Blogs for Bibs? ... Or ...?

In my English 1121 class right now, we are beginning work on our annotated bibliographies for our major argument paper. One option I'm giving is to compose the annotated bibliography using Microsoft Office's PowerPoint rather than the "traditional" Word document.

To give credit where credit is due, or at least some credit, since my idea is a bit different:

A fellow classmate of mine, last year, when I was on sabbatical and taking courses at the U of MN, was Kate Peterson, a librarian at the U of MN, did her final project on "new" annotated bibliographies. If I remember correctly, she advocated using blogs for this, with one blog post for each source; the blog post would contain both the bibliographic citation and the annotation.

If you are interested, please read Kate's blog post about her final project.

I really liked this idea--for many reasons, including the use of a popular digital writing tool in place of a more "traditional" tool--but since I'm not assigning blogs (yet?) in my writing courses, I went searching for a way to modify Kate's idea. PowerPoint came to mind, not only because it is another digital writing tool that we studied and practiced last year, but also because one of its slide choices, "Title and Content," seemed to lend itself well to how an annotated bibliography is set up. In addition, another slide choice, "Two Content," might lend itself well to doing a summary annotation on the left side and an evaluative annotation on the right side.

I can also see students perhaps uploading their PowerPoint bibliographies into something like SlideShare or SlideBoom or SlideRocket and "publishing" it on the web.

I'll report back on how this works out.

Final "Portfolio" Reflection #4

Of everything we've covered in class, what are two examples of things that I will definitely use in my teaching?

My final project, which I will probably post next, should answer this question clearly, but I can summarize that here.

First, I will definitely be assigning an "interactive presentation" of some sort, but for which assignment, or using what topic, I am not yet sure. For this, students will need to use PowerPoint, KeyNote, Google Docs, SlideRocket, SlideBoom, SlideShare, VoiceThread, or something similar. They will not be able to "talk at us," and the criteria for slide composition will be strict -- slides will definitely not be "text dumps." And I think my colleagues in the Speech Department will love me for teaching this unit; I think they already require the use of PowerPoint in student speeches.

Wait, Here's An Assignment Idea:

I could have groups of students (3-4 per group) do "research" to look for and analyze images or portrayals of contemporary college students in the media--print media (books, newspapers, magazines) and online media (websites, podcasts, blogs, video, etc.). The groups could then present their "media" (and their "remixes"?) and their analyses using one of the presentation applications mentioned above. Ooo, I think I like this idea!

O.K., Now I'm Back:

Second, I will definitely be rethinking "peer review" in my courses. I might do one, the first one of the term, the "traditional" way, in class, face-to-face, in pairs, trios, or groups of four. Let them experience it, and then really talk about it afterwards--"deconstruct" it and evaluate it. After that, I'll probably have them try Google Docs, since Professor Beach mentioned in his midterm evaluation of my blog that it will be the easiest, as opposed to using a wiki or a blog. And "training" students for peer review is always important--training and modeling--so I will need to rethink how I will present and have them carry out the peer review.

An "Aside":

(Is peer review going the way of citing sources ... in the digital world? It seems like citing sources has become a lot more informal ... "hey, just create a link, that's good enough." Is peer review merging with collaborative writing? Instead of just responding to a "text," or inserting comments into a "text," are students going to start just "playing around" with the text themselves, in an attempt to help out the writer? Is this bad? But what if the assignment is not a collaborative writing assignment? Or is all writing becoming collaborative? And do we need to start re-envisioning peer review to be something else?)

O.K., Now I'm Back:

Third, I will definitely introduce "Bubbl.us" as a prewriting and an organizational tool!

Fourth, I will definitely have a class wiki, but as you've read in other posts, I'm not sure yet what I'll have students contribute to that.

In Conclusion:

I am excited about all this! I'm interested to see how my students will react to all this. I'm interested to know how many have already done things like this. (And that's kind of what my final project was getting at. So I suppose I should end here and embed that project in the next post.)

