Well, I just looked back at all my posts and I must say that this has been somewhat different than I had imagined. For one thing, I actually kind of liked the blogging, contrary to what I initially thought (guess I have a big mouth), although the glitches in trying to comment have been frustrating. Even though I have used a number of these tools before, I think I did my part by investigating the ones I hadn't tried, too. This was a lot to squeeze into 3 months; I just started this in mid-January, although I guess others began in the fall. So I got a late start, but I'm happy that I made it all the way through. I think the best way to summarize is to say which tools I found most and least useful. So here goes.
Prezi was definitely very useful; I have been using it for a couple of years now and will probably continue to do so. Indeed, I ran out of time to convert a PowerPoint to Prezi for my class yesterday and had to use the old PowerPoint and really hated its limitations after using Prezi. It really does help to jazz up your visuals and tell your narrative in a somewhat different fashion.
Blogging was great; I'm thinking about figuring out how to use Blogger in a class next year. I would definitely like to continue with this.
Regarding productivity tools, I LOVE Drop Box and will be using that, I'm sure, for some time to come. With this and with Prezi, I am moving slowly but surely into the "cloud." It's great to be able to access your stuff from any computer.
I'm more reluctant to do social media, but I did introduce my students to Pinterest the other day and they took to it immediately. Of course, they are social media users, unlike me! So I think that their Pinterest board projects for the Material Culture course are going to turn out well. I created another board on Material Culture; I thought that might be a way to keep some links to images to show in classes. As I get more into it, I may find other uses. I find it disconcerting, however, that people comment on your pins and such; I just am not a social media person, I guess.
I am less enthusiastic about Diigo (which never did get back to me on my application for an educator account, by the way), although I can see some potential for it. I'm not sure how much I'll use it. I am much less enthusiastic about the Google Reader, especially since they are discontinuing it, but maybe I'll try another one. I don't know, because I find it daunting when I go on there and there are hundreds of unread stories. I end up just marking them all as read, which defeats the purpose, I suppose!
As for my last three, photo sharing, audio/visual, and collaborative spaces, I had some difficulties with those but I also cleared some hurdles. I figured out (with help from TOEP, but NOT from the Google instructions) how to embed my photo slideshow from Picasa and my Youtube video. That felt like a HUGE accomplishment! I can see some possibilities for doing small embedded slide shows for class materials, perhaps. I do use Youtube a lot in my classes, as it is easy to embed the videos in Prezi. I am not too sure whether I will make use of the collaborative tools, but I am rather intrigued by VoiceThread and will think about how I might use it. I also want to explore Jing or some such tool to record short screencasts about how to do certain formatting things, and perhaps how to do research as well. I could see that as a useful tool. I would like to explore the journaling tool, Penzu, for use in my consumer culture class, too.
On the whole, this has been a valuable experience. Not surprisingly, I have had trouble with some tools and have liked others. I have learned about a few that I think will become very much a part of my teaching in the future. I have spent a lot of time on this, and if I had a suggestion for future iterations of TOEP, it would be to be more realistic about the time commitment for this project. I seem to recall reading that one could spend 15 minutes to a couple hours each week; even for the ones where I had experience I spent a lot more than 15 minutes! And I would also emphasize that it should be done over a year rather than half a semester! But the reason I did this was to force myself to explore these tools, and it certainly did get me to do that. So I am happy I did it and thankful to those of you who put it all together!
Friday, April 5, 2013
Other Tools
After looking through the various options, I chose one of those on the top 100 to discuss and will also discuss another one that wasn't on the lists but that I have been using. I looked at Penzu, which caught my eye because it was an online journaling tool. I'm a big journaler on my travels, but I also have my students do journals in one of my classes. I examined this, and it seems to include more than just journaling (assignments, class management stuff), but it looks like it would be something I could use for this journal assignment. It has an education option, which might be useful. I like that using the class option, I could comment on their journals, and I think it's cool that the journals look like paper and you can have 'cursive' writing (even though we now have some students who cannot read this, sadly). So I may explore and use this next year when I teach this class again. If you want to explore it, click on the Penzu above.
I also think Wordle is cool, the ability to create a word cloud of a text. There seem to be some other vehicles for doing this as well. I was thinking I could maybe use this with students--have them make a Wordle of their paper to figure out the key themes and terms.
