Author: Dale

How are college students using Wikipedia?

Dale 3 Comments

A recent study took a look at how and why students use Wikipedia. Here’s what they concluded:

Overall, college students use Wikipedia. But, they do so knowing its limitation. They use Wikipedia just as most of us do — because it is a quick way to get started and it has some, but not deep, credibility.

This research suggests that college students are not using Wikipedia as a way out of an assignment but more likely as a way into an assignment.

Why do students use Wikipedia for course–related research?
Why do students use Wikipedia for course–related research?

I would like to see a similar study done at the high school level.

It’s time to teach ‘Gadget School’

Dale

It’s not just students, we all need a little Gadget School from time-to-time. I’ve attended several staff meetings where more than one cellphone has been a disruption. (The phones with the most obnoxious Sir Mix-a-Lot inspired ringtones are always at the bottom of the owner’s bag.) Everyone looks at the faux pas with unforgiving disgust until it happens to them. 

Every movie, musical and play starts with a reminder for us to turn off gadgets such as cellphones. I think we should do this in our classrooms too. The gadgets our students carry are not going away. Exclaiming that “they shouldn’t even have them in class” isn’t realistic. We must work with these devices. Schools need to stop the bad technology behavior not the technology. 

Enter Gadget School. If we don’t show students proper gadget etiquette, who will? Just imagine restaurants in the future if we don’t teach tomorrow’s diners that it is not okay to jabber away on your cellphone between the salad and the main course. 

Here are a few simply Gadget School posters to get things start.

Please Silence Your Cellphones

Silencing a cellphone seems like common sense. Or is it? Some students put their phone on vibrate but during a quiz this can still be noisy. Talk to your students. Let them know that you’re trying to ban distractions not devices.

Ask permission to record others

Insist that students ask before they take pictures, record audio or grab a video using their gadget. It’s rude to record others without their knowledge. Students need to learn this or our future will be one giant paparazzi world.

That’s it for Gadget School for now but there will be more to come. Please share your suggests for other Gadget School topics in the comments below.

College should ‘invest green’ instead of ‘think green’

Dale

Recently, the University of Wisconsin Green Bay (UWGB) received some attention after they announced their plan to save money by switching the default email font from Arial to Century Gothic.

…we have decided to change the default font for Outlook across campus to Century Gothic. Of course, you may change back to a different default font if you wish, but we hope you will “think green” as you make your choice.

There are a lot of questions here and number one is, “Who still prints email?” Perhaps removing the ‘Print’ button from the default toolbar in Outlook would make more sense. I think that changing users’ behavior, while more difficult, will result in a larger savings because users carry the conservation strategies they’ve learned into other areas of their life. I think it would be better if UWGB spent some time encouraging users to look before they print. (Or they could ban those half page signatures that some people put at the bottom of every email message they send that includes all 14 ways to contact them, a cutesy logo and their three favorite Lombardi quotes.)

Another problem with this simple font change is the increased space the new font takes up. The study UWGB cited ranks 10pt Century Gothic higher than a 11pt Arial font.

Century Gothic is longer

UWGB is choosing a smaller font over a larger font while the smaller font still takes up more space and therefore more paper. A page of text printed in Arial will often take up two pages when printed out in Century Gothic.

UWGB might be excited to ‘think green’ but are they actually doing anything? How will they even know if this move is worth it? I didn’t see their plan to measure the results (intended or unintended) from this experiment.

The font change did get them some press but it also supported the idea that conservation and sustainable living is easy. That it can be achieved with a click of a mouse. Typical efficiency changes are not like this. They require a larger cost up front with the hopes of a long-term pay-off. Even the simple act of changing an incandescent light bulb to a compact florescent lamp requires the initial investment for the new bulbs and a lesson about how to properly handle breakage and dispose of them.

Along with teaching users to print less, perhaps UWGB should replace those ink jet printers with more efficient laser printers or convert all their printers so they print on both sides of the paper by default. Measures that ‘invest green’ and ‘teach green’ are more effective long-term approaches.

P.S. I can’t stand how the question mark looks in Century Gothic

Google can’t do this

Dale 1 Comment

Like many people, I often go to Google for answers. However, when you need to do calculations or access raw data, Wolfram Alpha easily beats Google.

For example, the other day I needed to know what date is 60 days after February 11th. Sure I could get a calendar and start counting but it only takes seconds to do this:

Below are a few of my other recent inquiries:

Start your own investigation or check out their examples to get an idea of Wolfram Alpha’s power.

Using Twitter with students has gotten easier

Dale 5 Comments

It’s been over two years since the last time I had my students send tweets during their field trip. The folks at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (one of our field trip stops) wrote a fun article about my students’ recent Twitter-filled visit.

