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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

What's Wrong with this Picture?

OMG!!!

There isn't much to say about this photo.

Just in case you don't recognize the players, it is an Overhead Projector positioned to shine transparencies onto a Promethean interactive whiteboard. A document camera (left) is at the ready as well.

OUCH!!

What do you think? Leave your comments below.







Photo: Robin Galloway

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

APA Manual (6th edition) Changes Headings Format

Cover of Publication Manual of the American Ps...Image via Wikipedia
I have been looking into the formatting differences in the APA Manual (6th Edition) to prepare for the seminar I will teaching this semester on Writing Graduate Papers.

I just found that this updated edition has a new and different headings format system. As you may know, the headings format has to do with where the headings should be placed and what sort of font they should carry.

They talk about Levels of Headings. These have to do with the ranking of the text section (or subsection) that is being titled by the heading. Each level is numbered.

The section titles (e.g., Methodology; Analysis and Discussion; or References) is at the top and it is a Level 1 heading. A topic heading in the Analysis and Discussion would be a Level 2 heading. Subtopics within that topic would be Level 3. It continues all the way down to the sub-sub-sub-subtopic  Level 5 headings.

The headings format in the APA 5th edition was quite confusing because the format for headings if you had 4 topic levels was different than if you had 5 topic levels. Our Instructional Technology Division at the University of Northern Iowa didn't like this ambiguity so we just created a standard guideline (.pdf) for how headings would be formatted regardless of whether you had 4 or 5 levels.

Guess What?   APA came to their senses and they followed our division's lead. They have released a new set of guidelines that apply to your headings no matter how many levels you have.

This set of guidelines is quite different than before.  If you click on the link to our previous headings guidelines (above), you will see that some headings were all caps while others were upper and lower case. Some were italicized while others were plain. Some were centered while others were left justified. 

This set of guidelines includes bold lettering. Actually, every heading level is in bold except level 5.  There is a great deal more indenting than previously used.  I like the bold, but don't know if I like all of the indenting.  They printed the APA 6th edition using this format and it looks OK, but I don't know . . .

Here are the guidelines:

Level 1              
Centered, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase

Level 2
Flush Left, Boldface, Uppercase and Lowercase

Level 3
     Indented, boldface, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period.

Level 4
     Indented, boldface, italicized, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period.

Level 5
     Indented, italicized, lowercase paragraph heading ending with a period.


=== Sample===

Analysis and Discussion
Types of Learners

     Adult learners.

     Learning needs of adult learners. Knowles (1984) describes a set of assumptions for adult learners which include . . .

     The need to know.  Adult learners need to know why they need to learn something before undertaking the process of learning it.

===============

What do you think?  Is this an improvement?  When will you change over to this format?


You can read further online explanation of these new headings styles at the APA Style Blog.


BTW, I think that I found a mistake on page 63 in the sample headings. There is an example of a level 3 heading and it is written as "Life History Calendar."


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Saturday, January 02, 2010

Buying Research Papers is Cheating!!!

Have you ever purchased a research paper? What does it mean when you purchase a paper? Are you too lazy or too rich or don’t you “just get it” about why professors ask you to write papers?

I just had a company that sells research papers leave a comment on my blog and I rejected it. Maybe I am just being idealistic because students can always use Google to find these sites but I have no intention to support this criminal activity. For that reason, this posting will lack the many links that I like to include in my blog.

Not familiar with these research paper mills? Let me tell you something about what they are offering: These businesses market themselves as centers for “research paper assistance.” They suggest that you can purchase their papers to provide additional research for a paper that you are presently writing. HOGWASH!!!

They claim that all of their papers are guaranteed to each of their customers an “A+”. HOGWASH!!! This is ironic when their sites are filled with grammatical errors and misspellings.

They build upon the “Us and Them” structure that they claim educational institutions provide where the teachers make assignments and then “cast off” their students to fend for themselves. One of the sites asks if the students are “victims” of any of 5 research paperwriting problems. These problems include:
  1. Where to find research paper help.
  2. No knowing how to organize your extensive research.
  3. Not have a clear idea of how to write a research paper.
  4. Stuck on research topic selection.
  5. Don’t know how to format a research paper.
  6. Clueless about who to address your writing problems.
(Yes it IS true that their title says 5 problems and they list 6.)

Wondering how much this service costs? There is one site that simply charges $10/page but that is not the norm. Typically, the prices are not based upon quality or quantity, but rather urgency:
  • 6 days or more $15/page
  • 3 days $20/page
  • 24 hours $25/page
  • 8 hours $37/page

This means that these sources say that a student could order a 10-page university-level paper on Thursday morning for $250 and submit it to meet a Friday 3:00 pm deadline!

AND
These mills are claiming that each of the papers is ORIGINAL!!

What HOGWASH!!!

What is your opinion on this? In my next posting I will talk about why teachers assign research papers and what they can do about this plagiarism issue.

What do you do to address this kind of problem?

Photo: flickr.com/JOPHIELsmiles

Monday, December 14, 2009

Citing Wikipedia Using APA Style?


Citing Wikipedia in APA?

Why do we need to know that?

NO self-respecting educator would allow students to cite Wikipedia in a research paper! 

