etc@bmc
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Another look at Zotero
I'm planning to show some of the librarians Zotero tomorrow and so, I was reviewing it once again. I wrote about Zotero back in November. To review, Zotero is a Firefox plugin that allows you to manage a bibliography. It's quite easy to use and is a really effective way to manage your research. I'm still struggling myself with managing my information, using del.icio.us for managing the plethora of web articles I want to keep track of. I started using Furl and moved to del.icio.us about a year ago. Mostly I wanted a way to pull up articles from the web no matter where I was. But del.icio.us and other social bookmarking tools also allow me to find even more material. Zotero doesn't yet have this sharing ability, but hopes to add it soon. Not everyone wants to share, but I've found it really useful to see sources that others use related to my own. I've found sources that I might not have found via a regular library or web search.
Zotero's strength is its congruency with the academic work flow. Along those lines, they've recently released an alpha version of a plugin for Word. What this allows you to do is to add citations and a bibliography right from Word. I gave it a try and it works okay. It is alpha, so one shouldn't expect much anyway. It installed very easily. You have to copy a .dot file to the proper place, but they have very clear instructions. I'm assuming this will be automated in future releases. It currently doesn't format the citations correctly, putting the parentheses in the wrong place. They're working on that. But, creating the bibliography itself worked like a charm. They're also planning a plugin for Open Office (which is what I'm writing my own dissertation in).
I continue to be impressed with Zotero and I still highly recommend it as a bibliography tool. If you haven't tried it yet, what are you waiting for?
Zotero's strength is its congruency with the academic work flow. Along those lines, they've recently released an alpha version of a plugin for Word. What this allows you to do is to add citations and a bibliography right from Word. I gave it a try and it works okay. It is alpha, so one shouldn't expect much anyway. It installed very easily. You have to copy a .dot file to the proper place, but they have very clear instructions. I'm assuming this will be automated in future releases. It currently doesn't format the citations correctly, putting the parentheses in the wrong place. They're working on that. But, creating the bibliography itself worked like a charm. They're also planning a plugin for Open Office (which is what I'm writing my own dissertation in).
I continue to be impressed with Zotero and I still highly recommend it as a bibliography tool. If you haven't tried it yet, what are you waiting for?
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Friday, March 23, 2007
What we need to know
This video paints a compelling vision of the future and how we need to prepare ourselves and our students.
via Will Richardson
via Will Richardson
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Embedding a YouTube Video in Blackboard
So you've found the perfect YouTube video and you want to link to it in your Blackboard course? Easy as pie.
You actually have several options. You can always just link to the video using the url YouTube provides. Either copy the url from the browser's address bar or copy the url from the box to the right of the video. Paste the link into Blackboard using the "External link" button. You can have the link open in a new window or not. One advantage of linking is that students will have access to the rating and comments section so they can see what others' think about the video.
If you don't want or need the comments and ratings, you can embed the video in Blackboard directly. Once you've found your video in YouTube, select all the text within the "Embed" box to the right of the video (use ctrl-A on a PC or apple-A on a mac). Then copy it. In Blackboard, navigate to the section where you want to include the video. Choose "Add Item." Name your item. In the text box, click on the brackets to switch to html mode (<>). Paste the html code you just copied from YouTube (ctrl-v or apple-v). Then hit submit. You're done! Here's what it would look like:
You actually have several options. You can always just link to the video using the url YouTube provides. Either copy the url from the browser's address bar or copy the url from the box to the right of the video. Paste the link into Blackboard using the "External link" button. You can have the link open in a new window or not. One advantage of linking is that students will have access to the rating and comments section so they can see what others' think about the video.
If you don't want or need the comments and ratings, you can embed the video in Blackboard directly. Once you've found your video in YouTube, select all the text within the "Embed" box to the right of the video (use ctrl-A on a PC or apple-A on a mac). Then copy it. In Blackboard, navigate to the section where you want to include the video. Choose "Add Item." Name your item. In the text box, click on the brackets to switch to html mode (<>). Paste the html code you just copied from YouTube (ctrl-v or apple-v). Then hit submit. You're done! Here's what it would look like:
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Friday, March 09, 2007
Using digital images
Academic Commons has a great interview with Henry Art of Williams College on how he uses images in his teaching. I'm really impressed with some of the projects he and his colleagues have done.
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Thursday, March 08, 2007
Editing Wikipedia
It seems like every other day, I'm witness to or participant in a conversation about Wikipedia and its value or lack of value. I still find it interesting that people constantly dismiss it. Yes, it might not be the best source for academic level research, but it definitely has value. We use it all the time at home at the middle school level. When I was in middle school, I had to go to the public library and use World Book.
At any rate, at least one faculty member has decided to take matters into her own hands and have her students edit the Wikipedia as an assignment. She's using the assignment to help students learn the content of her course, but more importantly, she wants them to learn "first hand how knowledge is produced." She's also having them create their own articles.
My response to people who mention specific errors in Wikipedia has been just that: fix it yourself. You can't do that with the print versions very easily!
via Wired Campus
At any rate, at least one faculty member has decided to take matters into her own hands and have her students edit the Wikipedia as an assignment. She's using the assignment to help students learn the content of her course, but more importantly, she wants them to learn "first hand how knowledge is produced." She's also having them create their own articles.
My response to people who mention specific errors in Wikipedia has been just that: fix it yourself. You can't do that with the print versions very easily!
via Wired Campus
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Monday, March 05, 2007
PAETC Recordings
Jean-Claude has all the recordings up, so now you can experience the conference virtually.
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