A note to an absent student…

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Posted on 27th February 2007 by Chris in General |nextgenteachers

Each time a student is absent for more than a day or so, I get an email asking that I send missed work to the front office for pickup so the student can catch up. I usually fire off a copy of the slides in handout form and a little note, and go on about my business. In talking with a few other teachers, I have come to the realization that my little note to my absent students (always handwritten by the way) is a bit different than others’. Here is an actual note, without the student name at the top. I wrote this just this morning, and I thought you might like to see it!

noteforstudent.jpg

I hope you can read that ok, I wasn’t sure of the size. In case it is illegible, here is what it says…

“Spend some time on the Moodle if you can. You have a test on Friday, which you can take from home. You’ll see it in the Moodle on Friday, called Huge Test. It covers Colors, Numbers, and Days & Months. All the slides are online. Let me know how I can help! Mr. Craft”

I’ve been thinking about Alan November’s scenario of bird flu hitting our area and then no one being able to come to school.

Me, got it covered.

I am saying this not to be a punk, but I am using lots of cool tools to keep my kids up-to-date when they are at home.

Maybe a future post about what tools I use inside my moodle and on our class website, but not now. And please, spare me the discussion of authentic assessments ;) , tests serve a good purpose and are to help learn vocabulary, a core function of any foreign language. We do lots of other asssessments, too!

So, how’s my note?

Research and bibliographies, part two

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Posted on 25th February 2007 by Chris in General

Ok so I have been thinking pretty much non stop about research and bibliographies since the last time we spoke. Here is what I have been tinkering with…

A comment on my last post led me back to Lifehacker. This post held a wealth of opportunities, the most tasty of which were these three, which are in the final running..

First a quick review of my criteria. I need a web-based (or sync-able) program to be able to keep track of my research citations so that I can continue to work on a document prepping for submission for publication to journals. We are required to use the APA format, and I do have the Publication Manual here handy to consult as needed.

1.  Noodletools, $8 USD for one year, which I detailed in a previous post. Still very much in the running. I even emailed the son of the team and he emailed back saying he liked my posting. Heh.

2. SourceAid. $20 USD for one year. This is a tasty site, I have to say. It seems to offer very similar features to NoodleTools.  The interface is a little cleaner and seems a little more web 2.0. Ok not really, but the interface is a bit nicer and the questions are less confusing. For example, with NoodleTools, I had to know not to include the month of publication when citing a journal article, which I felt like should have been taken care of. SourceAid impressed me so much that I tried to sign up.

Twice. It declined my credit card without even asking for my address. No valid reason to decline, there’s plenty of room. Actually, it’s a debit card so I checked to make sure I wasn’t totally broke.  I’m not, although it’s slim pickings! No reason it should have declined, though. Is it worth fighting for? This may be what shoots me back to NoodleTools.

3. I also found a cool open source installable proggie called WIKINDX.  To be fair, I found a few installable proggies that could handle online bibliographies, but remember, I needed one that supported APA, which only WININDX did, best I could figure. I installed it in record time on my Bluehost account (full disclosure: that link has my affiliate code attached so I’d get credit if you signed up) and was up and running. I got a few records inputted and then tried to export them. It exported nicely as an APA list in Rich Text Format but there was a problem.

It wasn’t formatted correctly.

So far,  SourceAid has been the nicest in terms of formatting, as it gives a nice and easy download button right next to the citation, even when you’re using the free version. Noodletools allows you purely copy and paste when using the free version.

My big issue with NoodleTools, though, is the spacing. When the results come up, the spacing is not as strictly per the APA Publication Manual. With SourceAid, it is.

At least the Son of Citation Machine tells you to use your word processor to format the text to look like the illustration it shows, although the Son of Citation Machine does not allow you to enter an issue number for a journal article, only a volume number. So one portion of my citation is missing.

This is irritating. I am probably spending too much time on this, but hey, it’s keeping me from having to actually write the papers, right?!

How do you keep track of research online?

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Posted on 24th February 2007 by Chris in Educational Technology |Grad School

I am working on a few major research papers for grad school, so I have been thinking about how to best help myself stay organized in dealing with all of the research articles I am sifting through and notes I need to take, not to mention the painstaking process of citing all those articles! I have been looking for good tools to help me, especially web 2.0 tools that might keep me a bit more sane. Here is my progress…

I began thinking that a good start would be Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It appeals to me because I am already familiar with the interface, have tags set up for each course, and can access the document from any computer. It has great formatting, and seamlessly integrates with my daily Gmail and other Google obsessions. Because I enjoy security, I make sure to log in to https://docs.google.com, adding the s to make it secure. Ok, so I will draft my papers in Google Docs.

