But one thing I have never done with my students is give them the link to my blog. I don’t require students to read my blog and I don’t usually talk about it in class. But this semester has been different. I’ve talked a lot about my blog, other blogs I’m reading, blogs my students might be interested in and I’ve talked about the blogs they do (and don’t) read. Through this, I’ve learned something interesting.

I gave my students an extra credit assignment. It was only worth one extra point on the midterm and I haven’t had a lot of response (though I have quite a few students who are still looking for the extra credit). The extra credit asked them to interact with Diigo and find the extra credit. This consisted of finding my blog, reading the latest post and adding a comment providing me feedback on what they thought about the post. When I mentioned this to my students, I had just posted the pikiwiki post. I wasn’t expecting anything “phenomenal” from my students. But, as usual, they surprise me.

I had one student who not only commented on the post, but made an excellent point about why I should implement this into our syllabus this semester. The other student, well, she didn’t follow the directions and post a comment, but I gave her the extra credit anyway. Why? She created her own pikiwiki and sent it to me. How can I not give credit for that? The fact that she took the extra step and played with the technology demonstrates that my students are willing to play with the technology without being required to do so. I had planned to postpone pikiwiki until next semester so that I had more time to play around with it, but I think they’ve persuaded me to use it this semester. But they’ve also persuaded me to do something else.

Next semester, I’m going to give students the link to my pedagogy blog. I think it’s good for students to see their teachers writing as much (if not more) than they are required to. But I also think that this might provide a new means of dialoging with my students about what will “work” in their class. I’m contemplating this because I just finished reading an interesting post on Educational Discourse. In her latest post, Kelly talks about “Losing That Tech-Edge Feeling” and he makes two very interesting points in this post that I want to address here.

First, Kelly talks about using technology less in the classroom so that it doesn’t overshadow the student-teacher connection. He writes:

As I work with the teachers in my building, looking for ways to involve students, I’m wondering if the time being put into technology wouldn’t be better used working WITH THE STUDENTS.

I think this is a valid point. We cannot let technology overshadow our own interaction with the students. We need to keep the focus on engaging our students in their learning, not on just finding new ways to use technology in the classroom. If we aren’t using the technology to engage students, then why are we considering this technology in our classroom? He got me thinking here. I taught my students to use Survey Monkey last Thursday. It wasn’t a planned technology workshop, but came up somewhat out of the blue. As we were working on their argumentative essays, one of the students asked if she could use a survey in class. I agreed and recommended the site. Then, after recommending the site to another student, I rethought the approach. I asked the entire class if they would be interested in incorporation a survey and they were wild about the idea. So, right there in class, I taught them how to use it. They loved the idea and are returning to class tomorrow with their final surveys and we’ll discuss who (outside of the class) they might want to send it too.

I did a similar thing on Tuesday, also without thinking about it. I had only one student show up with the required materials for the class. I’ll admit that I was upset; I had gone to the trouble to put the daily lesson plans on the Blackboard calendar and tell the students where to find it. They forgot. I understand that. So, instead of getting angry and lecturing them about responsibility, I pulled out my techno-teacher best. I gave a “pop” quiz (I use that term loosely) in which I instructed students on how to put the calendar on their Blackboard homepage. When they had completed it gave them credit for the quiz. They all showed up this afternoon with all the materials they needed for class. I felt gratified–they did not do this because I screamed at them on Tuesday, but because I gave them the resources to be prepared for class.

I think that what Kelly is saying about working with the students is right on target, but I want to add a twist to this. I don’t think we can stop keeping up with the latest trends in technology, but I do agree that they don’t need to overshadow what we’re doing in the classroom. If I had not learned to use these tools, I would not have been prepared to teach them when my students needed or wanted to use them.

This brings me to Kelly’s second point.