The tool that I have been using is Lulu, an online self-publisher. There are any number of these, as I found when I was doing research last fall. I was teaching a senior seminar on local history, and I had the brilliant idea of collecting and publishing the students' essays in a book, which we could then give to our community partners (the local museums and libraries where they did their research). The students, being history geeks, were insanely excited about publishing a book. After reading some reviews, it seemed that Lulu was the best option. To make a long story short, I had all the students send me their final essays to compile into the book (I'd have made them do the work, but there just isn't enough time in the semester!). Lulu provides a template, and you just put everything in a Word document in the same size (in our case 5.5 x 8), then upload it to the template, use their cover "wizard" to make a cover, and voila, a book is coming your way (once you pay for it). Of course, nothing is ever that easy, but what made this difficult was not Lulu but my students' lack of formatting knowledge and uniformity. I found out in doing this that almost all of them did not know how to do hanging indent for their bibliographies and had just used returns and indents to achieve their hanging indent. Needless to say, when I put their essays into a smaller format, this did NOT work out. So I had to manually delete all the indents and returns and change them to actual hanging indents. And let's not even get into the student who had used Pages, which did NOT convert well at all! But after a lot of playing with the formatting, I finally was able to upload a pretty decent looking version into the template, make a cover, and order copies. Our wonderful dean agreed to pay for this venture into student publishing, and it was quite cheap (the books ended up costing just over $7). I ordered them on Tuesday and by Thursday I had received a notice that they had shipped. So the world of on-demand publishing is quite quick. I'd say this is really changing publishing (and have read some stuff to this effect). It certainly works nicely for a class project, and the local historical institutions will be happy to have a nice-looking copy of the research the students did (as will the students and their families, of course). I tried to embed a preview but Blogger wouldn't accept the HTML, so here is a link to the book preview: Lulu book preview.
I would definitely recommend Lulu to colleagues, with some caveats that you must have very strict guidelines for student submissions for this type of project. Uniformity of formatting is necessary! I haven't really used Penzu yet, so I don't know if I can recommend it, but it looks like it could be a good tool.
I also think Wordle is cool, the ability to create a word cloud of a text. There seem to be some other vehicles for doing this as well. I was thinking I could maybe use this with students--have them make a Wordle of their paper to figure out the key themes and terms.
The tool that I have been using is Lulu, an online self-publisher. There are any number of these, as I found when I was doing research last fall. I was teaching a senior seminar on local history, and I had the brilliant idea of collecting and publishing the students' essays in a book, which we could then give to our community partners (the local museums and libraries where they did their research). The students, being history geeks, were insanely excited about publishing a book. After reading some reviews, it seemed that Lulu was the best option. To make a long story short, I had all the students send me their final essays to compile into the book (I'd have made them do the work, but there just isn't enough time in the semester!). Lulu provides a template, and you just put everything in a Word document in the same size (in our case 5.5 x 8), then upload it to the template, use their cover "wizard" to make a cover, and voila, a book is coming your way (once you pay for it). Of course, nothing is ever that easy, but what made this difficult was not Lulu but my students' lack of formatting knowledge and uniformity. I found out in doing this that almost all of them did not know how to do hanging indent for their bibliographies and had just used returns and indents to achieve their hanging indent. Needless to say, when I put their essays into a smaller format, this did NOT work out. So I had to manually delete all the indents and returns and change them to actual hanging indents. And let's not even get into the student who had used Pages, which did NOT convert well at all! But after a lot of playing with the formatting, I finally was able to upload a pretty decent looking version into the template, make a cover, and order copies. Our wonderful dean agreed to pay for this venture into student publishing, and it was quite cheap (the books ended up costing just over $7). I ordered them on Tuesday and by Thursday I had received a notice that they had shipped. So the world of on-demand publishing is quite quick. I'd say this is really changing publishing (and have read some stuff to this effect). It certainly works nicely for a class project, and the local historical institutions will be happy to have a nice-looking copy of the research the students did (as will the students and their families, of course). I tried to embed a preview but Blogger wouldn't accept the HTML, so here is a link to the book preview: Lulu book preview.
I would definitely recommend Lulu to colleagues, with some caveats that you must have very strict guidelines for student submissions for this type of project. Uniformity of formatting is necessary! I haven't really used Penzu yet, so I don't know if I can recommend it, but it looks like it could be a good tool.
Collaborative Spaces
I took a quick look at both ooVoo and Google Hangouts and didn't see what I would use them for, although perhaps if I was teaching online the video call/conference thing might be useful. I could certainly see using these in a social setting to chat with friends or relatives, especially far flung ones. I could see them possibly being useful for conferences or meetings as well.