I also use Google Notebook to keep track of interesting websites I come across. Tragically, I tend to note them and then never go back to check it out. Sometimes I go search my notebook when I think I might have noted something previously, but it ends up being pretty much a black hole. It’s still fun to note stuff, though. How much will this help me with my research, though? Well, theoretically as I am searching Google Scholar I can annotate pages that I come across for later review. What I end up doing more often than not, however, is downloading everything I find that looks relevant, and then sifting through it later. I have a folder full of twenty or so PDF files that I am sifting through now, so no real need to Google Notebook it.

So I did a quick search in Google using the query APA +Firefox, since I am writing my papers in the APA Format. I do have the Publication Manual handy, but I still could use some help with citation formatting, etc.

An aside: Here is a rockin APA crib sheet (pdf).

The search results led me to Zotero. I found this tool also by searching for “research” in the Firefox addons section. Zotero is nice, and very easy to use. Trouble is I am not always going to be at one computer when I am doing research. I want to be able to have all my citations and bibliography handy wherever I am. After all, part of this web 2.0 world is having access to your information when you need it, right?

If Zotero had a Foxmarks-like syncing capability, we’d be in business. Maybe I overlooked it. Nope. Here is what the Zotero FAQ says…

In the near future, there will be ways of storing and syncing Zotero collections remotely.

Ok, so moving along. Zotero’s exporting citations feature felt a little clunky to me. Not sure why. Maybe it’s the browser integration. Blogging from Performancing feels odd, but works well. Probably my perception that needs to change?

At the end of the second page of search results I came across this link to NoodleBib’s FAQ page. Never having heard of NoodleBib, I erased the second part of the URL and got the home page to NoodleTools. Boy, am I impressed!

This is a nice suite of software, I have to admit. It feels very web 2.0 but in an early-startup kind of way. The reflective graphic they use in the header seems a bit off, but nonetheless it’s a solid-looking site. Here’s the scoop…

NoodleTools offers a variety of tools that look promising…

NoodleBib bills itself as, “The Web’s most comprehensive and accurate MLA and APA bibliography composer with a fully-integrated note-taking component”. Sounds tasty! I dug around some more and found NoodleBib Express, a free citation generator. I traditionally have used Son of Citation Machine, but think it might be giving incorrect citations. More on that later…

I kept digging and found this information about the company…

NoodleTools, Inc., a California company incorporated in 2002, was co-founded in 1999 by mother and son team Debbie and Damon Abilock. NoodleTools’ flagship product, NoodleBib, has emerged as the leading bibliography software on the Internet, transforming bibliographic instruction methodologies in thousands of subscribing schools and libraries.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it! The About Us page even has a nice photo of mom and son.

One word caught me, though, subscribing.

Uh oh. They want money. Shoot. I’m really poor cash-strapped these days. Grad school + stay-at-home-wife + two daughters + teacher’s salary = not much cash

How much do they want?

Eight dollars for a year. It’s a good value. Here is the total pricing package for individual subscriptions…

Subscription Rate: $4.00 for 3 months, $6.00 for 6 months (25% discount), or $8.00 for one year (12 months, 50% discount).

Whew. That might work in the household budget. What do I get for my ocho buckaroos?

All I can say is take the tour…

It offers me a central spot to store my citations, which they help me generate (same interface as the express free version), which I can then export into a .doc file (other formats available), and quickly cite parenthetically.

I can also take notes (aptly called notecards) which will allow me to digitally annotate my references. They even have a heck of a little Knowledgebase that has answers to lots of hard-hitting questions about how to cite this, do I cite that, etc.

It looks like a heck of a solution to my problem, and I am ready to sign up! I am curious, though, do any of you have any other suggestions? Something I overlooked? Sound off in the comments! (last line thieved from lifehacker, shame on me!)

Hope this has been helpful, I gotta go. My 5 year-old just told me she’s hungry. I need to get her some take out, cook her some supper. Wish me luck!

Podcast Episode 14 – A presentation on presentations

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Posted on 21st February 2007 by Chris in Podcast Episode

This is the audio that accompanies the slides you see on the previous post. Enjoy!

 Standard Podcast [39:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Don’t Read to Me, a Presentation on Presentations

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Posted on 20th February 2007 by Chris in Presentations |nextgenteachers

This is a presentation I gave to the College of William & Mary, for Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, who is teaching the class. She gave me a list of topics, and I chose one that I am particularly passionate about, presentations. I use PowerPoint and others regularly, and have some strong views on it. Here is my presentation…

Here are the notes, taken from the W&M wiki page on me.

Stock Xchng – www.sxc.hu
Garr Reynolds – www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/slides.html
Slide Share – www.slideshare.net/cmcraft
My presentation on Slideshare (or watch it above) – http://www.slideshare.net/cmcraft/dont-read-to-me-a-presentation-on-presentations/1

I recorded the audio portion and will be posting it as a podcast soon, maybe later today!

