Etale – Life in the Digital World

interdisciplinary musings on life and education in the digital world

Archive for category great ideas

10 Sources to Jumpstart Your Education on 21st Century Plagiarism

Jun 8

Posted by etale in blog, great ideas | Comments off

plagiarismPlagiarism.org – Start here. It is an excellent and well-organized collection of knowledge and wisdom (not just information) regarding Plagiarism. I found the Types of Plagiarism section to be especially helpful in getting my head around the different nuances of the issue.

Plagiarized.com – This is a great primer on plagiarism in the digital world. What I most like about this site is the wonderful article by Greg Van Belle called, How Cheating Drives Better Instruction. It is a great positive spin on the problem of plagiarism.

Willing Hearts and Minds in War on Plagiarism – This is a quick read from Inside Higher Education, and provides a quick introduction to some of the issues and challenges related to plagiarism. I appreciate the distinction between things like patch working and plagiarism.

Plagium – This is a free plagiarism tracking tool. Cut and past the text that you want to check, and Plagium compares it with content in the news and from other web-based sources.

Plagiarism Videos – Let’s take a break from reading and watch a couple of videos. Here are some well done videos from Rutgers University Libraries. I am especially fond of the one called, “Real Life Examples.”

PlagiarismDetect.com – The full service costs, but the free service still works fine, and it allows you to upload a .doc or .txt file for review rather than having to cut and paste text.

Turnitin.com – Now that you’ve looked at two free resources, it is time to check out one of the full-featured services. Turnitin.com not only helps with plagiarism detection. It also includes strategies/tools intended to help shape better and ethical writers in the digital age. While you are there, you may want to check out WriteCheck, a tool intended to help students check their own work.

Can Ethics Be Technologized? - Now that you’ve reviewed a few technological attempts to address plagiarism, allow me to introduce you to Paul Dombrowski. He, among others (I tend to agree with him on this subject), argues that creating technologies to solve ethical problems like plagiarism does nothing to address the two roots of the problem. By the way, you may have already discovered that the link I provided is only to the abstract. You will need to go through your local library or another creative source to get a fully copy of the article. It is worth the time and effort.

Prevent Plagiarism with Creative Assignments – Now this is where I get excited about a problem like plagiarism. Could it be that a problem like plagiarism is just what we need in order to get us out of a few educational ruts?

Cheathouse.com – This is one of many paper-for-sale services on the web. Educators may want to take a little time to browse a few of them in order to get a feel for what it out there.

Word Cloud of President Obama’s Speech in Cairo

Jun 7

Posted by etale in blog, books, education, educational technology, great ideas, reviews | Comments off

This was created from the transcripts released at whitehouse.gov on June 4, 2009. I removed the title and all references to “(Applause)” as I just wanted it to represent the words spoken by President Obama. Do you have any interesting reflections or observations? Here is one. If you look at the word cloud and the full transcript, you will not find the words “terrorism” or “terrorist.” Instead, President Obama opted for the word “extremist” and he used it 18 times.

obama-in-cairo

Why is Everyone Searching the Web for Information about the Laodicean Church?

Jun 7

Posted by etale in blog, great ideas, spirituality | Comments off

butterflyAbout once a month, I spend time at Google Analytics, Google Trends, and Blog Pulse; getting a feel for the search and blog trends in the digital world. I pay special attention to the trends related to “education” and “religion.” So, as I was looking at fastest growing keyword trends in religion over the last thirty days, I was surprised to see that “Laodicean” was listed as the fastest growing religious search term.

For those of you are are more in tune with current events, you may already know the answer to this riddle. I was clueless. What was happening? Laodicea, or at least the Christian church in Laodicia, is famous for a mention in the book of Revelation in the Christian Scriptures. There, the church is critiqued as being “neither hot nor cold”, for being a lukewarm church. Why are people so fascinated with this town right now?

I started to wonder, “Is there still a Laodicea today that might be in the news? Hopefully there wasn’t some sort of terrorist attack or natural disaster.” Of course, this town does not even exist today. Upon typing “Laodicea” into Google, it was clear that I was going the wrong direction. I typed the exact term that is listed as popular this month, not “Laodicea”, but “Laodicean.” Lo and behold, the curtain was opened and standing on the stage was 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas.