I spent more time looking at VoiceThread. I looked at the History of Women in Art example and found it an interesting way to hold a discussion. I liked the ability to "draw" on the image while commenting, and I liked the option of either talking or writing one's response. I could see this being great for online courses, but maybe even for a traditional classroom based course. I've tried using discussion forum in Angel with my students, but they don't seem to engage much with each other. Of course, in this format they didn't either, for that matter. But to have the students comment and then listen to/read all the comments would be a cool assignment. It would seem to work particularly well for analyzing a visual source such as the paintings in the example. When I went on the VoiceThread site, I liked that it could be used with your campus course management system. But it sounded like the campus would have to have a license, and so far as I know Fredonia does not. But I'd be interested in testing this if we had access.
I spent more time looking at VoiceThread. I looked at the History of Women in Art example and found it an interesting way to hold a discussion. I liked the ability to "draw" on the image while commenting, and I liked the option of either talking or writing one's response. I could see this being great for online courses, but maybe even for a traditional classroom based course. I've tried using discussion forum in Angel with my students, but they don't seem to engage much with each other. Of course, in this format they didn't either, for that matter. But to have the students comment and then listen to/read all the comments would be a cool assignment. It would seem to work particularly well for analyzing a visual source such as the paintings in the example. When I went on the VoiceThread site, I liked that it could be used with your campus course management system. But it sounded like the campus would have to have a license, and so far as I know Fredonia does not. But I'd be interested in testing this if we had access.
Audio/Video
I have friends who have used podcasts but have never tried doing it myself. It seems a bit daunting to me, frankly. I looked at the material, found the video on podcasting from New Zealand to be amusing, but do not see myself doing this in the near future. I had not looked at Vimeo before, and found it rather interesting source of videos, but I'm not sure how it differs from YouTube really. I also looked at Jing. I could see that this would be useful in terms of showing students how to do certain things. Indeed, having just discovered that my senior honors students didn't know how to do hanging indent on Word, I can see that being able to record a little screencast of me doing it might be useful to the students (and make my life easier, too). So maybe I'll think about doing that for my history methods class in the fall. I know about Khan academy, and hadn't thought much about how this type of teaching might be useful for history, but this could be one way (and simple enough that I might be able to actually do it!).
I looked on Vimeo for education related videos and didn't really find anything that interested me (in the first few pages). So I turned to YouTube, the old reliable and found this video called The Higher Education Bubble. It uses cartoon drawing animation to take on the high cost of education and the increasingly higher amounts of student debt that our graduates are accumulating. This is something that really bothers me, particularly as there is no way to get rid of this debt, even if you declare bankruptcy. A bubble indeed, I think. I am going to try to embed it; I hope it will be more successful than the attempt to embed the slide show!
hope it works.
I looked on Vimeo for education related videos and didn't really find anything that interested me (in the first few pages). So I turned to YouTube, the old reliable and found this video called The Higher Education Bubble. It uses cartoon drawing animation to take on the high cost of education and the increasingly higher amounts of student debt that our graduates are accumulating. This is something that really bothers me, particularly as there is no way to get rid of this debt, even if you declare bankruptcy. A bubble indeed, I think. I am going to try to embed it; I hope it will be more successful than the attempt to embed the slide show!
hope it works.
Photo Sharing
I looked at Flickr; it might be worth getting an account. I liked a couple of the features, such as the ability to map your vacation photos and to create galleries. I have used Flickr Commons before; it's a great source of photos. I already had a Picasa account, so I put up a small album of photos I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had no difficulty uploading the photos from iPhoto, but it seemed trickier to upload them directly from Picasa. I did succeed in doing one that way. I also added some descriptive captions. I study American cultural history and these photos illustrate some of the material culture of the nineteenth century, specifically in terms of household furnishings.
Where I did run into problems is with having too many different mail accounts that are Google. Because I started in Picasa Web on my gmail and then switched to my Fredonia account to do the blog, I lost the Picasa. Don't really understand why it cannot all be linked, since it's all Google! Since I cannot open both Google mail accounts in the same browser, it means I cannot upload the album, since I seem to not have access to my other Picasa web account from the Fredonia email. This is just one of my many frustrating encounters with the Web 2.0.
So I think I got this. I had to download the album to Picasa, sign into Picasa from my Fredonia account, then upload the album to THAT Picasa web album. Then follow the steps to embed the slide show. Fingers crossed that it works. Rather too complicated, if you ask me; I thought Web 2.0 was supposed to simplify life!
Okay, after three attempts to embed the slideshow, following the instructions link on TOEP, I failed miserably. So I have put a link below the slideshow instead. Also tried to insert a photo by clicking on the "insert image" but it told me that it was not available! Again, way too much trouble!!!
