Blogging Reflection

The experience of having and maintaining a blog for this class was an interesting and valuable lesson. I had never had a blog of my own or even posted a comment to a blog prior to this class, so for me it was quite a learning opportunity. As well, Task 1, in which we got to explore Blogging more generally, was eye opening for me since I had looked at very few blogs in the past. I have found that this experience affected me in several ways. For one thing, I now sometimes just search blog content when Googling a topic (through Google Blogsearch). Also, I find that I am much more aware of blogs as a genre of the Web. Another affect this has had on me is that when I was building a new website for the Canton High School library, I was comfortable including a blog as one of the links and teaching the TL how to use the blog.

More specifically, through blogging and posting to classmates’ blogs, I have learned quite a bit about the technologies we each were assigned. I really had very little familiarity with computer based concept maps (my first technology) before the class started, and I had not even heard of Filamentality (my second technology). I believe that the medium of blogging allowed us to share in a way we might not have if we had simply been assigned to discuss these topics in a group space on WebCT. Blog postings have a more easygoing, laidback style to them than posting on our class bulletin board. Perhaps it was because of this that many people in my group ended up using material posted on YouTube to help explore their assigned topics. These videos ended up being great ways to learn about the various technologies.

After using, posting to and replying to blogs, I can now imagine using blogs in many different scenarios and would be comfortable recommending their use to teachers. If, for instance, several teachers had just attended a workshop to learn how to use a new technology, I could imagine setting up a blog for them, which they could use to keep each other posted on their progress since the workshop.

I think my own blogging could be improved if I used tags (called Labels by Blogger). As my blog became longer, this would help make it easier to find posts on various topics. Also, keeping a list of “Related Resources” would make it easier for people visiting my blog to explore links related to the topics I cover.

Now that I have had the opportunity to explore, create and use blogs, I would be comfortable with using them again in the future. This comfort with technology is perhaps the most important outcome of the experience.

Nice summary and/or introduction to Filamentality

I think it is very fortuitous that I happened to find Keith Stanger's website on Filamentality this week. His website not only does a great job of providing an introduction (or, in this case, summary & wrap up) of what Filamentality is, it also provides descriptions and examples of each of the five Filamentality types. I think that Keith's website would be good to use to introduce teachers to what Filamentality is. (The only downside to Keith's page is that it has been 2 years since he has updated it... so, as is inevitable, many of the links are no longer active.)

If you don't feel that Filamentality is quite the right fit for you (or for your teachers), here is a list of resources of other similar products (click on " IV. Use the Web to Create Materials and Publish Work," the Filamentality-type stuff is in section "A. Create online teaching materials."

This site also offers some alternatives to Filamentality (and a description of them). Scroll about 2/3's of the way through the page to the section called "Some Examples of Free Online Authoring Tools" to find where the five examples are described. It is nice to know there are so many fairly straightforward ways for TLs and teachers to create materials online. Do any of these particularly appeal to you?

Thoughts on Week 13 readings

Two of this week’s readings (Technology to Support Learning by Bransford, Brown & Cocking and Teachers Face Handheld Revolution by Brant) mention the fact that using new technology doesn’t always mean better education. Although many new technologies have many potentially wonderful applications, I think this point is important to consider.

On another completely unrelated tangent, I wondered about the implications of having students each equipped with their own PDAs – ostensibly to record homework assignments, and download library books (as discussed in Teachers Face Handheld Revolution). As I was reading about the 9 year old who said he would use the school-provided PDA for downloading music (rather than the above approved uses) I found myself thinking about this week’s filtering discussion. Will these PDAs have Internet access? If so, will the content be filtered? As technology becomes ever more pervasive and integral for a complete education, these questions about the right amount of access to give kids will likely increase... so I guess it's good we're beginning the conversation now, as library students!

Filamentality as a personal organizer

Last week, Elise commented, “Filamentality seems to me to be more of a way to consolidate information into one place, kind of a make-your-own-reference page for a particular topic rather than as a lesson-building tool.”

This week I looked at a study published in 2004, that makes just this argument. The study was done by two researchers on whether introducing student teachers to Filamentality makes things easier or harder for them when they are using technology. Specifically, this paper examines a class of 41 student teachers who were taking a science education method class. All students had received instruction in Microsoft Office, the Internet (and searching techniques) and Hyperstudio.

