Category Archives: Communication

ISTE > Students use telecommunications to collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences.

ISTE > Students use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences.

Interactive Connections Conference 2012 Orlando

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Bishop Noonan’s Welcome on Sister Caroline Cerveny’s Cyberpilgrim’s Blog

Fr. Lawrence Rice’s Keynote:  “The Church is the original social network,” says @lrice. “If tech is not facilitating it, we are doing it wrong.”  Fr. Rice discussed ways to use technology to increase communication within our Catholic communities. He suggested that we put the bulletin online rather than printing so it can be accessed at any time; allow online discussions so there is two-way communication and not just a one-way push of information; use online databases to gather information; allow online donations and contributions without the need of a signed piece of paper; translate publications into appropriate languages and make them available online; etc. He recommended that we read the book from Gutenberg to Zuckerberg

  • Another book to consider reading is Brandon Vogt’s The Church and New Media.

Read Fr. Rice’s Blog: Corporalworks.com

Marketing using Digital Storytelling: My presentation at a Learning Session at Interactive Connections: Marketing using Digital Storytelling

Plagiarism

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I tried to embed the video Plagiarism from the Common Craft website here on this website but couldn’t get it to work. This was confusing since the Common Craft videos from youtube, such as Social Media and Social Networking in previous posts, worked very nicely.  I was happy that both edublogs and Common Craft responded quickly to help me figure out the source of the problem. I had dropped the Edublogs Pro account because I wasn’t using it withe students yet and wanted to save some money. I mainly this edublogs account as lesson starters for students so a free edublogs.org account is sufficient for my needs at this time.. It turns out that without an Edublogs Pro account I can no longer embed videos.

Be a URL Detective

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Tip #1: Use the URL to identify the domain name and web extensions and what they represent.

URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. The domain name is located after the http:// in the URL. For instance, the domain name for Incarnation Catholic School is icstampa.org. The domain name for Incarnation Catholic Church is icctampa.org.

The extensions in the URL provide additional clues to the identify and authorship of a website.

  • .org – organization
  • .com – company
  • .sch – school (used outside of US)
  • .k12 – most US school sites
  • .edu – US higher ed
  • .gov – US government (add country code for outside US)
  • .ac – higher ed outside of US usually used with country code, example, “.ac.uk”
  • .net – network
  • .mil – US military
  • .co – Company (if paired with a country code, example “.co.uk,” the state of Colorado or the country, Columbia)

For a list of country codes view Web Country Codes

Tip #2: Truncate the URL section by section

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

to  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ to learn that the information is hosted on and part of the University of California Berkeley Library web site. Knowing the documents are part of the official Berkeley library gives it authenticity.

Practice Truncating: What is the domain for each of the following:

Tip #3: Observe the URL grammar.

If a tilde (~), %, or a person’s name or the word “user” after the domain name is in the web address, it is a personal directory and not an official part of the website. In the following example, http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml, the information on plagiarism is in the personal directory of wts. It is not part of the official indiana.edu website. This means the information must be evaluated based on the information contained within the web page, and is not automatically valid because it appears to be on a university web site.

Identify the web grammar elements in this URLs. What is the domain? Who created each web page? Is each an official part of the domain website?

Tip #4: Find who links to a site.

In Alta Vista use the “link web addess” command. This shows who links to the site and also shows how many sites link to the site. Look at the Ova Prima site, then use link www.ovaprima.org in Google or link:www.ovaprima.org in Alta Vista search windows to how many and what type of sites link to the Ova Prima site.

Tip #5: Study historical information about a site.

Use Way Back Machine at www.archive.org to find the history of a site. Enter the URL of the site in question. You can see when the website was revised. If you have a link that is no longer active but you know the URL, you can enter the URL in Way Back Machine to view the contents. Think about the implications for FaceBook and MySpace users! Yes. What you put on today will still be sitting on some computer, possibly years from now.

*** View ICS Digital Help Web Search Strategies ***

Fact or Fiction – Internet Librarian

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Be an Internet Librarian. Use the 5W’s and the tips on URL Detective to compare the following pairs of websites. Decide if the information on each website is fact or fiction. Keep track of the steps you take to evaluate each web site. You will have to provide an annotation, a statement explaining how you know the information is valid, reliable and true facts.

Topic 1: Endangered Species

  1. Blue Poison Frog
  2. Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus

Topic 2: Crops

  1. California Velcro Crop under Challenge (1993)
  2. Mandarin Orange

Topic 3: Early Explorers

  1. About Explorers
  2. Explorers

Topic 4: Weather

  1. Case Analysis of a Historic Killer Tornado Event in Kansas on 10 June 1938
  2. Tornadoes

Topic 5: Dogs

  1. Burmese Mountain Dog
  2. Redbone Coon Hound

Topic 6:  A Dangerous Chemical

  1. Ban DHMO: Dihydrogen Monoxide
  2. Facts about Dihydrogen Monoxide

Topic 7: The Mind

*** View ICS Digital Help Web Search Strategies ***

Several links above are from Kathy Schrock’s list

Web Site Evaluation 5Ws

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5 W’s: Who, What, Where, When, Why

Who

  • Who published the website?
  • Who is responsible for the content found on the website?
  • What are the qualifications of the web publisher?
  • Is contact information provided?

What

  • What is the purpose of the site?
  • Is the information consistent with other sources?

Where

  • Where does the information come from?
  • Is it a primary or secondary source?
  • Are sources cited?

When

  • When was the site created?
  • When was the site last update?
  • Is the information recent enough to be useful?
  • Are the links up-to-date or are they broken?

Why

  • Why would you use it? Did the site give you with the information you were researching?

Summary: OK to use? Be prepared to defend the source of information. Can you annotate the information website with a statement about how you know this is a valid, reliable, up-to-date source of information. Yes or No?

5Ws: Based on information from: Web 2.0 Applications for Children’s Services Summer/Fall 2007 – This material has been created by Bonnie L. Peirce for the Infopeople Project [infopeople.org], supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian. Any use of this material should credit the author and funding source.

*** View ICS Digital Help Web Search Strategies ***

Internet Search – Where to Start?

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Search in more than one search engine. The list on NoodleTools website provides an excellent summary of places to look depending on your research topic:

Kid-Safe Search Engines

Frequently Used Search Engines

  • Google
  • Yahoo!
  • Bing
  • Ask
  • Alta Vista
  • Technorati is a search engine that searches blogs. Example of use: Technorati is a better place to find information about “Alan November” than Google because if you search for him in Google, the top links are owned by Alan November, so most of the information was written by Alan November. In the blogs you can read what people are saying about Alan November, not what Alan November is saying about himself.

*** View ICS Digital Help Web Search Strategies ***

Student Work – ICS Advertisements

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    Assignment:

    Create your own video slideshow on animoto.com. You must create a 30 second advertisement for ICS. Use your school email account to create the account on Animoto.

    Plan the following before you create the media message:

    1. What is the target audience? potential students or parents (early childhood, elementary, or middle school)
    2. What creative techniques are used to attract attention? images and music
    3. How might different people understand this message differently?
    4. What values, lifestyles and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message?
    5. Why is this message being sent?
    6. How does the advertisement address the ICS Mission statement?

    Links to Sample Products:

    Links to other students advertisements are on the Media Literacy Wiki.