Okay, I figured out how to do it after embedding the video. Either the instructions on the photo sharing left out the crucial step of having to embed the code in HTML mode, or I missed it. The instructions on the video TOEP did include that step. Yeeha. The Met slide show if you please:
Where I did run into problems is with having too many different mail accounts that are Google. Because I started in Picasa Web on my gmail and then switched to my Fredonia account to do the blog, I lost the Picasa. Don't really understand why it cannot all be linked, since it's all Google! Since I cannot open both Google mail accounts in the same browser, it means I cannot upload the album, since I seem to not have access to my other Picasa web account from the Fredonia email. This is just one of my many frustrating encounters with the Web 2.0.
So I think I got this. I had to download the album to Picasa, sign into Picasa from my Fredonia account, then upload the album to THAT Picasa web album. Then follow the steps to embed the slide show. Fingers crossed that it works. Rather too complicated, if you ask me; I thought Web 2.0 was supposed to simplify life!
Okay, after three attempts to embed the slideshow, following the instructions link on TOEP, I failed miserably. So I have put a link below the slideshow instead. Also tried to insert a photo by clicking on the "insert image" but it told me that it was not available! Again, way too much trouble!!!
Okay, I figured out how to do it after embedding the video. Either the instructions on the photo sharing left out the crucial step of having to embed the code in HTML mode, or I missed it. The instructions on the video TOEP did include that step. Yeeha. The Met slide show if you please:
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Social Bookmarking
I got signed up with Diigo easily enough, and filled out an application for the educator account. I still haven't heard back on that, but I explored Diigo with my basic account. I decided to just use the Diigolet while I was testing it, so I dragged that to my toolbar with no problem. When I tried to use it, however, big problem--it kept asking me to log in (even though I was already), when I logged in, it would just say that Diigolet failed. I got frustrated and gave up, then came back to it today and tried posting it as a bug in the User forum. Then found it listed as a bug with Firefox, and a suggested fix was to allow third-party cookies or put diigo.com as an exception. I did the latter, and voila, it worked.
Now this leads me to a concern I have with all these Web 2.0 tools. It seems like they want to leave cookies of all sorts, or in the case of blogging, won't work because of cookies, in which case you're supposed to clear out all your cache and cookies to make a dumb comment on a blog. I am not sure if this problem is specific to Firefox, and perhaps another browser such as Chrome works better. Maybe I'll try Chrome, as has been suggested to me. When I find time.
Anyway, back to Diigo. I added a few things to my library. One is an article from the Center for History and New Media about the benefits and perils of the wealth of primary historical sources being digitized and available on the Internet at the Library of Congress and elsewhere. Another is an article on Newport and leisure, which I can use in my course on Consumer Culture, where I talk about conspicuous consumption and use Newport as an example. The other two are biographies of a woman who wrote an article that I am going to use in the book I'm working on. So it's a variety of things. I highlighted some things on them, and did a few sticky notes, and created tags. You can check out my diigo library here. Finally, I checked out a few of the most popular bookmarked sites. I saw the tags for the articles, but didn't see any comments or highlighting when I clicked on them. So I'm not sure how that works. My favorite of the ones I looked at was Slate's piece on Google Reader joining the "graveyard of dead Google products." It had tombstones for all the different dead products, and you can click on it to place flowers on the graves. If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth a giggle: Google graveyard. I found this particularly funny since I just had to open a Google Reader account for TOEP. Another danger of the ole Web 2.0, I guess.
Now this leads me to a concern I have with all these Web 2.0 tools. It seems like they want to leave cookies of all sorts, or in the case of blogging, won't work because of cookies, in which case you're supposed to clear out all your cache and cookies to make a dumb comment on a blog. I am not sure if this problem is specific to Firefox, and perhaps another browser such as Chrome works better. Maybe I'll try Chrome, as has been suggested to me. When I find time.
Anyway, back to Diigo. I added a few things to my library. One is an article from the Center for History and New Media about the benefits and perils of the wealth of primary historical sources being digitized and available on the Internet at the Library of Congress and elsewhere. Another is an article on Newport and leisure, which I can use in my course on Consumer Culture, where I talk about conspicuous consumption and use Newport as an example. The other two are biographies of a woman who wrote an article that I am going to use in the book I'm working on. So it's a variety of things. I highlighted some things on them, and did a few sticky notes, and created tags. You can check out my diigo library here. Finally, I checked out a few of the most popular bookmarked sites. I saw the tags for the articles, but didn't see any comments or highlighting when I clicked on them. So I'm not sure how that works. My favorite of the ones I looked at was Slate's piece on Google Reader joining the "graveyard of dead Google products." It had tombstones for all the different dead products, and you can click on it to place flowers on the graves. If you haven't seen this yet, it's worth a giggle: Google graveyard. I found this particularly funny since I just had to open a Google Reader account for TOEP. Another danger of the ole Web 2.0, I guess.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Blog comment frustration
This is a call for help! I am having a problem trying to comment on blogs. I have tried this choosing both "Google account" and "Open ID" and putting in my blog URL. Neither works. When I hit "post," my comments disappear and nothing is posted. Now, I did comment earlier (Presentation Tools entry) on my own blog and it worked fine. Today I tried it and it won't work. I have tried to post comments on several people's blogs without success. I looked up the comments help on Blogger and followed the directions. I must be missing something, so perhaps someone could enlighten me!
