Action researcher

With almost every assignment I get in this Educational Technology program, I’m amazed at how similar it is to what I do as a journalist.

When I read the article “What is Action Research’’ and looked at the role of a classroom teacher, I saw it as very similar to the role of a journalist. As the article states, the main goal of action research is to address problems and find solutions for them.

A few things to remember with action research is that it’s important to:
Use action research to improve performance
Use action research to uncover facts
Understand that research steps are often repeated
Use it to empower those who are using it.

As I was planning my Project Based learning assignment, this is how I viewed.
The problem I identified was that the loss of a high number of journalism jobs could have an impact on how local communities are covered. So that was the driving question that I posed

I am actually using three web 2.0 tools in my project, but for this blog assignment, I’ll diagram how I think students should use PBworks wiki.

Here’s a simple concept created using gliffy.com.

Technology, classroom instruction and strategy

In setting up my final project, I decided to design a project based learning (PBL) lesson that journalism instructors could use for in high school or a 100-level course in journalism. It could also be used to help community groups who are trying to figure out coverage of their communities.

I will use two strategies from Really Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. They are Cooperative Learning and Summarizing and Note taking. Both of these learning strategies are played out every day in the real life experience of journalism. Journalists need to develop good collaborative skills. For example, through the course of a story, a reporter must work with sources, editors, sometimes a photographer, videographer or artist. Or they may sometimes be required to work with other reporters. Summarizing and note taking or actually note taking and summarizing is basically the job of journalists. It’s our role to find important and relevant information and synthesize it to make it relevant to our audience.

The Web 2.0 skills to be used in this project are wikis for writing collaboratively, Prezi for presenting the findings to an audience and a blog for reflecting on the experience.

There are a range of 21st Century skills that will be used or learned in this project. I’ll focus on assessing the following: Critical thinking, written and oral communication, collaboration, productivity and accountability and civic literacy.

I’ve created a rubric, using a combination of RubiStar and A+ Rubric, to provide guidance and assess student performance. A copy of the rubric is attached.

TEDtalks vs student presentations

In this assignment, we were asked to read an article and watch a video on TEDtalks, watch at three videos from previous EDU 590 courses and reflect on how “Crowd accelerated innovation’’ impacted the student videos.

My initial thought when watching the TEDtalks video was that the presenter really knew the material he was presenting. The presentation was engaging with a conversational tone to the point of making you feel like the presenter was speaking just to you. It was also interesting well he incorporated his electronic presentation into his speech before the audience. It was seamless.

A few things stood out in the student videos. Of the ones I watched, most were a bit static. One even had the feel of the presenting clicking through a PowerPoint presentation. One was very text heavy, although the presenter tried to perk up the presentation with small pieces of art.

The video that came closest to mirroring the concept of TEDtalks is shown here. I must admit that I could be a little bias because this video is about storytelling which is what my profession of journalism is all about. The presenter made use of video with is one of the things that TEDtalks advocates. This video is also attention-grabbing even if it was because the music was so loud. You can never go wrong with an approach that uses the “out of the mouths of babes’’ which is what this teacher did when she had students tell what they liked about spelling.

It’s clear to see from the comparisons the impact video can have on a presentation.

Collaborating with Google Docs, reviewing books on Amazon.com

I just finished a group assignment using Google Docs for an educational technology class. The assignment included dividing two books and reviewing assigned sections using Google Docs as our collaboration tool. I’ve set up documents on Google before, but I haven’t used it for collaboration. After this experience, I’m not sure that I will use it again for collaboration.
Our start wasn’t as smooth as I thought it would be. A couple of people in our group had a problem accessing the document because they didn’t have Google accounts. If you don’t have a Google account, you have to create one to access and edit Google Docs that you want to grant limited access. I would prefer, that as the document creator, I be allowed to provide a password to anyone I’m giving permission to access the document.
If I had to choose between Google Docs and PBworks wiki for collaboration, my preference would be for PBworks wiki because of the ease of access.
This assignment also required that we post a review of one of the books we read – “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms’’ by Will Richardson or “Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology’’ by Allan Collins and Richard Halverson to Amazon.com
I chose to post a review of “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms’’ by Will Richardson.
I guess I would say that this process hasn't changed how I would use Amazon for reviews. I use Amazon's rating system for making book decisions on a case-by-case basis. And even at that, I tend to look for another source. Although I've found that with the growing transparency on the Internet, reviews of products by average users have become much more reliable.
You can also take look at the group work here.

Watching Wikiliaty a year later

Time does change things. Or should I say that time can change my opinion. Watching Steve Colbert's "Wikiality'' nearly a year and half after I first saw it shows how quickly little respected things on the Internet can gain credibility. Just over a year ago, you could label me a big doubter of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Most of my skepticism came from the fact that Wikipedia is a website that anyone can edit. I was also aware of reports about people deliberately editing incorrect and harmful information into entries on Wikipedia. What I didn’t anticipate was how the passion that many people have for the subjects they are interested in would drive the accuracy of Wikipedia, which is what we’re finding today. Researchers are more receptive to the value of Wikipedia. And I guess like almost anything on the Internet, people find a way of seeking out the credible information.
I think that Colbert’s satire still serves as a reminder that anyone using Wikipedia should be aware of the pitfalls that come with using a site that allows anyone to edit. I also still advocate that you verify anything you plan to use from the site.

Collaborative effort on Wikipedia succeeds

Wow! It was great to see our Wikipedia entry today. As we started working on the assignment, I remember saying to my teammates that I was having a difficult time wrapping my arms around what we were supposed to be doing.
As I read the assignment and outlined an approach, what we were supposed to be doing became clear. However, I continued to struggle with how it would all come together. This was my first attempt at producing a paper through a wiki. I’ve walked away from this assignment with an understanding and a major appreciation for that process. I was impressed with the final project on PBworks and how the group and individual pages came together.
In the context of whether how working on the assignment has changed my mind about Wikipedia, I must say that it has changed it slightly. I can certainly understand the amount of work that people who care about a subject will put into making sure it is correctly represented. So I think that I can approach Wikipedia from this frame of mind in the future. However, as a journalist, I’ll still need to verify anything that I find on Wikipedia. For me Wikipedia remains a good starting point for research. The vast amount of references that come with entries provide a good source for tracking down additional sources and verification that journalism requires.
And finally, a shout-out the Group 3 team – Camille, Josie and Julia. The early concerns we had about producing the project and meeting deadline quickly dissolved as they took on various aspects of the project to get and keep us going. Awesome team! A big thumbs up to each of them.

Comparing Wikipedia and Encyclopedias

There are some obvious differences in using the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and a traditional encyclopedia, World Book. For this assignment, I’m comparing the entry, Pulitzer Prize. It’s something that every student journalist would research at some point.
When looking at the Wikipedia entry, the thing that stands out immediately is the invitation to improve the article by adding information. The second thing that stands out is the organization of the material. The researcher is given a short introduction to the topic and then a list of “Contents’’.
In World Book, the researcher must thumb through several pages to find specific categories of information about the topic. So you’ll notice immediately, that using the encyclopedia will require more time. However, you could find yourself clicking on link after link in Wikipedia and really getting distracted.
It’s been years since I’ve used a traditional encyclopedia. (The display in the library was so pretty that I took the attached picture.) I expected the encyclopedia to be very outdated and was surprised when World Book included the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winners.
I think that each method has its advantages. I feel more confident in the accuracy of the information in a traditional encyclopedia. Without a doubt, Wikipedia wins out on timeliness, but because anyone can edit it, the researcher must always be concerned about its accuracy.