer, a new blogging client

Bleezer, a new, free blogging client, is now available for all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac 10.3.9+). Right now, it doesn't work well with Blogger, but it does seem powerful. One advantage it may have over Performancing is that it's not tied to the browser. From the website:

Why use Bleezer to blog?

* Blog from anywhere. Work on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
* Work with any blogging service. As many as you want, even Blogger.
* Add tags for any tag service. Technorati, del.icio.us, or anything else.
* Create custom markup. Define your own key combinations for custom HTML markup.
* Spell check. Ensure everything is speeled spelled ok.
* Advertise. Ping Technorati, weblogs.com, ping-o-matic, Pingoat, or any other service.
* Work online or offline. Compose posts offline and post them when you want to.
* Did we mention Bleezer is free?

Teen Content Creators and Consumers

I just came across an interesting site: Pew Internet. It provides research and reports on how the internet is affecting American life. One report by Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden look at how teenagers create and consume content on the Internet. They write,

American teenagers today are utilizing the interactive capabilities of
the internet as they create and share their own media creations. Fully
half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be
considered Content Creators. They have created a blog or webpage,
posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or
remixed online content into their own new creations.

I haven't had time to look at this report, but it's now on my reading list.

Schools alarmed by schools

Tara Bahrampour and Lori Aratani's article "Teens' Bold Blogs Alarm Area Schools" (Washington Post) reports on how schools are "warning students [and parents] that their online activities may affect not only their safety, but also their academic and professional lives" and how some schools in the Washington D.C. area have even taken disciplinary action against students, including suspension and expulsion. The author has quotes teenagers and parents about the youngsters' writing on the Internet.

As the article noted, teenagers have always kept diaries in which they wrote their inner thoughts, including derogatory and discrminatory comments. But now these thoughts are in the open for millions of people to read. Not too long ago, schools had the authority of parents, but no longer today. Although schools can control use of school-owed computers and resources, computers at home are private property. How schools will tackle comments by students that target others at the school is still uncertain. This topic is a new arena in which old theories of psychology and sociological can be tested.

Plagiarism rampant?

Nick Farrell in the article "Paper fires journalist" (The Inquirer) reports that Tim Ryan, an entertainment reporter who worked for 22 years for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, was fired for using too much material from Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, and from other online sources, without citing them. Apparently, as Farrell notes, Ryan was not fired after Wikipedia brought the plagiarism to the attention of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin but after other news media began to report on Ryan's plagiarism.

It is interesting that Ryan was not fired immediately. We don't know the reasoning for the timing of the firing, but it gives an impression that's rather negative for the newspaper. Combined with Olesker's firing in a short period of time, one might wonder how rampant plagiarism is among the news media. According to Jerry Ceppos, former executive at Knight Ridder, the U.S.'s second largest newspaper chain, it is "widespread" and is a problem with "every American newspaper" (John McManus, "Plagiarism a widespread problem at newspapers," Grade the News).

Obviously, a lapse of ethics isn't limited to news agencies. I recently posted on the comments in the Chronicle of Higher Education of Philip Langlais, vice provost and director of research at Old Dominion University, about the problems of ethics in academia ("Scholarship and ethics"). So, I won't say more here, other than perhap we should pay more attention to the character education movement in the U.S. and abroad.

Plagiarism leads to losing job

Gadi Dechter in the article "Early Warning" (City Paper Online) brings together a variety of opinions of the resignation or "firing" of Michael Olesker, a columnist for 27 years for the Sun, a paper in Baltimore. Olesker resigned due to including "small amounts of background material that appeared copied, without attribution, from The Washington Post and The New York Times," along with an earlier warning about the lack of attribution. Gadi reporrts that some feel the punishment was extreme, that he should have received only a suspension. Others feel that it wasn't that offense alone, but "a pattern of recklessness."

Plagiarism is certainly an offense for which newspaper reporters, who understand its nature well, should be punished. Still, I need a little more information to determine the nature of Olesker's offense. Was this lapse of attribution just done a few times, and so should receive a punishment less than firing? Or was it "a pattern of recklessness"? One troubling factor is that if there was such a pattern, then why did he not receive more than a "warning" after a second or third offense? Why did the newspaper jump from a single warning to a drastic firing? But that's more on the appropriateness of the penalty not on the plagiarism itself. This article should be a good one to use in my composition classes.

Lies teachers tell?

Tim Frederick (via Bud and Nancy) are discussing the "lies" teachers tell their students, one of which seems to be saying "this is an important book." They make some good points, which I'll come back to, but first I want to look at some of the assumptions being made.