Update: I was able to post a comment successfully to a blog that was done on Word Press, but have been unsuccessful with Blogger.
Update: I was able to post a comment successfully to a blog that was done on Word Press, but have been unsuccessful with Blogger.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Newsreader
I have never tried the newsreader before, and find it a bit off-putting. I don't really keep up with a lot of blogs or online media, other than my NY Times account. I am old-fashioned enough to subscribe to an actual newspaper and read it every morning! But I set up an account and subscribed to a couple of general news feeds, such as Huff Post. And then I found a couple of museum blogs for the New-York Historical Society and the American Antiquarian Society, and set up those subscriptions. I teach public history courses, so I thought those could be useful. It was easy enough to subscribe, but I'm not sure how much I will really use this tool. Time will tell, I guess. I cannot think offhand of how I could use it for teaching; perhaps in a public history course I could have students subscribe to a museum blog?
Productivity Tools
I explored Google Docs and Dropbox. I find Dropbox quite useful for work, as I can work on lectures and documents from home or at work. I have been using it a lot for preparing for my classes. I haven't used the sharing or collaboration features, however.
I have used the collaborative features (to an extent) with Google Drive and Google Sites. I had students develop exhibits in a local history course using Google Sites, but they (and I) found it clunky to use. I haven't tried it recently. Last semester I learned about Google Docs in a workshop on campus, and then used it for two of my course projects. For one course, I created a shared document to which students could post the biographies they had researched and written. In this way we created a class "Biographical Dictionary" of Industrial America, which the students then had to read and discuss in class. I also created an instruction document. I was generally pleased with how this worked, and include a link: HIST 330 Industrial America Biographies. For my research seminar I used Google Drive for a peer editing assignment. Students had to post their rough drafts and provide access (for comments) to their peer editors, who had to read and comment on the drafts. Again, this worked well, with only minor glitches.
In sum, I would use Google Drive again for course assignments, although I am not doing so this semester, as I do not have an appropriate assignment. I also will continue to use Dropbox, and may explore the collaborative features as I grow more comfortable with it. I could see this more as a tool for collaborating with colleagues at other universities, for instance.
I have used the collaborative features (to an extent) with Google Drive and Google Sites. I had students develop exhibits in a local history course using Google Sites, but they (and I) found it clunky to use. I haven't tried it recently. Last semester I learned about Google Docs in a workshop on campus, and then used it for two of my course projects. For one course, I created a shared document to which students could post the biographies they had researched and written. In this way we created a class "Biographical Dictionary" of Industrial America, which the students then had to read and discuss in class. I also created an instruction document. I was generally pleased with how this worked, and include a link: HIST 330 Industrial America Biographies. For my research seminar I used Google Drive for a peer editing assignment. Students had to post their rough drafts and provide access (for comments) to their peer editors, who had to read and comment on the drafts. Again, this worked well, with only minor glitches.
In sum, I would use Google Drive again for course assignments, although I am not doing so this semester, as I do not have an appropriate assignment. I also will continue to use Dropbox, and may explore the collaborative features as I grow more comfortable with it. I could see this more as a tool for collaborating with colleagues at other universities, for instance.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Blogs and Wikis
I have belatedly looked at this exercise, weeks after starting my blog. It helped to clarify some of the differences between blogs and wikis. I have found Blogger quite easy to use, and would be interested in maybe using it in a class in the future, if the logistics wouldn't be too awful.
I have experience using a Wiki from an NEH summer seminar I went to hosted by Bard Graduate School. They use Wiki.dot, so I got a bit of experience using that. I found it a little more confusing than the Blogger, but I imagine if I used it regularly, that would go away. Interestingly enough, a number of the professors there use Wikis to organize their courses and for student assignments and such. I thought it was pretty cool the way they did that, but the tech guy there pointed out that you would have to have strong tech support for both set-up and maintenance. So I am skeptical of its efficacy at Fredonia. Of course, Bard's is a very small, graduate student only program, and one with the $$ to hire amazing tech support!