As part of their class, students were asked to find appropriate web sites for an elementary science topic of their choosing, and develop a Hyperstudio Stack. For this study, the students were divided into two groups, one of which was trained in Filamentality (specifically Hotlists and Scrapbooks) and one of which was not. The researchers found that the students who used Filamentality had a much easier time organizing their presentations. The control (non-Filamentality) group did not effectively organize the results of their web searches as they did them, and so they spent a lot of extra time re-doing their same searches.

The researchers found that at the end of the class the Filamentality group had higher confidence levels, and lower PTE (perceived task effort) on the difficulty of Hyperstack and the Internet. Filamentality effectively helped these students “manage the cognitive load and their PTE… more efficiently and effectively and consequently it may influence their confidence in using ICT (Information & Communication Technology) tools” (page 31).

The take home message to me is that although you might think that having students learn more technology would stress them out, if the technology is ultimately helpful (like Filamentality was for these students), stress & sense of difficulty may actually decrease with additional technology. Prior to reading this paper I hadn’t thought as much of using Filamentality as an intermediate step (as opposed to the final product) or as just a way for me to personally (or students to personally) organize websites.

I found that this paper made a compelling case – at least for those students who are not tech savvy and don’t know about social bookmarking. What are your thoughts?

Source: Angeli, C. & Valanides, N. (2004). The effect of electronic scaffolding for technology integration on perceived task effort and confidence of primary student teachers. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 37 (1), 29-43.

RFID technology in use

I know (at least to me) it seems like forever ago that we talked about RFID technology (it was actually in the third week of the class). I'm so glad we did discuss it, though, because I was able to understand what they were talking about in this article.

To quickly summarize the article, the library in Shenzhen, China is starting to use "Integrated Library Automation Systems" (ILAS). These are essentially like ATMs for books -- or another anology that came to mind was vending machines. These carts depend on RFID technology. The article does not go into detail on this point, but does say that patron cards, the books, and other library materials all have RFID tags. Patrons can request a book via the web (or at the machine) and the book will be delivered to the ILAS nearest them. It sounds like patrons will also be able to browse and choose a book that the ILAS has available for checkout, as the article talked about books "circulat(ing) on a three-layer conveyor belt to facilitate readers' selection." (that's the part that seemed reminiscent of a vending machine).

The city is planning to build several dozen of these machines and sprinkle them across the city in places like supermarkets, subway stops, and office buildings.

Personally, upon reading this article I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I love that books will be more conveniently accessed by more people. On the other hand, it starts seeming less and less like a "library" to me if someone's entire library experience could be had without interacting with anyone. How will patrons whose whole experience is at ILAS's know about all the other services the library offers?

What are your thoughts? Are the ILAS's good for the future of libraries (since they make the books more accessible) or bad for the future of libraries (reducing the role of libraries to book vending machines)?

Looking at some examples on Filamentality

Now that we have learned the basics about Filamentality, I thought the main thing we would do this week is to take a look at how people are actually using Filamentality.

I thought this Filamentality webquest was particularly appropriate, since it is on the topic of "a day in the life of a library media specialist." I thought this was a pretty neat webquest, though I was wondering in what capacity it is used... I wonder what age students use it and also if it was developed for a particular class. At the schools I've been at, it doesn't seem like the teachers would give the kids the three or so periods that this webquest would likely take to complete. The other comment I had after looking at it is that I miss graphics. 10 years ago, it wouldn't have been so noticable that a webpage lacked graphics (because so many did) -- but nowadays the lack of graphics makes it stand out (at least to me). I wonder if Filamentality is considering revising this policy?

Another filamentality page that I thought would be interesting for us to look at is this one on marketing your school library. This filamentality page is a Hotlist (essentially an annotated website list). On a personal note, I am planning to bookmark this page as it seems to be a "one stop shop" for all your library marketing needs. It includes what look to be very good websites/articles on the topics of "The Need for Library Promotion," "Library Mission Statements," "Research on the Value of Libraries and Librarians," "Marketing and Promotional Tools," and "Promotion Ideas and Resources."

I hope you find these Filamentality examples of a webquest and hotlist as interesting to explore as I did.
Nat

Schools and Cybersecurity

Since our class discussion this week (about phishing) did not focus on the school environment, I wanted to make a blog post on the topic of cybersecurity in schools. This article is about a high school district which serves 8,000 people (that's as big as my town!) and has 2500 computers.

