Collaborative Research Tools

Collaborative research allows the class to assist each other in finding sources. It also make life a little easier on the teacher, as you now have 30 people scouring the web looking for resources instead of one. Not that this makes you redundant. Students will still need to be show the best way to search, and how to critique their sources. Here I have included a number of eLearning tools which can facilitate collaborative research.

Diigo

Diigo is the first tool I turn to for collaborative research. It is one of the kings of social book-marking and offers some fantastic features. Diigo can be accessed using Google, Facebook, Twitter or Yahoo accounts, or you can create you own Diigo account. It also offers free educators accounts, which allow you to automatically set up student accounts and classes.

When I use Diigo, I create a Library for that topic and then add my students to that library (made easier by the education accounts). Students then research the topic and add bookmarks to the library.

Diigo also allows for students to highlight text on a website, and add annotations. These highlights and annotations are also added to the library. All members of the library can access the bookmarks, highlights and annotations. In addition they can add comments, and 'like' bookmarks. The highlighter is especially useful as it supports note-taking methods.

Diigo offers browser tools that make this process almost painless. It also offers many other features such as tag clouds, library searches, screen captures, read-it-later services, and web-based notes.

I love Diigo, but the amount of time needed for set-up and familiarisation means that it is best suited for long reseach tasks.

Pros: Many features; extensive collaboration; highlighting supports note taking techniques, tagging
Cons: A bit of set-up is required; students require accounts; familiarisation required

Pearltrees

Pearltrees is an interesting take on social book-marking. When you bookmark in Pearltrees you place those bookmarks in within a tree diagram. This allows you to categorise your bookmarks as you go along.

The nature of Pearltrees puts it somewhere between brainstorming and researching. These features, combined with it's collaboration ability, provides many classroom opportunities. For example, a new pearl could be created and shared with the class for a brainstorming storming session. Students can then assess the brainstorming results to distil a group of topics to research. Then the students can then research the topics adding the bookmarks to the Pearltree.

You can access Pearltrees with a Google, Facebook, or Twitter account, or you can create a Pearltrees account. Pearltrees has a browser tool (Pearler) that makes it easier to add pearls to your tree. Pearls are really easy to move around and copy.

Peartrees looks great and really helps students visualise relationships. It could work well for general research and for tasks where categorising is important.

Pros: Visually appealing; collaborative; categorising
Cons: A bit of set-up is required; students require accounts; familiarisation required; no highlighting

Padlet

Padlet (formerly Wallwisher) may be the least powerful of these tools, but it makes up for that in it's ease of use and speed of set-up. Padlet is essentially an online post-it board where people can add virtual post-it notes.

It is brilliant for a quick brainstorm, but it's ability to post URLs (web links) to it means that it can also be used to research. When you add a URL to the wall, Padlet embeds the relevant info from that page and adds it to the post-it.

Padlet doesn't have any of the more powerful features, and the wall can get quite crowded, so it's really not suited for any serious research. Never-the-less, you can go from having nothing to have student collaboratively posting research on-line in less than an minute. Just go to padlet, click create wall, type a title, and give the students the URL for the page.

Padlet doesn't require you to have an account to create or use walls, although having an account makes sure you never loose your walls. Log in using your Google account, or create a Padlet account. The best thing is, students will not need an account, you just give them the URL.

Padlet is a gem for quick research, or to expand on that 'techable moment'.

Pros: Realtime collaborative; quick; no accounts required
Cons: Few features; gets crowded

Lesson: Researching Sacred Stories

Details

Subject: Religion and Ethics
Grade: 11
Tools: Diigo
Focus Question: What are some examples of sacred stories?

The Lesson

The class is ready to prepare for their assessment. The students will be rewriting a sacred story into a modern day equivalent. The first step of that process is finding a story to rewrite, and that is the purpose of this lesson.

Previously we have used Diigo, so all the students have an account. If you haven't used Diigo, students can sign in using Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Yahoo accounts, or just create a stand alone Diigo account. Diigo also offers teacher accounts which assist in managing your class groups.