Never mind that the students are texting each other and that they like the technology. Even with all that, there is still a piece that is missing – the human contact. Someone who will listen to them, right next to them. Someone who is in the building that they know really cares whether they are successful or stumbling and helps to provide the means necessary for the them to pick themselves up. Yeah, I know all about embedding technology in the learning and capturing the students but it just seems to be missing something. Once the “Wow” factor is over, what do you have?

Again, Kelly is right. We need to make sure that students are still getting the human interaction they need. But I think that for a teacher who is not ready to give up the technology fight, this human contact can be combined with the use of technology. I think that I’m going to structure it this way.

• At the beginning of the semester, I’m going to start by introducing them to RSS feeds. These are helpful for students doing research or planning to follow a specific blog or page for the course of the semester. I want to see if there’s a way to link an RSS feed to Blackboard to put this in a central location for them, but I need to look into that further before I make promises.
• I’m asking students to subscribe to my blog and read all of the posts that I put into the technology section. I may ask them to read specific posts in other areas too, but I want them at least reading these.
• I’m asking them to post comments to any of the technology posts that they would like to learn to use in class. I’m hoping this will get a discussion started that can be continued in the classroom.
• I’m expanding the roundtable section of my class to include discussions about the comments they left on the blog and ways that we can consider incorporating the technologies in the classroom. As it stands, we use roundtable discussions at the beginning of every class to talk about recent developments in students’ lives (from getting a new puppy to their first fight with their roommate), interesting stories in the news (my students this semester voted in their first primary) to problems they’re having writing their essays (they get great feedback from their peers in these discussions). So, next semester, I’m going to start mentioning posts that I have coming up or posts that they have commented on. I want to use this as a means on listening to what my students want to learn about with their technology opportunities and get them thinking about their own learning.

The plan for the semester is to get students thinking about how technology works in their lives. I think that it’s one thing to tell students that a technology can be advantageous for them to learn. I know that this can be effective–it worked with Diigo and my students this semester. But in the upcoming semesters, I want this to be something that they have more input into. My theory is that if they have the desire to use technology in the class, they are more prone to use the technology later in life. Only time will tell, so check back in the fall to see how this is developing. I’ll keep you posted.

A history professor asks students to choose a specific aspect of World War II and write an informative essay over the topic. Now, consider two students (I’ll call them John and Shane) who both decide to write on the battle of Pearl Harbor. Let’s say, for sake of argument, that John had a composition teacher who stressed the importance of collaboration and introduced students to resources that would allow them to collaborate on the research portion of the essay. John introduces Shane to one of these resources. We’ll say that the students are using Diigo to share links. Now, during the research process, John and Shane create a Diigo group in which they both add links to collaborate for the paper. They both add annotations to the resources and use some of the same resources in their papers. The papers, when graded by the professor, vary in content, but contain several of the same quotes from the same sources. The professor thinks this is suspicious, so he compares the two documents and discovers these similarities:

• Three of the eight required sources on the papers are the same.
• Of these three sources, at least one quote from each source is in both papers.
• The organization of the papers is vastly different.
• None of the content is the same in either paper.

I would do a little happy dance if these two papers were from my students. Why? Because the content demonstrates that the students are not plagiarizing each other, but the sources indicate that they are in fact collaborating in their research (which means they were paying attention to what I said in class). But, it seems that some professors view this as cheating and will, in fact, give students a lower grade on the essay–if they don’t fail them–because they chose to collaborate.

Now, I would be the first to turn in a student who was copying answers from another student’s paper during a test. I would turn in a student text messaging a friend for answers to a test during the test itself. But we have to realize that with the advances in technology that our students use, we need to change our definition of cheating. Or do we just need to reconsider exactly what comprises collaboration. As I said, if I were reading these two essay I would be happy that the students had thought to collaborate on their research. I can easily tell, based on organization and content when students are collaborating too much on their technology and when they are merely collaborating on the research. Testing is another story, so I won’t address that in this discussion because I want to keep the focus to collaboration and writing.