One reason I liked this article is that rather than saying that the first line of defense is anti-virus software, they say that it is responsible users. This fits in well with my own thoughts on the topic. By educating the students (and faculty), they will be more responsible and have more ownership. Because the students feel a sense of ownership, rather than having "fun" hacking into the system, the students serve as a proactive first line of defense.

Another smart realization this school district has had is the influence of teachers on students' behavior. If the students know the teachers are not respecting the rules (for instance, if teachers disrespect copyright), the students are much more likely to pick and choose which rules they will follow too. In this district they attempt to solve this problem by having workshops for the teachers about ethics and safety.

One more thing I liked that this school is doing is that they are trying to give extra support to teachers with technology use. They realize that teachers are really too busy to be on top of the technology curve, so they are taking the time to educate the teachers (rather than expect them to pick up things themselves).

I think the most important ingredients for cybersecurity in a school setting are education and empowerment. What do you think?

Filamentality and Track Star

This week I am asking you to take a look at this article (it is accessed through the SU library) which is about Filamentality and Track Star. Track Star is another service, similar to Filamentality. As the article states, services like Track Star and Filamentality are most useful in classrooms which have Internet service, but where the teacher is short on the time/experience necessary to make a webpage from scratch.

The article explains that Track Star is a site that "allows teachers to organize and annotate Web sites for use in their classroom lessons." This list of Websites is called a "track" (hence the name) and it is visible to the students as they work on the questions which the teacher creates. Track Star sounds very simple (just like Filamentality). With Track Star, you just locate the Websites you want the students to use, register for an account, click "Make a New Track," enter the sites with annotations and then click "Submit Track." Track Star immediately turns what you have just entered into a webpage.

Of the five Filamentality formats, it seems most similar to Treasure Hunts (or Hotlists, if questions are not being asked) to me.

One thing I liked about Track Star is the option to revise someone else's Track. If, for instance, I am having third graders research mammals, and I go on to Track Star and find someone else's track that is very similar to what I want, I can just make a few revisions to their track and re-publish it (with authoring credit going to both the original author and myself).

I know that last week, we were mostly agreeing that Filamentality's five different options have quite a bit of overlap, and are a bit redundant with each other. After learning about Track Star (which only has one format), do you like the five options that Filamentality offers better? Or are there things you like better about Track Star?

Thoughts on Week 10 lecture

As Steve wrote in this week's lecture, the advent of the Internet has affected school librarians (really all librarians) in a huge way. Whereas students used to have to go to either their school or public librarian to find out HOW to find the information to answer various questions, now finding information is easy... it's sorting out the good from the bad -- or the authoritative from the non-trustworthy that is the trick. (Although this article presents a very interesting counterpoint -- essentially arguing that internet access at libraries has revitalized libraries)

Essentially, much of the perceived power of the librarian is gone. People don't seem to need us as much as they once did. They may not be finding the very highest quality information on their own, but they are able to figure out what the tallest building is, what the largest country is and so on without ever stepping foot in a physical library. This means we are losing many of our potential points of contact with our patrons. In order to make up for this, we have to think of ways to get our students in the library to see us. Hopefully, if we work at a school where the teachers are open to teaming up with the TL, the students will be seeing us when their class is working on research projects. Otherwise, we need to find other ways to get them in the door. I wonder if this is why so many public libraries have things like "Dance Dance Revolution" contests for teens -- just to get them in the space?

All this makes me think of the academic library setting. When I first entered the LIS program, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be an academic or school librarian. After working for about 4 months in a clerical position at an academic library, I had little desire to remain in that setting. From my view, the academic librarians are very involved in making sure that students & faculty have access to online library resources (for instance they deal with copyright issues, create online course packets, find the best databases, make sure there is access to e-journals, create digital libraries of student work, etc.). The thing I didn't personally like about this is that the work of the academic librarians mostly seems to go on behind closed doors with relatively little interaction with patrons. I can see how in that kind of setting, the physical space of the library may be deemed to be not necessary, and librarians could be relegated to offices somewhere just making sure the library website works. One of the reasons I am attracted to school librarianship is that there is still a high level of interaction between librarians and their patrons in the school library.

To answer Steve's question about whether bricks & mortar libraries will persist -- my opinion is that at least school libraries (where research skills will continue to need to be taught, regardless of the medium, and where at least the younger kids will continue to want to get physical books) and public libraries will last. I am less sure about the bricks & mortar academic library. What do you think?

