'Tech Tips'
The use of Wikipedia for class assignments or as a citation source has been an ongoing debate. Some professors accept the website’s use, usually after encouraging their students to caution what they take from the website. Other professors absolutely abhor the use of the website by their students. Robert E. Cummings says that he has found a new way to incorporate the use of Wikipedia into his classrooms and makes a strong case for using it in higher education, particularly as a writing tool.
According to Cummings, detractors of Wikipedia’s use in higher education assignments have reasons to be concerned. Wikipedia, indeed, is an open source where essentially anyone can edit or create information concerning almost any subject. With this in mind, people who use the website do expose themselves to getting inaccurate information or are subject to relying on information that is unfounded.
On the other hand, Cummings believes that Wikipedia offers several advantages for students. He believes the major advantage to helping student essay writing with the use of Wikipedia is that students have audiences that are real and can provide plenty of immediate feedback to their writing. In his classes Cummings literally has his students post their work to the website for people all over the Internet to provide them with comments concerning their work. More importantly for the students, Cummings believes that students are writing and having more exposure to having having to write formally. According to Cummings,
“Composition assignments in Wikipedia frame writing as a collaborative practice hosted within a network. This arrangement seems much more predictive of the environment our students will find themselves writing in after they leave the composition classroom, both in later college courses (as they collaborate across networks with fellow students in coursework) or in the workplace (as they collaborate with co-workers to prepare reports, proposals, or Web pages).”
We invite you to read Cummings’ article and see if what he has to say can be beneficial in any of your classes.
March 20th, 2009
With all the encouragement to integrate active learning techniques into your teaching, it’s easy to get confused about what to use when. Specifically, deciding which technological tools to use can seem overwhelming. Three of the most common tools instructors use in their classes are blogs, wikis, and dicussion boards. To guide you in the process of choosing which tool to use, we have collected information and dveloped a chart.
It is important that you consider the answer to some important questions as you make your choice:
- What is the purpose of using the tools?
- What features are most important for you?
- What level of privacy do you need?
The answers to these questions and others can be found by looking at the chart. Make sure to use the left-most colomn labeled “Topic” to guide your selection.
You can download the document here.
And don’t forget that you can always schedule a consultation at the Center for help on how to use your tool in class by calling the Center at 372-6898 or emailing the Center at ctl@bgsu.edu.
March 13th, 2009
Here are just a few pictures from the Third Annual BGSU Teaching and Learning Fair, held on Friday, February 6, 2009 in the Bowen-Thompson Student Union. Barbara Millis, from the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Teaching and Learning Center, presented the keynote, Persisting with Passion: A Summary in Break-throughs in Teaching and Learning. For more information on presenters or the keynote, visit the CTL Fair site.
February 9th, 2009
One of the leaders in online publishing is Scribd. Scribd allows people to upload documents – which can be in the form of reports, brochures, books, spreadsheets, puzzles and games, etc. – to the Internet for sharing with millions of readers. The website also allows you to discuss work that belongs to other people. And, Scribd is free for users!
As per Scribd’s FAQs:
Scribd lets you publish and discover documents online. It is like a big online library where anyone can upload. We make use of a custom Flash document viewer that lets you display documents right in your Web browser.
Part of the idea behind Scribd is that everyone has a lot of documents sitting around on their computers that only they can read. With Scribd we hope to unlock this information by putting it on the web.
Scribd would a useful website for students, especially, graduate students to get feedback on term papers, thesis or dissertation chapters, and for providing feedback to other users. For professors Scribd could prove helpful in publishing pre-publication documents for feedback or learning about what other college instructors are doing in their field or another field.
Over the past couple years Scribd has steadily grown in its users and readership. Please take a look for yourself and see what you can share or discuss.
February 3rd, 2009
While the Internet has opened us to a world of information and sources, it can also cause problems in our classrooms. The Internet has provided our students with a wealth of websites that will sell, barter and even give away research papers, English papers and essays. How do you combat this in our classes?
In a recent article in T.H.E. Journal titled “e-cheating: Combating a 21st Century Challenge,” Kim McMurtry provides us with a list of 8 suggestions to combat this type of plagiarism:
- Take time to explain and discuss your academic honesty policy
- Design writing assignments with specific goals and instructions
- Know what’s available online before assigning a paper
- Give students enough time to do an assignment
- Require oral presentations of student papers or have students submit a letter of
transferal to you, explaining briefly their thesis statement, research process, etc
- Have students submit essays electronically
- When you suspect e-cheating, use a free full-text search engine like AltaVista or
Digital Integrity
- Consider subscribing to a plagiarism search service, like Plagiarism.org or
IntegriGuard
Read the entire article by clicking here
How have you dealt with e-cheating in your classes?