What else occurred in the past month? My search took me to a May 28, 2009 article entitled, “‘Laodicean’ launches Kansas Teen to Spelling Bee Victory.” There you have it. A bright young lady wins the national Spelling Bee on the word “Laodicean” and the web lights up with people around the US looking up a word that otherwise hardly gets mentioned. All of the sudden, rarely visited web sites about the church in Laodicea are getting a ton of visitors. Who knows how many people might have ended up on random web sites that talk about God’s dissatisfaction when people are neither hot nor cold, about the dangers of spiritual complacency.

This might just be some strange social media equivalent of the Butterfly Effect. Could it be a that a butterfly flapping wings on one side of the planet can result in a chain reaction of events that cause a Tsunami on the other side of the planet? That is how the question is framed regarding the Butterfly Effect. Only, in the digital world, I propose that we change it from the Butterfly Effect to the Spelling Bee Effect. Could it be that a girl spelling a word correctly in Kansas can turn dusty web pages about 2000 year old towns into Las Vegas-style action-packed social hot spots? The answer appears to be Y–E–S.

And how about the irony of a church known for being neither hot nor cold turning into the hottest (at least fastest growing) religious topic on the web for the past month?

A Manifesto on Graduate E-learning Programs – Part 5

Jun 5

Posted by etale in blog, great ideas | Comments off

As noted in part four, feedback is an essential part of all learning, and intentional plans for providing frequent feedback are essential in quality e-learning programs. When it comes to e-learning, it becomes important that there are intentional and explicit sources of feedback throughout the entire program, as well as within each course. Failure to provide adequate feedback decreases retention, student satisfaction, and student learning. It also makes it unlikely that students will learn to engage in disciplinary thinking (a topic for a part six).

In traditional graduate education, some faculty have become convinced that the lectures they dispense to the students are their greatest contribution. They are mistaken. It is a rare faculty member who dispenses truly unique content that is unavailable in a variety of free or inexpensive sources. As noted by Neil Postman, information is rarely the answer to any problem today.

This is not an attempt to minimize the importance of content or the expertise of a professor. Both of these remain an integral part of graduate study. However, the more I look at what does and does not result in student learning, the more I am convinced that the most important trait of an effective graduate e-learning instructor is that he or she provide the learners with frequent and meaningful feedback. Granted that the instructor is well-equipped to teach a given course, he or she has reached at least a moderate level of expertise in the discipline associated with the course.

Expertise involves a deep understanding of vocabulary, skills, big ideas, problems, and essential issues in a given domain. It involves the ability to identify, frame, or solve difficulty problems within that domain. It entails a sensitivity to nuances that would go unnoticed by the novice or untrained eye. It is more than head knowledge about a topic. It moves beyond simply having a great deal of information. Experts have true knowledge and a growing measure of wisdom within a given domain.

If one simply wants more information about a subject, then a graduate course or program is not a good investment of one’s money. Information, even knowledge, is freely available on the web, in libraries, or through a modest investment of a few good books or other sources of media. However, if one desires to pursue expertise and the ability to think and act within a discipline, then mentoring and feedback become essential. Mentoring, when done well, is rich with meaningful feedback. That is what takes plans in a quality graduate e-learning program.

With that said, feedback can and should come from a variety of sources in a quality graduate e-learning program. It can come from:

  • A qualified instructor who has developed a level of expertise within a given discipline,
  • From peers (often in the form of well-designed group interactions and learning activities),
  • Through computer-generated feedback (in the form of computer-based quizzes, simulations, games and practice exercises that provide helpful instant automated feedback),
  • And through self-feedback.

    • In the early stages, self-feedback is guided. It is modeled for the students. Students are given rubrics, checklists, and lists of questions to use for self-evaluation. However, as the student progresses in the e-learning courses and program, they also develop the capacity to do more of this self-feedback (within a given discipline) simply by tapping internalized vocabulary, skills, knowledge, priorities, and values. This intrapersonal capacity becomes a key to lifelong growth and development within a given discipline.

    Quality graduate e-learning programs are learning communities that provide this sort of disciplinary feedback. And, over the course of study, these programs move students toward mastery within a discipline (or field of study), and toward the capacity to engage in disciplinary self-reflection.