Five Filamentality Formats

As I mentioned in one of last week's posts, Filamentality allows you to create one of five different formats. Briefly, these are: Hotlists, Multimedia Scrapbooks, Treasure Hunts, Subject Samplers and WebQuests.

Today, I am going to give you a little explanation about what each of these different formats is and direct you to two examples of each.

1. Hotlists. A Hotlist is really just a web page that has a list of internet sites. After each link, there can be a brief description of what is on that page or why it is a good/appropriate resource. The Filamentality folks say that Hotlists are handy to save students from hours of rather fruitless searching. By starting with the Hotlist, the students will be using only approved and valuable resources. See a simple example of a Hotlist, or a more complicated Hotlist.

2. Multimedia Scrapbook. In this case, all the links are to multimedia resources (photographs, maps, sound clips, etc.). It is called a Scrapbook, because in this format, after viewing the resources, students are instructed to select those that appeal to them and they put these into their own "scrapbook" on the topic. Again, there is a simple Scrapbook example and a more complicated Scrapbook.

3. Treasure Hunt. A treasure hunt is similar to a Hotlist but instead of just having description of each site, there are also questions. These questions can be answered by looking at the content of the linked sites. Again, I have two examples for you, both a simple and a more sophisticated one.

4. Subject Sampler. Sort of a beefed-up Treasure Hunt. Rather than only covering fact-based questions like Treasure Hunts, Subject Samplers also have a section for students to write about how they feel or react to the topic. Subject Samplers are good for topics that are not just factual, but where emotion and personal opinion come into play. Here is the simple site and here is the more professional one.

5. WebQuests. As we know, WebQuests typically are fairly complex activities which are likely to involve multiple perspectives, group work and a culminating project. Because we all explored WebQuests recently, I am not linking any examples of them.

Now that you have been introduced to all five of the Filamentality Formats, what do you think of them? Which of these formats do you think you would be most likely to use or recommend to teachers? Do you see a use for each of the five formats, or would you lump some of them together if you were redesigning Filamentality?

Reference:
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/formats.html

Further thoughts on Filamentality

First a couple basic points about Filamentality:
1. As you probably already know from this week's lecture, Filamentality is a combination of two words: Filament (as in filaments from the web) and one's own Mentality. Personally I think this is a bit a weird word, and since I never hear anyone referring to the filaments of the world wide web, it's a little confusing.

2. On the websites created using Filamentality, there can be no graphics, sounds or fancy fonts. They say it's because they wouldn't be able to regulate the appropriateness of the graphics. But that argument doesn't totally make sense to me, because someone could be writing or linking to very inappropriate stuff...

Now onto more thoughts about filamentality. I thought this article (editorial, really) did a good job of laying out filamentality's pros and cons. As the article mentions, filamentality is great for those who want a very simple and user friendly way to be able to create simple web pages. As well, it's free! On the con side are the facts that the filamentality sites only stay posted for a year (unless you repost) and also that you can't really do any designing of your website.
Another pro that is not mentioned in the article is the fact that you don't need a hosting site for your webpage, as the folks at AT&T provide it. This could be a big deal if you wanted to get a site up immediately and didn't want to wait for your IT people to get a new web page loaded onto the school's website.

If I were the TL, I would probably recommend Filamentality to teachers who were not very technologically savvy, but who wanted to be able to create simple webpages for class assignments (or who needed to get sites up immediately). Personally, after having just learned Dreamweaver (for my technology project), I think I might be frustrated by the lack of design control in Filamentality.

New topic: Filamentality

I can definitely say I had never heard of this term before I was assigned this topic to blog on. Steve briefly introduced this term in our week 9 lecture notes. As the AT &T webpage on this topic says,

"Filamentality is a fill-in-the-blank tool that guides you through picking a topic, searching the Internet, gathering good Internet links, and turning them into online learning activities... In the end, you'll create a web-based activity you can share with others even if you don't know anything about HTML or serving web pages."

Basically it looks like Filamentality is a brand name for a tool developed by AT & T that allows users who don't know anything about making webpages to make a web page! Neither Wikipedia nor YouTube have any entries that mention Filamentality -- which indicates to me that this is a phenomenon that quite a lot of people (besides me) are not "in" on.

