Pedagogy First!

Week 10 – Resources Online

I didn’t have any luck finding e-texts for ESL under Project Gutenberg and open textbook. However, I found a really cool website called VOANews.com (http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/home/). This site is loaded with podcasts, current events, and much more. One of the most important feature is that each story on the site has a transcript and a downloadable MP3. This is very helpful since students can listen and read along the articles.

Week 10 - Where did the time go?

Project Gutenberg and Open Textbook are very interesting sources of copyright free e-books. I downloaded Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello. The selection of text for Italian is quite limited but you can find some of the most important authors. The main problem for a language teacher is that texts are free 70 years after the death of the author, so they use a language that is not always close to the one used today. They are a great source for literature courses. I did not investigate it deeply but it looks like Project Gutenberg is connected to wikipedia. Nonetheless, in wikipedia it is possible to find more works than in Project Gutenberg.
For Open Textbook unfortunately I have to bring comments on the same note. While I am sure it is a very valuable source for a lot of instructors in many disciplines, I could only find a textbook for Chinese in the language section. What is very valuable is the incredible amount of links to other websites to the right! It would take forever to check all of them but in the meantime I found a wikibook with an Italian course that I could use in my course. No animations, but some nice pictures. I will keep looking...(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Italian).
What got me really excited is MERLOT. Not only because of the reference to the wine, but the Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching is awesome. Unfortunately here too, I could not find anything I can use in class for Italian (there are only some very good lessons about the Divine Comedy posted by Yale), but the resources for Spanish are interesting and generally speaking the amount of articles about online teaching is huge.

Week 10

I had to blog at this very moment because I am on a flight to Seattle on Alaska Airlines and they are offering free Wifi and I had to take advantage of this cool opportunity.  That being said, like Lisa, I was disappointed with the free online text offerings for my discipline.  Nursing and Allied Health would seem to be abundant on the web, it is, but not a free medical surgical text book out there,  I did stumble back into Merlot, I hadn't been there for a few years, and I rediscovered some wonderful teaching objects to add to my online course.  There are so many talented educators out there who are creating cool online materials.  Combined with what I found on Merlotand YouTube I have supplemented my courses with so interactive and practical tools for the students.  A side note about the up high wifi in the sky - slow - but still really cool!

Week 10 - Online texts

I had to blog at this very moment because I am on a flight to Seattle on Alaska Airlines and they are offering free Wifi and I had to take advantage of this cool opportunity.  That being said, like Lisa, I was disappointed with the free online text offerings for my discipline.  Nursing and Allied Health would seem to be abundant on the web, it is, but not a free medical surgical text book out there,  I did stumble back into Merlot, I hadn't been there for a few years, and I rediscovered some wonderful teaching objects to add to my online course.  There are so many talented educators out there who are creating cool online materials.  Combined with what I found on Merlotand YouTube I have supplemented my courses with so interactive and practical tools for the students.  A side note about the up high wifi in the sky - slow - but still really cool!

Week 10: WorldCat

I remember hearing the announcements for Project Gutenberg (PG) a few years back and was pretty excited then about the endeavor.  It seems that the buzz around it has waned much, but the resource is quite useful, especially in this current environment of textbook affordability for students.  Obviously, PG doesn't contain everything, but good instructors can always manipulate assignments to the resources available, especially if those resources are free.  What I also like about PG is the various download features for the popular handheld and e-reader devices out there (iPad, Nook, etc...).  I haven't had a chance to try the scanner feature, but I will do that soon with my iPod touch to see how it works.

Since we are on the topic of books, there's a really good resource for locating print books, DVDs, CDs:  WorldCat

1. You can search in the database.  I'll use Harry Potter as an example since the latest movie release is this week:

2. Then look for the item you want:

3.  After selecting the item, you can enter your zip code to see the location of the nearest library that carries the item:

Google Books offers a very similar feature, and I think running underneath Google Books is WorldCat.

One educational site that contains good information related to the library field is Michigan State Unversity's Library Site.  There are mini tutorials on various topics, and I hope they would continue to create more.  We're in the process of creating content very much like this for our library, but in a more modulized form.  Eventually, what we want to produce is an entire online tutorial that would mimic what we present in face-to-face library orientations.  It's an ambitious undertaking, and we won't be able to roll out the product any time soon, but it's definitely on our radar.

Open textbooks (Week 10 / Cohort 2)

You would think that the field of History would have created some of the best open textbooks, but actually I can find little available that is suitable. Then, of course, most of these are available online, though you can print them out.

