Web 2.0 in Education Workshop at FLC

This is just a note to let staff and faculty know about an exciting upcoming workshop on October 2 at Folsom Lake College.  If you came to (or were interested in but missed) the Classroom 2.0 event last Spring, this looks to be similar but with a more specifically community-college focus.

This will not be a traditional conference with presenters and spectators, but rather an “unconference,” so come ready to share what you know and learn more about using Web 2.0 and emerging technologies in education.

Visit the workshop wiki to learn more and add your name to the list of participants.

Resources for a Teachable Moment

Many SCC faculty are making use of recent campus events as a teachable moment for critical thinking.  To support that momentum, the library would like to share a sample of significant information resources.

Books and Media in the SCC Library

Asking the right questions: a guide to critical thinking.  M. Neil Browne.  2010, 2007, 2004.

From critical thinking to argument: a portable guide.  Sylvan Barnet, Hugo Bedau.  2008, 2005.

Beyond feelings: a guide to critical thinking.  Vincent Ryan Ruggiero.  2008, 2004, 2001.

The thinker’s guide to fallacies: the art of mental trickery and manipulation.  Richard Paul and Linda Elder.  2006.

How to think about weird things: critical thinking for a New Age.  Theodore Schick, Jr., Lewis Vaughn.  2002, 1999.

Find many more titles in LOIS, the library catalog.  Suggested keyword searches:  critical thinking, persuasion, logic, reasoning, freedom of speech, reasoning, ethics.

Websites

There are many.  Turn up a good quality list of resources by searching for “critical thinking” at INFOMINE, Intute or Librarian’s Internet Index (research databases of handpicked websites).

The Library has also posted a few links to published articles from library databases about the abortion debate on its Twitter stream.

Librarians are deeply invested in helping students think critically about information.  Bring your students to the library for an orientation, or send them to do some digging on their own.

Classroom 2.0 opens doors at the LRC

Last weekend the Learning Resource Center became a training ground and conversation hub for instructors seeking to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into the classroom. Classroom 2.0, a workshop series and online community developed by Steve Hargadon, provided an opportunity for K-12 and community college educators to come together and explore tools, strategies, and best practices in using current Web technologies to engage students and enhance learning.

Those just starting on their tech journey learned how to create blogs and wikis, while more advanced (or geeky) users shared favorite tools.  These included creating custom Google maps (click the “My Maps” link) and importing the data to Google Earth; using social bookmarking tools such as Delicious and Diigo; harnessing “back channel” conversations using Today’s Meet; building elegant websites in a matter of minutes with Weebly; creating multimedia discussion pages using VoiceThread; and sharing documents and presentations using sites such as Scribd, Slideshare, and drop.io.

If you’re looking for a community of educators sharing information on technology in the classroom, you might want to take a look at what the Classroom 2.0 site (hosted by Ning.com) has to offer: discussion forums, links to resources, and networking opportunities.

Social Networking ~ The World is Watching

Students love social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace because they offer quick, informal connections between people who share interests.  Messages, pictures, videos, and instant messages reach a few friends or the whole world in seconds.  But there’s no taking back a statement or photo that’s been published.  How will parents, school officials, future and current employers, or online predators interpret a student’s online profile?

Facebook: Helping employers eliminate applicants one drunken post at a time.

You can challenge your students to think about what is private and personal.  Print a poster from Ohio State University, pick up a thought-provoking handout on social networking at the SCC library reference desk, or read “10 Privacy Settings every Facebook User Should Know About” on allfacebook.com (a blog about Facebook) for step-by-step instructions on how to protect your privacy on Facebook.

Millions of E-books on the way?

You might have heard of Google Book Search, which allows you to search the text of millions of books and provides full-text access to books no longer protected by copyright. You might also have heard that Google was being sued by the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild on the grounds that by scanning all these books, they were infringing copyright on a massive scale. Finally, you might have heard the news in October of a settlement that would allow Google to continue its Book Search project. But have you heard what this settlement means for libraries?

As part of the settlement, Google would make a large portion of its database of full-text books–those that are currently out of print but still protected by copyright–available to libraries in two forms. First, it would sell subscriptions that libraries could purchase, just as we do other electronic databases. Second, it would provide access to its database at no cost from a limited number of computers within the library.

Clearly we will need more details to assess exactly how this settlement (which has not yet been approved by the court) might affect SCC library users. For instance, how much will a subscription cost, and how might Google limit library users’ ability to use the books in its database? What is clear is that this arrangement has the potential to add millions of books to our collection, books from some of the world’s greatest libraries, including Harvard, University of California, University of Michigan, Columbia, and Stanford.