I created a Diigo group called Sacred Stories and provided the students with the URL. Once I approved their application the students then started book marking examples of sacred stories they found on the web.

Some of the sites bookmarked were a little off the mark. These sites were analysing sacred stories, or talking about the importance of sacred stories, rather than the stories themselves. To address this, I 'liked' all the stories that would be appropriate for the assignment.

Follow Up

The students now have to choose a story from all the 'liked' bookmarks to rewrite.

Tools: Infographic Tools

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends. Inforgraphics can be especially useful for topics which have a great deal of data.

Below is a selection of three tools you and your students can use to make infographics.

Easel.ly

Easel.ly is very aptly named, as it is a simple way to create infographics. It is more focused on graphic design than it is on data analysis. It is the perfect tool for students to create the equivalent of an on-line poster. There is a wide range shapes, objects and themes, as well as the capacity to upload your own images.

Students will require and account, so you will need to allocate some time to set these up.

Using easel.y is equivalent to drawing on a piece of paper. It won't generate anything for you. If you want to put a graph in, then you will have to draw the graph yourself. You can produce quite impressive inforgraphics, but you have to do every bit yourself.

When you are finished you can share the link or embed the infographic in a website.

Easel.ly is a nice easy way to introduce infographics into your class and is especially useful if you don't have to do any number crunching.

Pros: Easy to use, sharing and embedding, templates

Cons: No graph creation, students need accounts

Venngage

Venngage is like the big brother of easlel.ly. The interface is a little more complex, but this site is really about crunching numbers. The emphasis on data is evident in their slogan "Data meets design".

Venngage offers the usual range of shapes, objects, backgrounds and you can upload images, or import from the web. There is limited pre-created themes, although the user can save their own designs as themes. There are a limited number of maps you can use (although, not if you're in Tasmania).

The big place that Venngage stands out is in it's presentation of data. It has two features to express data; pictographs and charts.

The pictographs allows you to easily click and drag the image you want repeated. Then you merely need to double click and choose the number of row, number of columns, and how many units are full.

The chart feature has a wide range of options, from the trusty bar and pie charts through to bullet and tree charts. There is a wide range of them, The best part about the charts is the ease of getting data into them. Upload an excel sheet, choose the worksheet and then drag and drop the data onto the chart.

This tool is powerful enough to provide a wide range of analysis on pretty much any topic. If you have data, you will be able to create an infographic to express it.

Pros: Can represent any data, charts, pictographs
Cons: Limited templates, students need accounts, slightly complex interface

Thinglink

Thinglink is not actually an infographic creation tool, but it's capacity to turn static infographics into interactive ones rates it a mention here.

Basically,Thinglink allows you to place markers on an image. The viewer then interacts with these markers by hovering their mouse over them. The markers can contain text, or can be web links. The web links options allows the image to become very media rich indeed.

Thinglink is very simple to use and produces an interactive image that you can link to, or embed. Students will have to sign-up to create images. Images can be set so they can be modified by anyone, which allows for collaboration, but you can restrict access.

Thinglink allows students to create media rich, interactive infographics, which could be a nice change to PowerPoint for multi-modal presentations.

Pros: Simple, interactive, media rich, collaborative
Cons: Can't restrict collaboration, students need accounts.

Useful Links

• Infographic lesson plans 
• an easelly infographic 
• a thinglink example

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Control Over the Screen

"IMG_4646" by Tom Woodward (licensed CC BY-NC 2.0)

For years I have worked in a computer room that our head of IT services designed with classroom management in mind. There are two distinct design elements he used.

Firstly, where I sit behind all the students and we all face the projector. This may seem a bit weird, but it gives me a very important advantage, I can see all of their screens from my desk. The second designed element is that the computer room has two separate electrical circuits. One of those circuits is for the monitors and is fitted to the kill switch, so at a press of a button, all the monitors go blank.

While these two designs may not be possible in a normal classroom, but they do highlight a very important classroom management concept - having control over the screen. So how can this be applied to the normal classroom?

Viewing the screen

Ok, so talking to the back of your students' heads, or having them turn around to face you, may not be a practice, you wish to use. It is not a big issue for me, as most of my courses are designed with minimal 'face time' from me. 