I survey my students each semester, and they want a textbook they can carry around, even if it costs money.

My survey question says:

Instead of the printed textbook, I would have preferred:
- an online textbook (an "e-text")
- open web resources linked from the class instead of a textbook
- creating a textbook-like resource collaboratively as part of the class
- I like having a printed textbook

And although the number saying OK to an online textbook has increased somewhat over the past three years, overwhelmingly they want a printed textbook.

It's not that I think this is necessarily a good thing. We keep talking about mobile technology, so you think a textbook they can read on their iPhone would qualify as a text you could carry around with you, but that's not what they want. That means it's an affective thing -- they feel more secure with a printed text.

Does this also mean they'd feel more secure with a multi-color big-publisher's text than with a black-and-white printout of an open textbook? Probably.

In my class, the purpose the textbook is background at the beginning, then an encyclopedia of facts they can use near the end. I do not use the perspective of any of my textbooks, except in its choice of which facts to include.

So for now I'm giving them what they want, but eventually I hope that an open textbook will be available that I like, and that they can print out via Lulu or something so they can have the security they want from the physical object.

Weeks 10 and 11

Greetings Pedagogy First Writers!

I apologize for falling behind on our weekly prompts. To atone for my sins, I am posting two weeks worth of material for this week so that we can catch up with things and finish our sequence by the end of the semester.

As you add your posts on these topics--please designate which week you are responding to--this will make it easier for you to organize your portfolio at the end of the semester.

 

Cohort 3

Week 10: Resources Online

• Explore online textbooks and e-books at sites like Project Gutenburg and open textbook.
• Search and find a good educational site in your discipline, something with animations that you can use.
• Write a blog post about your findings.

Week 11: Podcasts and Video

• Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos, such as blip.tv or Vimeo.
• Discover some useful podcasts about teaching or your discipline.
• Blog about what you learned.

 

Cohort 2

Members of cohort two should be reporting on their progress implementing ideas from last semester and providing feedback and support for cohort three members and each other

Our workshop is Friday!

Our zany two-location workshop is tomorrow -- I'd love it if all the certificate candidates could join us! If not, we will, I hope, record it, at least from the Elluminate end. It starts at 1:00 in OC4607 and Elluminate.

The idea is to explore a method for collecting all those wonderful journal articles, web pages, and mailing lists, annotate them, and store them where you can find them again. Even arrange resources on a nice page for yourself and your students. Our tools will include Diigo and Netvibes.

Hope to see you there!

Lisa

Week 11 in Week 12 - Online resources

With this one I'm only five days behind, not a whole week! Slowly catching up?

Since most of the readings for my history classes come from online documents, I am aware of very many sites that I use regularly. The one I rely on the most is the Internet History Sourcebook at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall. I wouldn't be able to do what I do without this source. It doesn't have nay bells and whistles, just many of the most important documents in human history. Another invaluable resource is the Yale Avalon Project Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy at http://avalon.law.yale.edu. There are many other sites with more specific interests, but these are the most general, and have the most relevant documents as well.

I have been to Project Gutenberg before, but this was the first time I really went through the site thoroughly. Since this site has books in their entirety, and not the excerpts from sites like those mentioned above or that I have chosen myself that I assign, I have not used it in my classes. I couldn't assign anything from project Gutenberg as a textbook, as everything is at least 80 years old. But as a historian, I see a treasure trove of primary source material. If I taught literature as well, I would like the many resources I could use. I looked up all the 19th century Russian classics, for example, and they were there. There is one book at Gutenberg that  do assign on a regular basis, Candide by Voltaire. Next time I assign it i will include the link to the Gutenberg version for students if they want to read the book that way. I do believe that in many ways Google Books has overtaken Gutenberg in many ways, however.

The open textbook site I didn't find much helpful for me. First off, I kept getting warnings "Reported Attack Page" warnings whenever I clicked anywhere. But besides that, the history selections, while the may be helpful, are not peer-reviewed and I don't think they could really replace a textbook. Nevertheless, for someone like me that doesn't require textbooks, students may find the "Comprehensive Outline of World History" helpful. I'll think about using it in my next life, but not as required reading, just something to help students out who want it. 

History, online -- a Twitter thang

I am putting on my historian hat to analyze a website and, perhaps, a trend.

The site is called TwHistory (here's the About page). The idea is that you recreate historical events by having participants use primary source documents to create tweets. It is certainly a Student Learning Outcome everywhere to have students use primary sources, but there is some discussion among historians about how best to do it. Many documents are written in archaic language, using slow-letter communication patterns we no longer use. That can make them hard for students to understand. One reason for TwHistory seems to be to "bring life" to documents and events. 