NO professional would try to cite Wikipedia in a refereed journal!

Why waste the time and effort to even consider how to cite it?

It's funny how the title of this posting will raise the dander of many an academic. It will cause them to respond exactly as the quotes above indicate. Many an academic will complain that Wikipedia is an indicator of how far our world has plummeted when they consider that a resource created "by the masses."  It is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

This reminds me of a little known fact that Dr. David Thornburg mentioned once in a presentation I had the good fortune to enjoy. He was addressing this very issue of Wikipedia being considered unreliable because it was created and maintained by people who were not christened as "experts" in the field. He pointed out that the first Oxford Dictionary had been compiled by 800 volunteer readers back in the mid-1800s.

Many question Wikipedia's reliability.  It can be edited by anyone with an account.  Most teachers and publications don't accept it as a valid reference. I don't accept Wikipedia as a valid reference from my students.

But ask a room full of academics and educators about how many of them use Wikipedia and the only liars in the room will be the ones who don't have their hands raised.  Wikipedia is a WONDERFUL starting place for beginning research or getting familiar with a topic or even finding relevant references in the References and External Links at the end of each article.

Run a Google search on most any topic and there will be at least one Wikipedia reference in the first 10 links. Wikipedia is ubiquitous.  It is everywhere.

So what do you do if you want to refer to a definition in Wikipedia (not necessarily as an expert resource but as an example in a discussion) and you want to make an APA-appropriate citation?  Listen to Timothy McAdoo in the APA Style Blog.  His posting, How to Cite Wikipedia in APA Style, explains that it is quite similar to any other electronic citation with a couple of modifications to make it Wikipedia-specific:

Infinite Monkey Theorem. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Monkey_Theorem
 
 Give it a try. Do you use Wikipedia? What is your call on using it as a reference tool?
 
 
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Friday, December 11, 2009

The REST of the Story - Checkpoint Charlie

I was presenting at the Iowa Technology and Education Connection conference in Des Moines, Iowa. The great thing was that I got to meet a number of people who follow this blog. One of the interesting questions that I received was about the photo that I have in header above ^^^^.

Just thought that I would share "The Rest of the Story" with you.


This is from a photo of me in Berlin at CheckPoint Charlie in 2000. I was one of the professors who escorted a group of UNI students to visit schools in Poland and The Netherlands. We landed in Berlin so did a little exploring the streets. I had actually found a hat that fit my huge head and had Joe Smaldino take this photo.

I know that this posting had nothing to do with educational technology but just sounded like it might be of interest to some of you.

Here's a city e-visit to CheckPoint Charlie





Z
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Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Thankful for Free Apps

LifeHacker asked their readers to submit their favorite Free Apps. It was a simple process. They posted the challenge and the readers were to comment with their favorite apps. It appears that they had 484 comments with hundreds of suggestions. After a great deal of review, they whittled is down to:

The 61 Free Apps We are MOST Thankful For [sic]

Check them out. You will certainly find old friends, but you might be able to expand your toolbelt with some new apps you find.

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Monday, December 07, 2009

How to Cite Twitter and Facebook - APA Style


Twitter and Facebook have DEFINITELY made an impact on Academia!!!!  APA Style now has defined how to cite them in a formal APA-formatted paper/article!

It's not even in the latest 6th edition of the APA Style Manual (you remember, the one with so many mistakes in its first printing that they had to call back all of those copies and have issued a reprint - the question is, how do you cite the second printing of the 6th edition?  =-)

Well, Chelsea Lee on the APA Style blog has provided guidance and examples for citing these social media sources. She says that these formats will work until more "definitive guidance is available." So I guess this means that she has received the blessing from the APA Oracles to share these rules.

Chelsea provides her guidance in two postings:

How to Cite Twitter and Facebook, Part I: General
This provides the format for just referring to a Twitter feed (http://www.twitter.com/barackobama or http://www.twitter.com/zeitz) or a Facebook presence (http://www.facebook/barackobama or http://www.twitter.com/zeitz)

How to Cite Twitter and Facebook, Part II: Reference List Entries and In-Text Citations
This posting refers to citing particular posts.  These posts need to reference both the source and the specific posting.  The examples are more complicated than I want to post here so I will leave you to click on the title link to see how they work.

I teach a Seminar at the University of Northern Iowa on Writing a Graduate Paper.  I find it humorous how paranoid students get when they have to write in APA format. It becomes a barrier to writing because they are afraid that they don't know everything there is to know about APA.

IT'S ONLY A FORMAT, FOLKS!!!!!

By the end of my class, I have tried to demystify APA and convince the students that the important part of their writing is what they say and how they organize their thoughts.  The APA format is only to ensure consistency between authors and it can be implemented (and refined) towards the end of the writing process.

Sometimes it works . . . =-)

Trying to format the plethora of sources available in the world today is a moving target and I take my hat off to the folks at APA.  It's genius to run a blog that can be used to channel recommendations about formatting sources between their editions that are published about every 6 years.  It's just that educators shouldn't take the format's importance to the point of squelching creativity and original thought.

This posting about referencing Facebook and Twitter is only a small part of the many suggestions available.

What is your opinion about APA and how it's importance in teaching writing in schools?
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