Such may have been the disapproving sigh of an observer watching a busload of teenagers tour Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory last week. The 11th and 12th graders from Appleton, Wisconsin, spent an awful lot of time typing away on their cell phones. But be not dismayed, O horrified observer. They were just doing their homework. [read on…]

In two years, making this project work has gotten a lot easier. Here’s why:

  • a lot more students have cellphones with unlimited texting- and they all know how to text
  • many students have smart phones that allow easier tweeting via an app
  • students with iPod Touches just hopped on the public wifi they found available during the trip (we even had wifi on the bus!)
  • I didn’t have to explain Twitter to any of  the students- they all knew what it was and no one asked how to setup an account this time around
  • Twitter’s lists feature made grouping our field trip tweets super easy

This makes me think about what we’ll be able to do in two more years.

I do have two more things to add to my list of things that teachers should consider when using Twitter:

  • remind students that anyone will be able to read their tweets- they should never post about others unless they’re comfortable having that person read what they wrote
  • instruct the students to be discrete when they’re using their cellphone- ringers should be off and the activity of texting shouldn’t be any more disruptive than traditional note-taking

Lastly, check out the students’ tweets from this year’s trip.

Britannica Online: thin, boring and not free

Dale 1 Comment

Recently, I attended a presentation for Britannica Online.

Britannica Online School Edition
Britannica Online School Edition

To test the resource, I searched for my favorite physicist- Richard Feynman.

While Britannica gave me a brief summary of Feynman’s physics career, I was disappointed by the questions that Britannica could not answer.

They also neglected to include Feynman’s involvement with the Challenger explosion and the popular books that he wrote.

Some teacher’s give Wikipedia a hard time for it’s openness but it does a much better job at showing us the more interesting and human elements of historical figures.

Two more things that annoy me…

  1. We pay for Britannica while a simple search at Google or Wikipedia is free and provides richer results.
  2. Britannica provides MLA and APA citations at the bottom of each article. Since when is it a good idea to cite an encyclopedia? I wish they would provide references (like Wikipedia does) so students can cite the primary sources that are related to the subject and more authoritative.

The one-stop-shop argument…

Others defend resources like Britannica because they are an easy-to-use place for students to find things without having to search all over the web for what they need.

But isn’t the skill of effectively searching all over the web what our students need?

If your students are elementary level…

Then I take it all back. Britannica does a nice job getting little kids started with material that is written at their level. They also have some quasi-educational games at the Britannica Learning Zone that are worth a look.

Incoming Text: Warning, pop quiz ahead

Dale

pop quiz

A survey by Common Sense Media of more than 1,000 students ages 13 to 18 found that 48% of teens with cell phones call or text friends to warn them about pop quizzes.

I say, “who cares?”

If a pop quiz is given to offer students a chance to review past material or to provide teacher feedback on how the class is doing then the text warning is only going to trigger more students to study. That’s a good thing, right?

However, if the pop quiz is given to punish students who haven’t been studying, stifle bad behavior or just take up some class time, then Who’s Cheating Whom?

What to do with Wordle

Dale 3 Comments

Have you tried Wordle?  If you provide the text, Wordle will create a word cloud that will display each word used in the source text in a font size based on the frequency that the word appears in the source. The more the word is used, the larger it appears. Take a look at Wordle’s gallery to see some examples.

Some have criticized Wordle by suggesting that Wordle’s only attribute is that it is eye-catching.

I’m okay with that. I can work with eye-catching. Below is a Wordle I made using all the text from a recent test.

Wordle the Test
Wordle the test at Wordle.net

A few days before the test, I shared this with my students. They were eager to hypothesize as to how words like “astronaut” or “gravy” would be used to access there knowledge of friction and momentum. Some student suggested possible questions that used the terms from the word cloud. A few of their questions were so good that I plan to use them next year.

While Woodle wasn’t able to teach physics, it was able to start a conversation. That’s perfect. I can take it from there.

Office 2007 Demos: Get up to speed

Dale

Well, it happened. Our school finally upgraded to Office 2007. I was reluctant to be happy about the switch. The new version took away all the menus just when I was starting to figured out where everything was.

However, after a few weeks of use, I have grown to like the new Office. Yet, I still get stuck from time-to-time with the new version.

The good news is that Microsoft has a real treasure trove of demo videos on all sorts of things within the entire Office 2007 package. The sad thing is that they hid them away at there website where you have to download each video one-by-one to view. (Come on Microsoft, streaming video online was innovative in 2005. Where have you been?)

Fortunately, someone has posted all these videos to YouTube; making browsing through them much easier.

Here’s what I recommend, go here to see what videos are available and then find that title at this YouTube channel. I think the Word video above is a perfect place to start. Share which ones you’ve found valuable in the comments below.