As this (quite old) review states, "This is a great place to start for users new to the Web or to the concept of using the Internet in education. "

Filamentality can be used to create a variety of educational resources, such as... Hotlists, Scrapbooks, Treasure Hunts, Subject Samplers, and WebQuests. Users of the Filamentality site may either create their own activities or they can find/use and potentially adapt activities made by other users.

If you want to see some examples of websites created by Filamentality users, click here, and type the search term of your choice into the "Search Filamentality" box.

My first thought regarding Filamentality is that this tool would have been very useful and valuable over 10 years ago when it was first introduced... but now that there are more software programs that make designing one's own website much less arduous, I wonder if Filamentality will continue in its current form, somehow change and adapt or disappear. What do you think?

More thoughts on digital books

In last week's discussion, we talked a lot about ipods and MP3 players and their potential for use in the school library. One issue we stumbled across (at least in group B) was the fact that if the LMC checks out MP3 players to students (with books loaded on them) there is nothing to prevent the student from also loading music onto the device and using it for listening to their favorite tunes rather than reading.
Yesterday when I was in at the high school library where I am doing my fieldwork I was talking to the librarian there and she mentioned "Playaway." With Playaway, you have to buy a separate device for each title (the downside) BUT the only thing that is or can be recorded on the player is that book (the upside). The cost is around $50 per title (rather steep, but not totally prohibitive).
In reading about the Playaway, I found that different people have very different takes on it. In this review, the reviewer is rather scathing and makes all of the people who would consider using the Playaway sound like technophobes. On the other hand, in this review, the reviewer seems like they might be on Playaway's payroll. Personally, I can see that it would not be very practical for an individual to buy a Playaway -- but it actually seems like a decent investment for a library.

Incorporating multimedia into concept maps

In looking for something different to discuss about concept mapping software this week, I came across this article which discusses incorporating multimedia into concept maps. The article makes the point that the purpose of a concept map is to "visually represent knowledge of a subject." It goes on to point out that in order to really represent all that we know about a subject, a concept map has to be more than just text. The article advocates for concept maps including not only text but images, sound clips, video clips, and hyperlinks. The example that the paper works with throughout is a concept map of horses. The article points out that:

"one’s knowledge of horses might include not only what a horse looks like, but what a horse looks like when galloping and when trotting, the image of a jumping horse gliding over an obstacle, the sight and thundering sound of a group of wild horses stampeding across a sandy plain, the moving images of a wild bronco bucking in its attempt to throw a rodeo cowboy off its back, the sound of a horse 'neighing.' "

The article also makes the point that by using a multimedia concept map, the user will have a "more engaging user experience" and thus will be more engaged in the learning process.

The article goes on to introduce the multimedia concept mapping software that it recommends, Webster. I had never heard of Webster before reading this article, but I can certainly see for certain subjects, that having multimedia concept maps makes a lot of sense (for example, in a concept map of MLK, jr, being able to put a clip of the "I have a dream" speech).

Some other options for concept mapping software

I was inspired by the YouTube video that Brianna found about Tablet PCs and thought this week I would explore YouTube to see what sorts of concept mapping software videos were posted there. (Yes, I did get distracted on YouTube for a few minutes -- but quickly got myself back on track :) I found a few things which all looked very interesting...

PiCoMap is a software for Palm Pilots which is explained in this video (the video is just under 9 minutes long). At first, I wasn't really sure what the benefit would be to having students do the concept maps on Palms instead of desktops or laptops, but the "Gloved Palm Ladies" (as the narrators refer to themselves) point out a couple of good reasons for using the palms. I think the implicit assumption is that this would be used in a school in which students are assigned Palm Pilots and use them for a number of different applications. I liked the idea of having students do their concept maps on a Palm. For one thing, the students become familiar with a new technology (the Palm). The students don't have to worry about losing drafts (since the Palm saves automatically). Also, if the teacher had covered several new concepts in class and wanted the kids to add them to their concept maps, it seems like it would be easy to have the students pull out their Palms and spend 5 minutes updating their concept maps (if the students were using desktops, all of that 5 minutes would be wasted getting to the computer lab and logging in).

Another video (around 1 minute long) that I found that shows some neat concept mapping software is this one about Tabula Touch. I'm not sure about its application in school environments, but it sure looks cool (and perhaps would be really useful for ESL students or students with language disabilities?).