According to their FAQ:

TwHistory is based on the idea that historical reenactments can take place online and have positive effects for all involved. In school settings these virtual reenactments can increase engagement while providing opportunities for students to research personal journals and other primary source documents.

I heard about this project at the New Media Consortium Symposium last month and posted a bit about it as part of my review (it's at the end of the post). I had promised the presenters I would think about the concept, because I confessed it bothered me. They were not historians, and wanted input.

I asked a lot of questions at their session about how the historical sources were used -- many students seemed to use actual excerpts from the documents for their posts, which of course are limited to 140 characters. Others posted about what was happening, the context. Some of these tweets used modern net-speak (you know, LOL for laugh out loud, BTW for by the way). I had a bit of trouble with the idea of Lincoln posting "87 yrs ago dudes created new nation", but thought maybe I was being a fuddy duddy.

Some of the simulated events were deliberately done on certain dates, with certain posts written on the corresponding days of historical events (such as posting on April 9 to report Lee's surrender 144 years earlier on that day). That was interesting, like anniversaries.

I had previously been accidentally exposed to the idea of historical tweets on Twitter itself, where for awhile I enjoyed following President Harrison. In other words, I very much like the idea of historical figures tweeting. It was very fun. So I needed to explore my gut reaction against the reenactments, and posting on sites in my discipline for Pedagogy First! gives me that opportunity.

So...I took a look today at the Gettysburg scenario. I admit to some enchantment at "seeing" the characters from history come to life in little posts, communicating with each other. Instead of reading a whole document, such as a letter or diary entry, the short format forces a communicating style that is much more direct than it actually was in the 19th century. Nevertheless, there was much that sounded 19th century, that clearly came directly from documents. It was delightful to read what was happening!

What's created here is clearly story-telling. History is partly story-telling, but it is also making meaning from past events as recorded in documents. It seems to me that the story itself, told this way, could have an entirely different meaning than the actual events support. Abraham Lincoln could have written a letter to a general on a particular day, but it might not have arrived for weeks, so having Lincoln and the general communicate via Twitter makes a false impression, even if the messages are spaced out by the same number of weeks. The fact that communication was not this direct had an extraordinary impact on events. People could not read each other's diaries and letters to other people.

Sort-of 13th century armor,
but not really.
(http://www.sca.org/officers/media/images.html

This brings up, for me, interesting questions about the use of new internet communications for the teaching of history. For student engagement, I can easily see how a TwHistory reenactment project could be enlightening, but it seems on the same level as something like the Society for Creative Anachronism, the members of whom frequent Renaissance Faires. Many of them love history, and SCA says they are an "Organisation dedicated to researching and recreating pre-17th century European history." They are history enthusiasts rather than scholars, and I often see their membership wearing clothes from the 16th or 18th century or, even more often, clothing loosely based on designs from these centuries but no more authentic than a stage costume, complete with contemporary interpretations. As with costume designers for theatre, many are very well read in the period, and I have nothing against SCA or Civil War reenactors or anyone making history come alive -- on the contrary. One of my favorite places in the world is the Modern History Gallery at the Royal BC Museum, where I can wander a 19th century street. I'm also quite partial to New Orleans Square at Disneyland.

Those are places to experience what certain elements of the past might have been like, rather than places to do history as a student. TwHistory seems to be the SCA version of history, but developed deliberately as a scholarly project inside schools.

There are also parallels to the History Channel, a popular television channel that features documentaries, most of which focus on the sensationalist aspects of historical events. This make history interesting, it is said, as if it isn't otherwise. The result is a lack of depth and perspective, the kind of thing that is gained by careful, deep reading of multiple sources, both primary and secondary. Historians develop theses about the past, and prove them with evidence. While perhaps not scientific in the same sense as a laboratory science, there is a methodology that is inherent in the discipline. 

TwHistory teaches students one aspect of the method, the use of primary sources within a historical context. But recreation/reenactment is not really historical analysis -- it is great for history buffs, but not so much for students studying history as a discipline. I'm not sure where the lines are exactly, between engagement in the events of history and actual inquiry, but I don't think TwHistory crosses fully into the discipline the way it should with young historians. I remain deeply uncomfortable with it.

[Please forgive the double-post -- I wrote this for Pedagogy First! but decided it should also go on my online teaching blog.]