If we can think about the load of courses that our students have to take to meet the requirements for graduation (both in high school and college), it requires a LOT of writing. English teachers require between one and five essays per student each semester. In addition, many history, psychology, and even music or art classes are requiring papers of students. This is just brushing the surface of classes I can remember taking. Now, we also have to think about the friendships that we encourage our students to make in the classroom and how we encourage these students to create study groups for tests and to contact each other if they have to to miss class. So why do we not encourage the collaboration that helps them achieve the goals we want them to achieve?

To return to the history paper, think for a second about the number of sources–books, journals, and websites–devoted to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Now, if we think that a traditional semester runs about 16 weeks and the paper is discussed on the first week of class, but not begun by students until around week four (and I’m being optimistic here) then they have fourteen weeks to complete the research and write the paper in order to turn it in during the final week. There is no way these students can get through all of that research. But, if they form study groups as they will have to do in advanced classes and careers, they can then begin to condense the amount of research that is done in the group. It doesn’t matter how they divide the research, but that they divide it. This allows two people to continue to research longer while gaining more information on the subject and, ultimately, be able to use better research. There is no need for both John and Shane to need to decide that a particular book is not useful to the research. If one can determine this and then notify the other then they cut out a portion of the research.

I doubt that this form of collaboration is new. What is new about it is the way students interact with the books. Using digital libraries and more online sources, students are able to access more sources than ever before. Because of this, I think, many professors are expecting a more diverse group of sources when they could be looking at the way that students are using their research networks to their advantage.

I’m not saying that if John and Shane each included the exact same sources, organized their paper the same way and had paragraphs that had similar wording, we should not consider this a potential cheating issue. However, if the only similarities between the two papers lies in the research of the paper, then the use of research networks should be taken into account.

But let’s say that John and Shane each have completely different sources. John, normally a “C” writer has written a “B” paper that is organized in exactly the same manner as Shane but has different content. Is it a bad idea to look back at John’s previous papers and see if he has encountered comments in the past that focus on his lack of organization? Is it too much to consider that perhaps John knows Shane is good at organization and asked for help with his own paper? Shane would likely tell him how his own paper was organized and John is likely to use this information to organize his own paper. Again, I don’t think that we should consider this cheating. We teach our students using examples. Why then, would we not allow them to use an example they had sought out on their own? It makes sense to me.

I am not saying that a teacher should completely rewrite their definition of cheating. What I am saying, instead, is that teachers need to look closely at what is going on in these situations and determine whether it is detrimental to the student to eliminate collaboration for the sake of keeping students from drawing ideas from other students. I, however, think that if students are using each other to further expand their education, we should encourage this. It could very well lead to a promotion in their future. Should we stand in the way of this?

But I’m curious. What do you consider the difference between collaboration and cheating? Am I living in a utopia where student collaboration is not cheating or am I actually being realistic about these collaborative endeavors? Do I need to explore this idea further?

This article is also featured on TheApple; join the conversation in TheApple’s article discussion

I gave a presentation to a class on Wednesday. The class focuses on using electronic texts in First Year Composition. I took the course last spring and it opened my eyes to the things that I could do in my own classes. This was the class that set me on my path to a potential dissertation topic. So, when the current professor of the course asked me to present on blogs in the classroom, I jumped on the chance. Honestly, I did this for three reasons. It gave me a chance to further show off my research to a professor who I want to be on my dissertation committee (she now is). It also gave me the chance to try out some new things in presentations; I got to use a YouTube video in my presentation for the first time. But most importantly, it gave me a chance to present a good idea to a group of new teachers. This last one was the most important.

I spend a lot of time in the office working with our first year teachers and helping them along as a mentor would. I never would have thought of this role developing into anything else when I took on my first mentoring role. But now, I have three teachers who come to me for guidance when they need it (and two more who call from out of state on occasion).