Happy viewing!

Podcasting 101

As a complete newbie to the world of podcasting, I was fascinated by the links to Audacity.com and epodcast producer. I downloaded audacity.com and was able to record my voice. But as is mentioned in the CNET video, audacity is not really built as a podcasting application, which means that although I can easily record my voice, it actually would take a bit of work and know-how to turn that recording into a podcast. Not being familiar with FTP and xml and the other things mentioned by Brian Cooley, if I were going to do podcasting in my library, I would either need to take a class/have someone teach me how to turn an audacity recording into a podcast OR I would need to use epodcast producer. Although $250 is a lot of money, it would likely be worth the investment if I was going to use podcasting regularly in my library. I did notice that epodcast producer is only available for Windows, which made me wonder what similar products there are for Mac users. I did a little searching and came up with "podcast maker" which is a product made just for macs.
Given the right training and/or a fairly straightforward podcasting program, I would definitely be interested in having podcasting be a part of my library. I am very inspired by the collaborative technology projects that some of our classmates are doing that involve podcasts. I would be interested in using podcasts as a way to record and publish kids' book reviews. Also, I can imagine using podcasts as a way to introduce and recommend books.

Using Concept Maps

This week I thought it would be interesting to try out some concept mapping software. By far the most commonly used concept mapping software is Inspiration/Kidspiration (a version of Inspiration for grades K-5). I found out that you can download a free 30-day trial of either Inspiration or Kidspiration from http://www.inspiration.com/freetrial/index.cfm

I downloaded the Kidspiration software (warning... at least on my computer this took about 15 minutes!) and have played around with it a little bit. It is very user friendly, and even K and 1st graders could use it, as it will "speak" your choices to you (so you don't need to be a proficient reader. I haven't really used Kid Pix (basically PowerPoint for kids), but from the little I've seen of Kid Pix, Kidspiration seems similarly user-friendly (and the layout seems similar to Kid Pix as well, so if a kid had used one, I think they would be able to transition to the other fairly easily).

I also found this neat site which provides an overview of what concept mapping is, some ways to use concept maps and some good "coaching" questions to ask kids as they are creating their concept maps. They also discuss the advantages and limitations of concept mapping and provide several examples of concept maps made with Inspiration.

All for now,
Nat

Thoughts on DOPA

In this week's lecture we were asked to share our thoughts about the Deleting Online Predators Act (which now seems to be going by an additional name -- "Protecting Children in the 21st century act"). In any case, although it seems that the bill had good intentions... I mean, who doesn't want to protect kids from predators!...it doesn't seem well thought out to me. The way the bill is set up, it would ban any website that allowed networking and chatting. But in our increasingly web 2.0-type of world, LOTS of sites allow networking and chatting... and LOTS of them are educational (or at least have the potential to be). For instance, it would ban access to Flickr -- where currently the LOC has a bunch of its pictures posted -- and if a teacher wanted to have something like a book discussion blog, the access to that would be banned too.

And anyway, if the web is going to become more and more networky and chatty, but kids at school aren't allowed to access those types of sites, how on earth would we instruct them about how to chat safely or how to use social networking for educational reasons? Also, it seems like it would be holding the kids back from the most current technology.

As the article (The Moral Panic over Social-Networking sites by Roush) points out, passing DOPA would also serve to widen the digital divide in that kids whose only computer access was at school/the public library would be effectively banned from a whole (most current and exciting) segment of the web. They would be reduced to second-class web citizens only able to access web 1.0 type of sites.

For all these reasons, I would definitely not be in support of passing DOPA and am therefore glad it is tied up in committee in the Senate.

paper & pencil vs. computer based concept mapping

Hi Elise and Mariah,
I'm kind of glad that you both see some benefit in the pencil & paper method. Although technology is great, I too think it is important to not just "throw the baby out with the bathwater" so to speak. That being said, I definitely concur with both of you that there is a place for both the old and the new technologies. I love Elise's analogy of measure twice, cut once. And I think Mariah makes a great point regarding that we actually end up spending less time on the content if we get too sidetracked by all the bells and whistles of computer generated concept maps.