According to Tim, this is called a lie because: "How did we become so arrogant as to think we had the right to say which books were important to read and which aren't? "

I'm not sure we should consider arrogance as a form of lying, and I'm not sure that it's rights that are the issue. Shouldn't it be responsibility? That is, teachers have the responsibility (and are accountable to parents and society) for selecting those books that will best enable students to learn. Actually, depending on the grade level and subject, school administrators often do the choosing of books for the school's curricula, books that must meet a state's criteria, as determined by state departments of education.

Tim adds:

What disturbs me most is that when we say this, we take a little power away from students AND hurt their critical thinking. Shouldn't they decide what's important and why? That can be empowering, as well as exercise the critical thinking muscle of evaluating. They would have to be able to justify their reasons for thinking a book is important and we can share how other people define "important". Students can further evaluate others' criteria for "importance". How many perfectly good lessons surrounding this are thrown away when we decide what's important?

Part of this argument is a value judgment of "empowering" student, of appealing to egalitarian values. In the classroom, however, such an appeal should be secondary to principles of learning. No research on learning is cited in these claims, nor is any evidence given to support that "empowering" students will help them learn better. To be fair, Tim just wrote a few paragraphs, not an academic essay. However, with such strong claims, I'd like to see a little evidence.

Another assumption without evidence is that saying "This is an important book" somehow "hurt[s] their crtical thinking." Actually, this assumption is a shift from the perspective of teachers wanting students to read "good" books to a position on the value of "critical thinking," as if these positions were exclusive. Of course, I can imagine teachers who pontificate without inviting students into the discussion, but that's not at issue here.

There is no getting away from the teacher's responsibility. Consider Tim's last sentence, "How many perfectly good lessons surrounding this are thrown away when we decide what's important?" Who decides what are "perfectly good lessons"? If we carry this perspective to its conclusion, then we should have the children evaluating the criteria for "perfectly good lessons" and the criteria for good teaching. In fact, we should listen to the commplace saying that one learns best by teaching, and we should just have the children do the teaching, too. Then what would the teachers do?

Now looking at the positives of Tim's argument, it does make sense that students need to learn and evaluate "how other people define 'important'" and also develop critical thinking. The issue is how to accomplish this. Perhaps we can draw from ACT-R learning theory. Anderson and Schunn (2000) write,

There are no magical properties conveyed upon a knowledge structure just because it was self-generated. If all things were equal it would be preferable to have children learn by generating the knowledge (due to the redundant encoding). However, because of difficulties of generation and dangers of misgeneration, things are not always equal and it can be preferable to tell the knowledge.
...
Thus, ACT-R's theory of procedural learning claims that procedural skills are acquired by making references to past problem solutions while actively trying to solve new problems. Thus, it is both a theory of learning by doing and a theory of learning by example.
Simply providing the learner with examples is not sufficient to guarantee learning in the ACT-R theory. The sufficiency of the production rules acquired depends on the understanding of the example.

Anderson and Schunn add, "For competences to be displayed over a lifetime, time on task is by far and away the most significant factor." That is, learners must practice a lot, whether critical thinking or other skills. The problem is one can practice the wrong skills, in which case "practice makes imperfect." In other words, learners need feedback and at times explicit guidance to make their practice effective.

Reference:
Anderson, John R., Schunn, Christian D. (2000). The implications of the ACT-R learning theory: no magic bullets. In R. Glaser (Ed.), Advances in instructional psychology (Vol. 5). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Podcasting in the classroom

Wesley Fryer has an excellent introductory article on integrating podcasts into the classroom. He concludes,

We need to get serious about educating today’s digital natives for the digital knowledge landscape of the twenty-first century. In many ways, the traditional, “transmission-based” educational model of the past is insufficient for the needs of today’s learners and employers. Classroom podcasts can provide engaging opportunities for students to develop desirable skills as digital storytellers and cutting-edge communicators. The price is right, and the benefits are plentiful. Isn’t it time you and your students started a classroom podcast?

For language learning, podcasts are a good tool for students to practice and revise a presentation.

using performancing

I made my last post with performancing, a blogging editor plug-in for Firefox. It makes blogging really easy, but I just noticed that I couldn't see the line break when copying and pasting.

Networking for Success

Chris Garrett at Performancing.com has some good, common-sense suggestions on Networking for Success, that is, success in having your blog become known. He says, "it's not just what you know, who you know (or get to know) can make a big difference." Primarily, it's interacting with other bloggers, whether by commenting "intelligently" on their blogs or by including your blog url as part of your signature in an email, forums, or discussion lists. As he notes, not all forums or discussion lists might approve of dropping your url there, so be sure to observe a place's signature etiquette.

Chris ends with: "I am not talking about using people. People like to do friends
favors, make more friends and you will get more favors! Even better if
these friends you make are influential in your niche."