Yesterday, I sat down and had a conversation with these first year teachers. They were all saying the same thing–they loved the presentation, but they still weren’t comfortable using blogs in their classroom. Now, keep in mind that these are the same people who are the core of the technology workshops that I am starting in the office. I reminded them that once we cover blogs, they’ll begin to see how they can use them in their classes. But then I began to listen–really listen–to what they had to say and think about this from a broader perspective.

I know that what I am trying to do with the technology workshops will help the teachers that I work with. I also know that a good number of people are doing the same thing in their own schools and districts. But deep down, my plans for a dissertation have been bothering me over the last few days. I can’t seem to justify to myself what good it will do to write 200 pages on how effective social medias can be when used in the classroom when at least half of my general audience may not know how to use these mediums when they’re through reading the book. If I really want to make a difference in the way that teachers engage their students, I need to make them tech-literate on their own. I cannot expect them to read my work and say “oh, Diigo. I’ll just go sign up and figure it out.” Not all teachers are prepared to just get an account and figure these things out on their own. This is already a question that I can see having to defend in my prospectus defense. Which brings me to my first “dissertation coffee break” as I shall call it.

I want to use these random thoughts to converse with my readers and get feedback on some ideas I’m having for coming up with the ideas that will drive my thinking to a fuller idea for a dissertation. I want to consider not only the use of Web 2.0 and social media in the classroom, but I want to expand that to look at how teachers can be taught to (a) learn to use 2.0 (specifically social medias) in their personal lives (b) use current 2.0 tools in their classroom (c) assess and learn new tools as they become available.

Now, I have a background in literature which I have realized is not as conducive to working with educators as, say a degree in education or curriculum could be. However, I’m relatively good at learning as I go. But I could use some feedback. Since many of you are teachers or work with teachers on a regular basis, take a minute and comment to this post to let me know what the one thing you think a curriculum for teachers should include to help teachers accomplish these goals. What is the one thing you wish somebody had taught you about using these tools.

The good news is, my prospectus is over a year away (I still have coursework to finish and comps to take). So, you have plenty of time to think this through and let me know of good leads that you have along the way. I’m looking for links to sites that help, stories, ideas–anything you’re willing to provide. Also, I’m starting the technology workshops in mid-April, so you’ll be seeing more in-depth ideas on this same topic as we undertake these.

In the fall, I ran across a new social bookmarking site–Diigo. I started using Diigo with a paper that I was writing and loved it for several reasons. First, it’s a social bookmarking site which meant that I could peruse the links of other people on the site. Second, Diigo gave me the Furl functionality of highlighting and annotating, but the format seemed easier and the interface was more aesthetically speaking (in my opinion).  While I was in this stage of tinkering, I met with one of my dissertation committee members and I was talking about the focus of my dissertation–blogging. He very bluntly reminded me that my entire dissertation could not focus only on blogging, but needed to be focused on more features. I was in a bind–I wanted to focus on the advantages to writing that came from blogs, not all medias. But the more I played around with Diigo, the more a little grain of an idea began to grow. My dissertation should note about the advantages to writing–but about collaboration through Web 2.0.

So, this semester, I went out on a limb and offered my students the option of collaborating on their research this semester. They were already not looking forward to the research, but the idea of using each other to further their research sounded like a good idea. Still, they weren’t jumping at the idea. Then, I gave them a quick walkthrough of Diigo. Their eyes lit up like they had just been given a present–and it wasn’t even their birthday. One student looked dumbfounded and asked:

“Is it really that easy?”

“It sure is.” I replied. So we set about installing the Diigo toolbar and they started on their research. But I’m leaving the student portion of this experiment here. (You have to want to come back, right?). Instead, I want to talk about the pedagogical approach to using social bookmarking–and Diigo especially–in classes that require research.

Students Use Social Bookmarking

Just like I learned with blogging in the classroom, I know that students get more out of methods of learning that they use in their free time. So, social bookmarking was a way for me to engage my students not only in the research, but in conversations with the research. Social bookmarking, regardless of the site used, creates a conversation among members interested in the same tag. Each time a member marks a bookmark, they are speaking to their networks and saying “Read this.”