If you’d like to explore the issues further, here are a few links:

• Google’s press release announcing the settlement
• A discussion of the issues on the Digital Campus podcast (start at 21:15)
• A bibliography of pieces written about Google Book Search
• Siva Vaidhyanathan’s blog, The Googlization of Everything, which trains a critical eye on the activities of the world’s most interesting corporation
• For those who can’t get enough, a link dump collecting all sorts of responses to these developments

Use of Copyrighted Media in the Classroom

Many instructors avoid using TV or movie clips, images, web sites, broadcasts, songs or other copyrighted materials in lectures and online courses out of confusion about the legal doctrine of “fair use.”  It can be difficult to determine when the use of such media constitutes infringement of copyright law or falls under fair use provisions of copyright law. 

A new code of best practices helps educators and students reclaim their rights to fair use of copyrighted media in the classroom.  America University’s Center for Social Media has published The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education to demystify fair use.  Well worth a quick read, the guide offers guidelines for determining fair use in educational settings.

Common copyright questions about books as well as media are well covered in Know Your Copy Rights from the Association of Research Libraries. 

Happy Open Access Day! (What’s Open Access?)

October 14, 2008 will go down in history as the first annual Open Access Day. Which might prompt a few questions: namely, what is open access, and why should we care?

Groups of scholars and librarians developed open access (OA) publishing as an alternative to the conventional model of academic publishing. In the traditional system, scholars submit their work to academic journals, who then assume copyright ownership, publish the work, and sell or lease the content to libraries and other entities–often for enormous sums of money.  OA content, by contrast, is freely available over the World Wide Web, and costs no more to read than this blog.

OA publishing is still a marginal enterprise, but it has increased in volume and prestige in the last few years. Peer-reviewed OA journals published by the Public Library of Science have earned an international reputation; Harvard University adopted a policy encouraging their faculty to make their scholarship freely available; and the National Institutes of Health now require anyone accepting one of their grants to submit any resulting article to its freely accessible full-text database, PubMed Central (a policy that is currently under attack in Congress).  Community colleges are getting in on the action by promoting OA textbooks.

Interested? Check out some videos celebrating open access, or

• read an overview of OA “for beginners”–either very brief or more thorough
• browse the Directory of Open Access Journals to find free scholarly content in your field
• subscribe to Peter Suber’s blog, Open Access News
• learn what’s behind acronyms such as SPARC and CCCOER
• read Stevan Harnad’s “Subversive Proposal“–a proto-OA manifesto from way back in 1994

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month

Looking for ways to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month?

On Campus:

• See the Hispanic Heritage Library book display on the 2nd floor.  Check one out!
• Did you catch the Mexican Independence Day celebration in the Quad today?  Check online for upcoming Cultural Awareness Center events.

Library display of Hispanic heritage books

Online:

• Trace Spanish influences in the Americas on Scholastic’s interactive map.
• Explore Arte Latino’s treasures online, from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In a Museum:

• Visit “Latinas: the Spirit of California” at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.
• Take a field trip.  Paintings by Frida Kahlo are on display at SFMOMA through September 28th.

Earth Day on the Web

You really should get outside.  The weather is going to be beautiful and Tuesday is Earth Day, for pete’s sake.  But you’re stuck indoors, hard at work, so how about just an Earth Ten Minutes?  That’s all it takes to pop into these winning websites:

Redefining Progress has a new Ecological Footprint Quiz with results that will surprise you.

Or try Low Impact Living for “the low down on living green” and your home’s environmental impact.

The National Resources Defense Council informs on global warming, environmental pollutants, ocean revitalization, and guidance for activists.

Skin Deep, from the Environmental Working Group, rates hazards to your health and the environment of 30,000 products, from deodorant to bubble bath.

Sierra Club videos will show you how to install a low-flow showerhead or wrap up your water heater.

Share your ideas with others on the World Wildlife Fund blog – or here!

Uncork your curriculum with MERLOT

Have you discovered MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)? Find hundreds of online teaching materials in your subject areas – lesson plans, lectures, tutorials, quizzes, case studies, animations, simulations, and reference material. (Browse in your subject area if Search doesn’t turn up any hits.) You can contribute your material, too, and registration is free.

Just for example, if you browse Math, you will find Larry Green’s Applet Page, which contains “dozens of interactive tutorials and discovery exercises for beginning, intermediate, and college algebra.” Or browse to Humanities and sample “Ojala que llueva cafe,” a Spanish-language reading selection based on a song by Dominican artist Juan Luis Guerra.

There’s a biology assessment tool for amphibians, too:

Write a comment and post your favorite curriculum websites.