Skype setup, need some help!

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Posted on 10th February 2007 by Chris in Educational Technology

I am prepping for a pretty major online collaboration project between my kids and kids in a few different countries, and I need a bit of help with my Skype setup. When I skyped with Peru, the setup was pretty good, but kids could not really hear what was being said. Let me lay it out for you…

Two laptops, one running Skype and the other with the wiki showing. The laptops are older and I didn’t want to crash one…hence two.
A headset plugged into the headphones and mic jacks on the laptop running Skype.
Sony mini DV camera running usb 2.0 streaming for the video portion.

So it worked well as long as we had no desire for the rest of the class to be involved.

I do have a surround-sound system in my room, but of course when I hooked that up the echo got mean!

So, how can I have a setup with a central mic, and a system loud enough for nearly 30 kids (!) to hear it? Is there some sort of echo-killing device? Do I stream it out and then have a participating station and a listening station?

Thanks in advance for all your help! I will keep you all posted on my efforts!

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Do we pay enough attention to conversation?

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Posted on 7th February 2007 by Chris in General |nextgenteachers

I am posting this from a public computer located in the Department of Education of my University where I am awaiting a 5pm class. I’ve been walking around campus for the last hour or so, quick bite to eat, and some low level sociological observations, which are always fun. What follows are my observations, and surely I will augment some opinion. Take it for what it’s worth. Hat tip to Jeff Utecht, who is constantly talking about how much he loves conversation partly due to it being such a source of learning for him.

I had to keep reminding myself that these students were recently answering “here” in the context of k12 education. Most of them looked like kids to me, albeit I am but 29 years old. Maybe it’ s me, but they looked young.

A great number of kids seemed to be involved in their own world and intentionally closing off the outside world. I do this as well, since this is my only time during the week to walk around with an iPod in my pocket playing catch-up with all the podcasts I have been meaning to listen to, as well as just veg out to some music. This observation is worth making because when I was in college the first time, in 1995, cell phones, the Internet, and connectedness in general was not nearly as widespread.

Students spent the time immediately following a class talking about the shared experience. They either continued the learning or just commiserated about the course.

When I went back to undergraduate (after a few-year haitus ;) the atmosphere had changed entirely. Not only did students not talk to one another following class time, they all pulled out cell phones and began dialing. This blew me away!

They wanted familiar connections, not new ones.

They wanted connections made in the context of fun, not class.

They didn’t want to connect with me.

I’m a talker. I love to have long conversations where both parties get to wax rhetoric about deeply philosophical topics, ranging anywhere from existentialism to education. Nothing lights up my day like a conversation with someone who challenges my thinking. I like it when my thinking is rocked, because it either changes or is strengthened.

Do undergrads crave that any more? Not from each other, it seems.

The mess hall ( do they call it that any more? ) showed a different scene. There were a couple of folks studying individually and a few others chatting. Since it was 3:30ish, there weren’t many folks around. The conversations I did overhear (read: eavesdropped) were about circumstance. Who did what, who went where, and with whom, etc. All par for the course. What I did notice that further irked me is that half of the people having face-to-face conversations were also chatting with someone via cell phone.

Is that what we’ve taught our kids? That people do not deserve our full attention?

Do I do that to my daughters? Do I ever give her more than one ear while I am typing away?

Am I teaching her that one ear is enough?

A professor of mine remarked, following a 3 hour rich discussion on some of the more basic learning theories that freshmen cannot handle such a discussion because is requires more attention than they are used to having to allocate.

Am I teaching my daughter to allocate attention to two things at once?

Is my drive for productivity sending her the wrong signal? Hmmm..time for some self-check analysis.

Truth is, this whole post has been written whilst listening to Brave Saint Saturn on my iPod, which means, to be honest, I have only given it half my attention.

Ouch. Reality checks hurt…

Internet Speed Test Meme

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Posted on 7th February 2007 by Chris in Web Resources

This is a completely lame attempt to start a meme, more for my own curiosity than anything. If high speed internet access is considered a strong flattening affect, it would be interesting to see how fast yours is!

I challenge anyone and everyone to visit http://www.internetfrog.com/mypc/speedtest/

and take the test, then post the image of the results, like Wes did.

Here’s mine, this is from home. I may do another from school just for curiosity’s sake. I have never seen this site before so there is no chance of it being cached.

Your turn. If you participate, use the tag speedtest07

Meme fun!

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More signs of the times…

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Posted on 1st February 2007 by Chris in General

Got gas at Sam’s Club the other day, saw this.

we do not accept cash

I can recall the days when Sam’s only accepted cash and Discover cards, now this. Signs of an unfolding apocalypse, fer sure.