I have experience using a Wiki from an NEH summer seminar I went to hosted by Bard Graduate School. They use Wiki.dot, so I got a bit of experience using that. I found it a little more confusing than the Blogger, but I imagine if I used it regularly, that would go away. Interestingly enough, a number of the professors there use Wikis to organize their courses and for student assignments and such. I thought it was pretty cool the way they did that, but the tech guy there pointed out that you would have to have strong tech support for both set-up and maintenance. So I am skeptical of its efficacy at Fredonia. Of course, Bard's is a very small, graduate student only program, and one with the $$ to hire amazing tech support!
Social Media
This one is a bit of a hard one for me. I have resisted joining Facebook for years (and continue to do so), and really don't have any interest in Twitter either. I found out when looking at the list of social media sites, however, that I do use some, such as Yelp. I am signed up for Linked In but don't really use it; it doesn't seem useful to me. I just joined because people I knew kept inviting me. But then I don't see why once I go to the site. I was intrigued by Fakebook, and may use that for a class in the future.
So it was easy to choose Pinterest here, especially because I had heard a speaker at a recent Digital Humanities conference suggest using it for a student project. I am teaching Material Culture this semester, and had decided that my students could use it to create a display (board, in correct terminology) related to the artifact that they are choosing to research. So I read up on it and joined Pinterest. At first I found it confusing. They ask you to "follow" 5 boards at the outset, and then they all show up somewhat randomly on your home screen. I was confused by that. But then I created my own board about places I'd like to travel to; it is a work in progress, as there are many many places I'd love to go to! I found that it is very easy to pin things, and you just write a brief caption and it's done. I pinned several photos of places I want to or plan to go to, and I also re-pinned one from another travel board, and added a comment to a pin about Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica. I haven't yet explored whether there are ways to organize your boards, which I think there are.
In sum, I think this tool is fun, but a bit limited. If all you want to do is show pictures with short captions, it's great, and I think it will work well for the assignment I have planned for my students. But it doesn't allow for much textual analysis, and I don't know how much one can organize an "exhibit" on a board. I haven't found a way to do so, anyway. Here is a link to my pinterest board.
So it was easy to choose Pinterest here, especially because I had heard a speaker at a recent Digital Humanities conference suggest using it for a student project. I am teaching Material Culture this semester, and had decided that my students could use it to create a display (board, in correct terminology) related to the artifact that they are choosing to research. So I read up on it and joined Pinterest. At first I found it confusing. They ask you to "follow" 5 boards at the outset, and then they all show up somewhat randomly on your home screen. I was confused by that. But then I created my own board about places I'd like to travel to; it is a work in progress, as there are many many places I'd love to go to! I found that it is very easy to pin things, and you just write a brief caption and it's done. I pinned several photos of places I want to or plan to go to, and I also re-pinned one from another travel board, and added a comment to a pin about Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica. I haven't yet explored whether there are ways to organize your boards, which I think there are.
In sum, I think this tool is fun, but a bit limited. If all you want to do is show pictures with short captions, it's great, and I think it will work well for the assignment I have planned for my students. But it doesn't allow for much textual analysis, and I don't know how much one can organize an "exhibit" on a board. I haven't found a way to do so, anyway. Here is a link to my pinterest board.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Citation Management
I have been using Zotero, off and on, for several years now. I looked at EndNote Web briefly, and it seems to be fairly similar in what it can do. The fact that I do not use it regularly for my own work suggests that I have not yet seen it to be that useful, for reasons I'll get back to later. I have found it most useful when I am teaching research methods courses to my history students.
The good: Many students really like it to collect the documentation on the sources they find. I like that I can create a group library and thereby keep track of their research progress (to an extent, anyway). I have done two courses that focused on local history, and we have created group libraries, arranged topically, of locally available sources on Chautauqua County history. Another professor in my department, working with one of the librarians, created a Zotero library of local history sources on campus, to which classes such as mine can add. Thus, the campus will have a database of local history sources. Finally, Zotero is relatively easy to use, and I love the option of being able to easily import Web pages, article links, etc.; many of these have a little icon that you can click on to automatically add it to your library. You can get a plug-in for Word that enables it to create notes and bibliographies for documents. I love that the library is both online and easily accessible at the bottom of your browser screen; I believe they have made it accessible on other browsers now, although it used to be just Firefox.