November 24th, 2008
Do you ever have a hard time finding books and sources to help you prepare for lectures and classes? Do you have a list of books that you would love to read, but just don’t have the time or money? Could your students benefit from free book viewing online? Well, Google has launched something that could help: Google Books.
Google Books allows you to search through a wide variety of books and even provides access to the content of those books. This means that you can read whole books online, although some authors and publishers only allow a few pages to be read. Google books categorizes books into subject matter, has a great searching capacity and even allows you to create your own library where you can recommend books and write reviews.
The topics that can be found within the archives of Google Books are vast. A simple search of books on teaching pulled up 131,582 results. This could be a tool that may help in your research and something that may help your students in your classes as well.
What do you think about Google Books?
November 17th, 2008
If you haven’t heard of Google Jockeying, you will probably be hearing or reading about it soon. Its popularity is growing quickly in higher education.
Here’s a quick example of how Google Jockeying works in the classroom:
An instructor is doing their presentation on the American Revolution or some other topic. At the same time there is a pre-designated member of the class is “Google-ing” (the student doesn’t have to use Google either, they can use any search engine they want) the different terms or aspects from the presentation, which students may want to know about. They are doing this with a projector attached to their computer for the entire class to see while they participate in the presentation or listen to the lecture. So, in the American Revolution discussion, the “Jockey” may Google a name like Lord Dunmore or pull up an image of a British soldier or display online links for students to read the Declaration of Independence.
Many instructors are finding Google Jockeying helpful for their students. It’s popularity is growing.
Link to more information about “Google Jockeying”:
<http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39391>
August 7th, 2008
Nicholas Carr recently wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly about what he believes the Internet is doing to people’s brains. Carr’s, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” asks the question over whether people are relying far too much on the Internet for instant access to information, and changing the ways we think and altering “our understanding of the world.”
Below are two short reactions to Carr’s popular article.
Reaction #1
Nicholas Carr may ask the question, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, but his clear answer is that it certainly isn’t helping us think critically or deeply. Carr draws some comparisons to other technological advances in history, including writing and the printing press, fairly noting that although certain prominent thinkers of the time were certain we would see detrimental results in society’s collective cognition, the opposite is generally true. Carr is obviously skeptical of a positive affect of technology on the brain and learning. He raises good questions that amount to a consideration of how much “concentration and contemplation” actually occurs with an increase in technology and the future outcome of this change in learning. Whether you are concerned or celebratory of the change technology has made in learning, addressing the philosophical issues of “What is important to learn?” and “How can we best learn it?” will remain at the forefront and Carr gives us such an opportunity to reflect.
Reaction #2“So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism,” is what Carr offers as a disclaimer after he essentially writes about the negative affects the Internet has on how people think and read. He proposes anecdotal evidence to support his assertion that the Internet is somehow controlling what people read, how they read, their reading and comprehension habits and, ultimately, how people think. He makes a formidable attempt to show how the giants of the Internet, like Google, have a predetermined plan to alter the web surfers intelligence. His argument is not the greatest defense of his overarching thesis, but he does ask a worthy question. It would be interesting to see what academic studies would say about how the Internet has morphed people’s minds.
Please take a look at Carr’s article and feel free to post your reaction or thoughts about it. Here is a link to Carr’s article: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
What do you think about the article and suppositions?
Click on the COMMENTS link below to get started!
July 14th, 2008
Many people are learning new words everyday by subscribing or going to the Merriam-Webster website or from Dictionary.com to expand their vocabulary or the size of their “word bank.” A brilliant resource for any educator can be found any day on the Ohio Learning Network’s “Resource of the Day.” Daily random tips from how to deal with aspects of everyday classroom teaching, up to tips concerning Distance Learning-it can all be found at:
http://www.oln.org/rss/rotd.php
The Ohio Learning Network even has a Search option where you can determine your search by topic, date, field of dates, and/or keywords. Please take a look at:
http://www.oln.org/rss/rotd_search.php
May 21st, 2008
Terry L. Herman, Melanie Alt, Daniel Lemmerbrock, Christopher Pappas, Todd Pavlack, Christopher Pittman and Mark Stevens (College of Technology)
Virtual Learning Environments: A Look into the Future
Michael Kudela (IDEAL) & Garrick L Ducat (Mercy College of NW Ohio)
Creative Commons: Share Your Work, Keep Your Rights and Learn from Others
Connie Molnar & Carolyn Matzinger (IDEAL)
The Metamorphosis of Biology 101: Face-to-face to Online Course Delivery
Carrie Rathsack (CTLT)
Today’s Digital Tools for Enhancing Future Learning
For more information about ODCE or the conference events and resources, including the keynote address by Chancellor, Eric Fingerhut:
March 10th, 2008
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