Actually, reading Mariah's thoughts on the pros and cons of pencil & paper vs. computer based concept mapping got me wondering if anyone has studied this. Well, they have! In an interesting study done eighth grade language arts students (who were using concept maps as a prewriting technique for an essay test), it was found that although the students using the computer based concept maps had better idea generation and higher quality of their prewriting concept maps, the students who used pencil & paper concept maps actually had better final essays. One reason the researchers think this was that case was that this was a timed test, and because the kids doing the computer generated concept maps spent quite a bit longer creating and tweaking their concept maps, they actually had less time to write and proof read.

More on which sort of concept map is best to use in which situation later!

concept mapping in the classroom

This article provides an interesting look at how concept maps can be used in the classroom, and why computer generated concept maps are better than their pencil and paper brethren. Initially the article points out how, when one is creating an outline of ideas, the flexibility provided by a concept map which is on a computer is preferable -- since you don't have to worry either about erasing or starting over. The article goes on to point out that by having your concept map on the computer, you can include hyperlinks and clip art as well as creative colors and designs. I also like that computer generated concept maps have templates (such as the poetry analysis template mentioned in the article). This could really come in handy to get a student started on an assignment.

At this point I started seeing that computer generated concept maps: pencil & paper concept maps as PowerPoint: (film) slideshows.
I don't know everyone's age -- but I certainly have seen and even (gasp!) created slideshows using film slides. PowerPoint is a snazzy upgrade (from slideshows) with which we are likely all familiar. Just as PowerPoint allows us to add hyperlinks, clipart, images, text, etc., so to does concept map software.

This gets me thinking of how we tend to toss out the old technology when the new comes along... What do you think -- are concept maps made on the computer clearly superior? Or are there certain benefits to making concept maps by hand?

(as a sidenote: after typing this post, one thing I AM sure of is that computer generated concept maps need a svelter, catchier name! Just as we say PowerPoint rather than computer generated slide show, this technology needs a handle!)

concept mapping -- an introduction

The first technology I am exploring is Concept Mapping Software. But I want to begin at the beginning. So first, what is a Concept Map? A Concept Map is a type of graphic organizer. There are lots of different kinds of graphic organizers used in education, such as K-W-L charts and matrices. A Concept Map is a specific kind of graphic organizer that is "a visual diagram... used to show the links among important related concepts" (Harada & Yoshina, 2005). Concept Mapping was developed by Joseph Novak. He thought that concept maps helped students tie in new knowledge with what they already knew. It provides a hierarchical way to arrange information. Here is an example of a concept map (from http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw05/papers/refereed/rees/conceptmap.gif):






















Concept maps are used commonly by students when they are organizing their thoughts about what to write about.

Concept Mapping Software is just computer software that allows you to easily make concept maps. This article explains how concept mapping software (specifically Inspiration and Kidspiration) can be used to help make learning about a new concept not only less intimidating -- but actually fun! One thing mentioned in this article that I thought seemed particularly neat was how students can go from their concept maps to creating an outline. I can imagine how creating the concept map (especially on the computer) would seem pretty fun to kids. If they then understood how to easily turn this map into an outline, it would put them well on their way to being able to write about their topic. One thing I wasn't sure of was whether the software automatically generated the outline based on the student's concept map, or whether the student used the concept map to create an outline.

I thought that Patricia Knox, who was quoted in the above article, made a great point when she said, "Kids love computers. If we hand them a blank concept map on a piece of paper, they will learn how to organize their ideas. But, if we sit them at a computer and make pictures, sounds and colors available to them, they will love learning how to organize their ideas!"

In my view, anything that makes kids excited about learning is worth knowing more about!
All for now,
Nat

To start with... By Natalie

I started this blog as an assignment for a class in library school about technology. Although I use the Internet daily, this is my first experience with using (or for that matter reading) blogs. I grew up in Oregon and went to college in Indiana. I have lived in northern (really far north -- Ottawa Canada is our nearest city!) New York for 8 years. I live here with my partner and a bunch of pets -- we now have 2 cats and 2 dogs (just got a black lab puppy during winter break).

I have worked in the field of education, though mostly not as a classroom teacher. I have been an environmental educator, camp counselor, summer program director, before & after school program director, math tutor and science teacher. Now I am getting into the field of library science. It is my plan to stay in the field of education by becoming a school media specialist (otherwise known as a teacher librarian or school librarian). I have always enjoyed working with and educating young people and I love children's books.

For this class I will be learning about and posting about different kinds of technology and, if you read my blog, you can follow along my learning curve!

Nat