The bad: Zotero can be a bit clunky to use, and unless one uses it regularly, it is easy to forget the basics. The navigation isn't as intuitive as I'd like. One of the biggest shortcomings isn't really the fault of Zotero, but leads to problems when my students use it construct their notes and bibliography. The beauty of the program is one can just import the citation to one's document. But, as I tell my students, it is a computer and what gets put in is what will come out. So if you pull a citation from JStor and the title of the article is in all caps, that is how it will show up in the bibliography. And I will then mark it down and tell them they need to correct their citations! So I have to remind them constantly that they are responsible for cleaning up their citations. One issue that annoys me is that you cannot just "move" citations from library to library. Yes, you can move a citation, but it stays in the original spot and is just copied to the new library. So you now have it on your computer twice. And if you decide to just delete it from one of those, it deletes the citation entirely from all your libraries. So I find it difficult to organize well.
Bottom line: Despite its shortcomings, I find it most useful as a tool to assist my students when they are learning to collect, organize, and properly cite their sources. Because of its shortcomings, I do not find it particularly useful for collecting and organizing my own research sources. That said, I do find it useful as a place to collect articles and other materials that I encounter on the Internet. I can save these on Zotero and go back to check them out later. I will continue to use it sporadically for my own research, but I will also continue to use it regularly for my history research courses.
Here is a link to a group library my students made last semester in the history senior honors seminar on local history: HIST 499 Local History Zotero Library Fall 2012.
The good: Many students really like it to collect the documentation on the sources they find. I like that I can create a group library and thereby keep track of their research progress (to an extent, anyway). I have done two courses that focused on local history, and we have created group libraries, arranged topically, of locally available sources on Chautauqua County history. Another professor in my department, working with one of the librarians, created a Zotero library of local history sources on campus, to which classes such as mine can add. Thus, the campus will have a database of local history sources. Finally, Zotero is relatively easy to use, and I love the option of being able to easily import Web pages, article links, etc.; many of these have a little icon that you can click on to automatically add it to your library. You can get a plug-in for Word that enables it to create notes and bibliographies for documents. I love that the library is both online and easily accessible at the bottom of your browser screen; I believe they have made it accessible on other browsers now, although it used to be just Firefox.
The bad: Zotero can be a bit clunky to use, and unless one uses it regularly, it is easy to forget the basics. The navigation isn't as intuitive as I'd like. One of the biggest shortcomings isn't really the fault of Zotero, but leads to problems when my students use it construct their notes and bibliography. The beauty of the program is one can just import the citation to one's document. But, as I tell my students, it is a computer and what gets put in is what will come out. So if you pull a citation from JStor and the title of the article is in all caps, that is how it will show up in the bibliography. And I will then mark it down and tell them they need to correct their citations! So I have to remind them constantly that they are responsible for cleaning up their citations. One issue that annoys me is that you cannot just "move" citations from library to library. Yes, you can move a citation, but it stays in the original spot and is just copied to the new library. So you now have it on your computer twice. And if you decide to just delete it from one of those, it deletes the citation entirely from all your libraries. So I find it difficult to organize well.
Bottom line: Despite its shortcomings, I find it most useful as a tool to assist my students when they are learning to collect, organize, and properly cite their sources. Because of its shortcomings, I do not find it particularly useful for collecting and organizing my own research sources. That said, I do find it useful as a place to collect articles and other materials that I encounter on the Internet. I can save these on Zotero and go back to check them out later. I will continue to use it sporadically for my own research, but I will also continue to use it regularly for my history research courses.
Here is a link to a group library my students made last semester in the history senior honors seminar on local history: HIST 499 Local History Zotero Library Fall 2012.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Presentation Tools
So I chose this category today since I was short on time and have already used Prezi many times. But I did investigate a couple of the other online presentation tools suggested here. SlideRocket is described as PowerPoint on steroids, and I looked at a couple of the presentations there, which did look pretty much like gussied up Power Points. I also checked out the Design Guide for Rockstars, which suggested that one could make a presentation that would look much more creative and less PowerPoint-esque, but also that it might take some time and talent to do so.
The other tool I looked at here was Glogster, which sounded intriguing as a potential venue for student presentations. The video seemed geared at K-12 teachers, however, which was less interesting to me. The problem I found with Glogster was that its site was confusing. I went to the Glogpedia at the EDU Glogster site in order to look at some examples, but found there that one had to have a paid license to view any of them. I could not find a way to see an example of a Glogster. On the regular Glogster site I could find examples, however, but they were rather different. Bottom line is, the concept of a digital poster is cool, but I would like to find more out about this before jumping in and opening an account, and this seems difficult from the website. Therefore, I probably will not pursue this one.