    A Manifesto on Graduate E-Learning Programs – Part 2

    Jun 2

    Posted by etale in blog, digital storytelling, e-learning, editorials, educational technology, great ideas | Comments off

    At best, e-learning is an educational conspiracy, challenging the superiority of traditional face-to-face graduate study. E-learning often gets the scrutiny that is deserved of all learning. Is a one hour lecture to a group of 30+ students truly the most effective way to help students master the stated course objectives? Is it superior to or more effective than other methods? Or, is it simply an unquestioned higher education tradition? E-learning, in some cases serves as a challenge to such traditions. For that reason, it may well be a mechanism to not only increase accessibility to higher education, but to challenge, improve, and transform what takes place in traditional face-to-face graduate programs.

    While certainly not an exhaustive list, here are five other ways that e-learning graduate programs challenge the superiority of traditional face-to-face graduate study:

    1. They challenge the notion that one must move or travel large distances in order to obtain a high quality graduate education.

    2. They challenge the notion that one must submit to often inflexible schedules of courses and offerings in order to obtain a quality graduate education.

    3. In some cases, they challenge the notion of a one-size fits all graduate education (although many of the best face-to-face programs join in this challenge).

    4. In other cases, they challenge the notion that graduate courses are best designed and taught by a single person. Instead, in the best cases, e-learning promotes a team-based approach to course design that may include a combination of subject-matter experts, instructional designers, graphic designers, computer programmers, and a variety of other specialists. In fact, the role of instructor is just one of many factors in some good e-learning course designs. What makes the role of instructor so sacred? The only essential role in effective learning is the role of learner.

    5. They challenge the idea of the closed-door no questions asked approach to courses. In place of that, many online courses and programs receive ongoing careful scrutiny. Furthermore, all course activities are perfectly recorded and available for post-course review and evaluation. Imagine if every classroom interaction, every instructor comment, every student comment, and every student artifact of learning in a traditional face-to-face course were available for careful review as part of a course improvement process. That is already the case with many e-learning courses. This is not to suggest that all e-learning programs use this data, but the data is available, there is an option to use it.

    Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

    May 26

    Posted by etale in editorials, ethics, great ideas | Comments off

    While I never met him face-to-face, Neil Postman (in the form of his writings) was my tutor when it came to thinking about media and culture. I’m the first to admit that Postman would have disapproved of much that occupies my thought, work, and time. I am, in many ways, a contributor to what he described as a Technopoly. Nonetheless, Postman left a mark on me when it comes to considering the importance of media literacy, exploring how technology “uses us”, and in the call to equip youth with the ability to ask and find answers to the difficult and often unasked questions about the Faustian bargains present with each new technology.

    As we learned about the ever-increasing amount of information that is available to the typical person over the past decade, Postman was quick to point out that more information is hardly ever the answer to problems in the modern world. We have plenty of information, he would explain, more than an one individual could possibly use. For that reason, Postman distinguished between information, knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is the logical organization of information, it is making sense and meaning out of the individual bits of information. And wisdom, it is capacity to use the knowledge in order to make the best decisions, to choose one path over another.

    I do wonder what Postman would have to say about some of the technologies emerging in the last few years as well as some of the efforts to help make sense of, organize, and visually represent what was previously just an Earth-sized ball of knotted strings of information. Perhaps he would point out that these are rarely true moves toward knowledge or wisdom, but just information about information, lots of form with minimal substance. Or, it may be that he would accept that these are moves toward knowledge, but he might just return to some of his famous questions. What problem is this information technology solving? Who are the winners and losers when this technology is used? What are the unexpected consequences of this technologies?

    For me, these questions are not a call to cease innovation (as if anyone other than a few friends with a horse a buggy would listen), but rather a challenge for us to bridge the gap between our technological advancements and our humanity, a calling to remember that ideas have consequences, that ethics are important, and that humanity has a responsibility to pursue that which is good, pure, noble, true, and right.

    Neil Postman and Media Ecology

    Apr 17

    Posted by etale in great ideas, luddite | Comments off

    Here is an older lecture from Neil Postman, presenting to the faculty and students at Calvin College. It is part 1 of 7. If the first part catches your interest, you can view the rest of them on YouTube. If we are going to spend time exploring critical perspectives on technology and society, we can’t ignore Postman. Back in the 1990s, it was Postman’s books that introduced me to the world of media ecology, challenged me to ask tough questions about our technological society, and introduced me to a world of thinkers/authors like Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong…

    More than anything else, I value Postman for helping us craft good questions about life in the digital world. ”

    What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?”

    “Whose problem is it actually?”

    “If there is a legitimate problem that is solved by the technology, what other problems will be caused by my using this technology?”

    “Am I using this technology or is it using me?”