Getting to Know Zotero

Last week we were introduced to Google Scholar and Zotero. Google Scholar is a Google search engine for scholarly literature that narrows searches to theses, books, abstracts and articles. Zotero allows the user to collect and organize items found in a Google search. Zotero can also convert those finds into a bibliographic reference for citation purposes.

This week we were introduced to some best practices when conducting academic research. Our knowledge of Zotero was also expanded while conducting research. When an item is added to Zotero, research notes can be added right to Zotero. This puts the referenced information and its citation together, thus making citations easier.

The last part of this week’s assignment was an introduction to Delicious, a Social Bookmarking service. Delicious stores and shares bookmarks on the web. This method of bookmarking avoids the use of a browser so that the user can obtain their bookmarks on any computer! Delicious also allows the user to add tags to their bookmarks. Tags can be descriptive or unique. Descriptive tags allow other users to find a bookmark if doing a search. A unique tag to a group can allow a group of users to quickly share their bookmarks.

Sir Issac Newton stated “I seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” All forms of research will excel when researchers use the ideas of others to prove their assertions. All of the methods discussed in this post allow users to share their research and ideas with others.

RSS Feeds for Education

I have to say I am excited about this week’s topic on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds. I follow a few blogs about my favorite hobby, trail running. I also know several runners, elite and non-elite, who maintain their own blog. Before this week, I was unfamiliar with RSS Feeds and either subscribed to feeds via email or just checked in to a familiar blog whenever I had the inclination to do so. The concept of RSS Feeds alerting me of new posts and comments is very appealing mostly in terms of being such a time saver.

In doing this assignment, I was able to find many relevant blogs in the field of educational technology, as well as educational technology blogs with an emphasis in chemistry. It is obvious that educational technology will have an impact on education, however, it will only truly have an impact if it is implemented and implemented well. With the plethora of information in the form of blogs, conferences, and articles, being able to follow many blogs efficiently is exciting. Currently, at BSU, I use Blackboard for my courses. I create a Blackboard site for my course and only students registered in my course have access to my site. I use the Blackboard site to post notes, assignments and exams, grades and announcements. Because the registrar provides access to anyone enrolled in my course, this method is effective. However, I can see classrooms, such as at my children’s primary school, having their own classroom blog. This blog could allow students and their parents to retrieve and submit assignments via RSS feeds. The classroom blogs could also contain podcasts, announcements, website links, webinar information. The RSS feeds would alert the students and parents of any new entries and provide them with instant access. WOW is all I can say about this efficiency.

This assignment required us to make a Google Reader Shared items page. The items contained in the Shared items page are posts from the following blogs whose RSS feed I subscribed to while completing this assignment:

EDTECH News: This is actually a forum supported by the BSU EdTech department to provide students in the program with current department happenings, announcements and support.

Technology Teacher: This blog is maintained by BSU Clinical Associate Professor, Barbara Schroeder.

Chemistry Chris: This blog is maintained by Chris Keipert. Chris is currently teaching chemistry at the university level, however he is studying to become a high school chemistry teacher.

CITations: This blog is an educational technology blog maintained by the Centre of Instructional Technology at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Some of the posts in this blog pertain to contests open to NUS faculty, however, it also contains posts about educational technology articles, commentaries, webinar information and technology reviews.

Educational Tech Guy: This blog is maintained by David M. Andrade, a physics and emergency medical services (EMS) teacher.The posts in his blog offer free educational technology resources, methods for integrating technology into the classroom, and tips and resources for new teachers.

Stump the Teacher: This blog is maintained by Josh Stumpenhorst, a 6th grade Language Arts and Social Science teacher who strives to perfect the use of educational technology in the classroom.

World of Webcast: This blog is maintained by two marketing and product management employees with Sonic Foundry. This blog covers topics on webcasting, including industry trends in lecture capture, event webcasting, knowledge management and up to date news on Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite technology.

Plagiarism Video

The following video is my Xtranormal video that I created for this week’s plagiarism assignment. Plagiarism is an issue in the BSU Chemistry Department. This video involves one student asking another if he can copy her laboratory report. This is my first time playing with Xtranormal. I hope you enjoy watching the video as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Plagiarism Video

My Reflections About Plagiarism

I found this week’s assignment about plagiarism interesting. I myself was guilty of thinking that cheating, or blatantly copying, and non-attribution, or failing to site the work of others, were the only forms of plagiarism. Looking back on my college career, I do believe that I may have been guilty of patchwriting. Wow, copying and pasting from the Internet makes patchwriting too easy.

I was aware of the Boise State University (BSU) plagiarism policy. The BSU Chemistry Department will assign a grade of “F” for the course and drop the student from the course. Until recently when upper division chemisty students had to submit their formal laboratory reports through a web-based software called SafeAssign, I don’t think many students thought much about the Chemistry Department’s policy on plagiarism. However, last semester several students were removed from Organic Chemistry labs due to plagiarism. Plagiarism is detected when the Organic Chemistry students submit their reports through SafeAssign, which is part of their Blackboard account. SafeAssign compares their report to any similar report found on the Internet along with any reports submitted by BSU students who have or are taking the class.

Students in the chemistry labs that I coordinate do not turn in formal laboratory reports. The laboratory reports for these labs involve writing simple observations, making conclusions based on observations and completing chemical calculations and reactions. Students work on each laboratory experiment in small groups of 2 or 3 and all work is done and completed in class. Plagiarism, however, in the form of cheating is still a problem in these courses and students are warned that if they turn in work that is verbatim to anyone else in the class, their score will be reduced by half. This tactic seems to be very effective and only needs to be employed a maximum of one time throughout the semester.

While reflecting on this topic and creating the corresponding video, I did a little Google search on plagiarism and found the following tutorial. I found it very insightful in explaining what is and what is not plagiarism. I hope to keep it in my arsenal of EDTECH goodies.

Next is a posting for the plagiarism video that I created for this week’s assignment.