This brings me to Prezi, which I have been using for about a year and a half now. I like Prezi a lot, as I find it more dynamic than PowerPoint, and I have been converting my course PowerPoints to Prezis. I will admit that I am not the most adventurous or creative of Prezi users; my creativity tends to vary in direct proportion to the time I have to spend on the project. But I love how easily one can integrate videos, music, and images, and how easy it is to convert PowerPoints. I find Prezi frustrating at times; it changes quite frequently, which can be confusing. Just when you figure it out, they change it. But I will say that most of the changes have been for the better, and have made it easier to use. I have even given four workshops introducing Prezi on my campus. I have also shown my students how to use it in a couple of classes, and some students have used it to create class presentations. So this is definitely an online presentation tool that I recommend enthusiastically. There is a bit of a learning curve; it takes some time and effort to learn it well, as with most of these Web 2.0 tools. I consider myself to be still in the learning mode, but am considering actually paying for the upgraded license so I can have the desktop version. Here is a link to a Prezi I created last semester for my course, Industrial America 1890-1920: 'Women and Progressive Reform".
The other tool I looked at here was Glogster, which sounded intriguing as a potential venue for student presentations. The video seemed geared at K-12 teachers, however, which was less interesting to me. The problem I found with Glogster was that its site was confusing. I went to the Glogpedia at the EDU Glogster site in order to look at some examples, but found there that one had to have a paid license to view any of them. I could not find a way to see an example of a Glogster. On the regular Glogster site I could find examples, however, but they were rather different. Bottom line is, the concept of a digital poster is cool, but I would like to find more out about this before jumping in and opening an account, and this seems difficult from the website. Therefore, I probably will not pursue this one.
This brings me to Prezi, which I have been using for about a year and a half now. I like Prezi a lot, as I find it more dynamic than PowerPoint, and I have been converting my course PowerPoints to Prezis. I will admit that I am not the most adventurous or creative of Prezi users; my creativity tends to vary in direct proportion to the time I have to spend on the project. But I love how easily one can integrate videos, music, and images, and how easy it is to convert PowerPoints. I find Prezi frustrating at times; it changes quite frequently, which can be confusing. Just when you figure it out, they change it. But I will say that most of the changes have been for the better, and have made it easier to use. I have even given four workshops introducing Prezi on my campus. I have also shown my students how to use it in a couple of classes, and some students have used it to create class presentations. So this is definitely an online presentation tool that I recommend enthusiastically. There is a bit of a learning curve; it takes some time and effort to learn it well, as with most of these Web 2.0 tools. I consider myself to be still in the learning mode, but am considering actually paying for the upgraded license so I can have the desktop version. Here is a link to a Prezi I created last semester for my course, Industrial America 1890-1920: 'Women and Progressive Reform".
Sunday, February 3, 2013
week 1
After hearing the 7.5 habits, I would have to say that the one that is probably the most difficult for me is to view problems as challenges (#3). I tend to have a low tolerance for frustration, and the more frustrated I get, the stupider I tend to get. This, of course, is not good in most situations, but is particularly not a good trait when trying to learn new technology! So I am going to try to work on this. I did manage to learn Prezi, even if I still get frustrated a bit with it from time to time, so I know I can get through the learning curve for new technologies if sufficiently motivated. For some of them, I think I will be; for others, not so much.
As for the one that I find easiest, I guess I would say accepting responsibility for my learning (#2) (although perhaps blaming technology when I get frustrated is not a good example of that!). I like to learn new things of various kinds, whether it is learning about other societies and cultures (through both travel and reading) or learning new technologies to use in my teaching and research. I think that anyone who goes through the years of school required to get a Ph.D. is pretty much someone who accepts responsibility for learning.
Actually, in terms of hardest things, I would say that this blog will probably be one of the most difficult things for me to do. Not just the technology (with which I've already encountered frustrations, such as where do you find the "settings-basic" tab to change the privacy/permissions??), but with the very concept of blogging. I have never been one to keep a journal or diary. I do keep a travel journal on trips, but it isn't very reflective. So this kind of sharing will be rather difficult for me. But hey, I guess I have accomplished the first step anyway.
As for the one that I find easiest, I guess I would say accepting responsibility for my learning (#2) (although perhaps blaming technology when I get frustrated is not a good example of that!). I like to learn new things of various kinds, whether it is learning about other societies and cultures (through both travel and reading) or learning new technologies to use in my teaching and research. I think that anyone who goes through the years of school required to get a Ph.D. is pretty much someone who accepts responsibility for learning.
Actually, in terms of hardest things, I would say that this blog will probably be one of the most difficult things for me to do. Not just the technology (with which I've already encountered frustrations, such as where do you find the "settings-basic" tab to change the privacy/permissions??), but with the very concept of blogging. I have never been one to keep a journal or diary. I do keep a travel journal on trips, but it isn't very reflective. So this kind of sharing will be rather difficult for me. But hey, I guess I have accomplished the first step anyway.
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