Final "Portfolio" Reflection #2

What have I learned in class, and how have I changed because of the class? Wow! This post could be lengthy, but much of it I covered in the previous post, so I'll just add a few more comments here.

This class was the perfect class for me at the perfect time. First, both "fortuitous" and "serendipitous" come to mind as I try to describe that day back in August 2008 when I decided to check the UMN course schedule one last time. I don't know how I had overlooked the course before; I don't know if the double-numbering (5475/5330) threw me off, or if the 5330 description wasn't added until later on. However, I do know that the certificate program I am in did not leave a lot of "wiggle room" in terms of electives; perhaps that also partially blinded me, until I decided I might be able to petition for a change, which I did.

Second, I am grateful to be on sabbatical, to have the time to devote to the course, to be able to find my way about the course and all the "digital tools" without the distractions I would have if I were teaching at the same time. I don't know how my colleagues/classmates in this class, who are also teaching, can do it. I'm sure they're doing just fine, but I've never been one who works well with many things going on all at once.

Finally, this class provided the structure and learning environment I needed, especially for this particular topic. I don't know if I would have taken on "Digital Writing" on my own, and I don't think I would have learned as much if I had tried to do it on my own. But I do know that my comfort level -- with technology in general, and with the "digital tools" we've covered in particular -- has risen immensely. I feel I will be able to return to the classroom in the Fall of 2009, not only ready to include some of these things in my courses, but also able to introduce them with a fair measure of confidence.

I do know, however, that I need to do more thinking and brainstorming about specific applications of the digital tools I have learned:

• What, exactly, am I going to ask my students to contribute to the class wiki?
• How, exactly, am I going to ask my students to conduct peer reviews?
• Am I going to ask my students to blog, and, if so, about what?
• I know I'm going to include an "interactive presentation" as part of my course, but what is going to be the assignment, or the topic, for these presentations?

I expected that this course would answer many of my questions about technology, and about teaching with technology -- and it has. It has even answered questions I didn't know I had. But, equally importantly and frustratingly, it has raised even more questions that I still don't know the answers to. But this happens to good teachers, right? It's the not-so-good teachers who neither ask questions nor seek to answer them -- the "cruise-control-set-on-retirement" teachers. And, unfortunately, they are out there.

Analyzing My SlideRocket Presentation

A week or so ago, I posted my SlideRocket presentation, and at that time I promised to add more commentary later. Here's that commentary! Better late than never?

SlideRocket is a lot like PowerPoint, or KeyNote (on the Mac), I'm told, and there are other "presentation sites" out there on the web, such as Google Docs, VoiceThread, SlideBoom, or SlideShare. I've used VoiceThread already, so I thought I'd try SlideRocket.

An interesting assignment idea might be to have students compare-and-contrast, and evaluate, two different presentation tools, and then create a presentation about it!?! I've just done an informal survey, and students are reporting that a "PowerPoint assignment" should definitely be a part of a college-writing class ... perhaps especially since they are already required to use PowerPoint in their required Speech class.

In creating these presentations, my digital writing professor asked us to make them "as interactive as possible," and then I missed the next class where he demonstrated some very interactive ones.

So, instead of using SlideRocket as a lecture/presentation tool where A LOT of information is given, using A LOT of bullet lists, I envisioned and created it for a discussion-based literature class, where discussion rather than lecture is the dominant mode. I wanted to use it to guide the in-class discussion, to give students things to think about, to activate their background knowledge(s), to explicitly elicit comments from them, and to move us forward. (So many times, discussions can stall. However, sometimes it is also good if discussions get off track, or even back up a bit. Can these presentation tools handle that?)

I think this presentation does a fairly good job, but it is definitely for an in-class discussion, where I (or someone else) would be "moderating" and perhaps even jotting notes on the whiteboard -- or somewhere else ... is there a digital tool for that? (There's got to be; it's just not on my radar yet.)

A classmate, Brent Eckhoff, told me about a presentation he designed, with the idea that students would view it, and interact with it, OUTSIDE of class. This is my next step.