Annotation is Suddenly Fun

Each semester, I try (in vain, usually) to get my students to annotate their text book. I do this to prepare them not only for future studies, but also for the annotation that research demands they do. Diigo, suddenly, makes the students want to annotate their bookmarks. It is their chance to make sure the world (or their group) knows how important specific words on a webpage are to them.

Diigo allows a More Advanced Conversation

As I mentioned above, social bookmarking allows students to engage in a conversation with other scholars on the same topic. Diigo allows this conversation to move beyond just the “Read this” comment and actually allows the students to create a dialogue. Through Diigo, students have a variety of ways to engage in this dialogue.

• Creating Groups–creating groups of individuals within their network who are researching on the same topic allows students to share bookmarks they have found.
• Using Forums–Within a group, the administrator has the opportunity to create a forum that allows each member of the group to ask and respond to specific issues on a topic. For example, if one student cannot find statistics, they can mention this in the forum and receive an answer (or better yet, a bookmark) from one of the group members.
• Highlighting–This allows one student to specifically show others in the group what they find important about the bookmark. But the highlights are not owned or seen by just the individual. If John shares a bookmark with highlighting, Frank can not only see John’s highlighting, but can also add his own highlighting (which is also available to John).
• Sticky Notes–In addition to highlighting, students can add to the conversation on the page. Their comments can be seen by others who read the page (if the notes are public) and their friends can add to this conversation.

Now, I’m looking at the benefits to what happens when students alone share bookmarks. However, keep in mind that in the most public realm, these conversations can be looked at and added to by anybody else in the Diigo network. Therefore, students have the chance to get information from even more sources.

Now, in the grand tradition of my previous hows and whys, I want to look at how I assigned this to my students. This is a bit complex, but I’ll try to simplify it. It’s also very heavily geared towards a rhetoric focused First Year Composition that spends the entire semester focusing on research.

Assignment Part One–Bookmarking

In the first part of the assignment, I asked students to complete research with Internet sources through specific search engines (Google, Internet Public Library,  and the Librarians Index to the Internet). I told them to simply bookmark and tag any site or article that looked usable in research. (At this point, my students were working with three controversial topics, so they were doing research on three different topics.

Assignment Part Two–Sharing Bookmarks and Creating Subgroups

In class the day students were to turn in their bookmarks, I simply had students log in to Diigo and then share their bookmarks to the class group. Then, I asked them to get together with those who were writing on the same topic (they also chose their final topic in class this day) and create a subgroup for their topic. Then, I asked them to share their bookmarks on their final topic with their group and to browse through the class bookmarks for other bookmarks on their topic. This way, they also had the bookmarks from people who had researched the topic, but not chosen it as their final topic. So, essentially each person in the group had the opportunity to get research from up to 10 other students.

Assignment Part Three–Evaluating the Sources via Sticky Notes

For this part of the assignments, students are to go through each of the sources in their group and create sticky notes throughout the essay to identify the author’s use of the three rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos). Then, I’ve asked them to post a sticky at the bottom evaluating the source and explaining how this specific article would fit into their argumentative essay. (What students are not aware of at this point is that this step is essentially creating their annotated bibliography–the next step in the research process for this class).

Final Thoughts

Each of my students is also linked to my Diigo account, so they can see how I interact with the site itself. I’ve encouraged them to look through the bookmarks and ask questions about why I do specific things on my sites. If they’ve kept up, they had the chance to see my resources double for a class that I’m taking as well as for links for future posts on the blog.

Feel free to poke around through their group and visit Diigo if you haven’t. You can see the 1023-Collaborative Group without an account and you can see what the students are doing with their bookmarks. Or, you can see my pubic bookmarks. If you are a Diigo user (or decide to become one), feel free to join my new Diigo group for TRC.  As always, please let me know if you have questions or need feedback. But  more importantly, let me know if you try this in your classroom. I’d love to know how it goes.

Happy Techno-Teaching