In practice, viewing a student's screen isn't for when you are in front of the class. Viewing their screens is for when the students are engaged in their task. The time when a teacher traditionally moves around the class observing students' work. During this time it is really helpful to have students arranged so that you can easily see their screens. I even go as far as to state it explicitly "Please turn your laptop so I can see it.". 

How you arrange this will be dependent upon your room, it may be easier to mover yourself rather than all the students.

Remove temptation

There are times when you are addressing the class and the students do not need to use the laptop. During these times make it easier for them to focus by removing temptation. 

I remember my teachers saying "pens down", so why not use the digital equivalent? The most commonly used phrase is "Screens at 45 degrees". This means that students tilt their screens down enough that they can't see them, but not far enough to put the laptop to sleep. A colleague of mine has a different take, he tells the students to turn the laptops around to face him.

Conclusion 

Remember, focusing on work is one of the skills that we have to foster in students. Both of these methods will assist you in preventing the students from "digitally wandering off", but, in the end, especially with younger grades, some students will need assistance to focus on their work.

Lesson: Creating Netiquette Rules

Details

Subject: Information Technology Systems
Grade: 11
Tools: YouTube, AnswerGarden, Google Docs, tricider
Focus Question: What is appropriate on-line?

The Lesson

The lesson started watching Beaker's Ballard on YouTube.

We then used AnswerGarden to garner students' experience about inappropriate behaviour on the web.

The concept of Netiquette was introduced by introduce by Will (he's a high school junior) via Youtube. This was expanded on by "The Core Rules of Netiquette" provided by Albion.

The class was then challenged to collaboratively summarise this into a "Netiquette 10 Commandments". Originally this was done using typewith.me, but now I would choose to create a Google Document.

Finally, the video "How to Follow Proper Netiquette Rules" showed the students how generalised 'commandments' can be distilled down to very specific rules. The students were then asked to create specific rules and post them to tricider.

Follow up

For homework students were asked to check over the rules that had been posted on tricider, and vote on them.

Lesson: Creating a Life Map

Details

Subject: Religion and Ethics
Grade: 11
Tools: Padlet *; Mapfaire
Focus Question: Where did the significant events in my life happen?

The Lesson

The concept of one's personal story being a sacred story was addressed in a previous lesson using the "Moments" Youtube Video by Everynone. This lesson was designed to get the students thinking about the significant events in their lives.

First we used corkboard.me*to brainstorm what kinds of things could be considered significant moments in a person's life.

I then showed them a life map I had created covering my life up to leaving school. I used this to introduce the students to the tool.

The students then logged onto Mapfaire using their Google accounts (each student at the College now has one). Once logged in they started adding locations on their map and writing notes about what happened at that place.

At the end of the lesson I encouraged them to ask their friends and families for details of more stories.

Follow Up

The beginning of the next lesson, students shared their maps in small groups. Each student was encouraged to share at least one story.

* corkboard.me has subsequently changed it's pricing therefore I'd recommend using Padlet instead

Just another technology

"Low-tech Texting..." by Jon Mott (licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The introduction of new technologies into the classroom always presents new challenges in behaviour management, but maybe the adjustment is not as big as it first seems.

Technology may continuously change, but student behaviour remains constant. Therefore, use the skill you have developed over the years to address the behaviour not the technology. This frame of mind enables you to approach ICT use in your classroom with your normal classroom management techniques.

Draw Parallels

The way I apply this methodology is is to draw parallels between the ICT behaviour and the non-ICT behaviour. Since I was far from a model student, I may have the advantage of personal familiarity with the non-ICT behaviours, but I'm sure that you will recognise them from your time in front of the class. Below are some examples.

• Texting - Passing notes
• Online chatting - Passing notes
• Playing computer games - Playing tic-tac-toe or dots-and-dashes
• Watching YouTube - Staring out the window
• Surfing the web - Reading a book
• Cyber-bullying - Bullying

Once, the parallel has been draw between the behaviours, then it's a short step to applying your classroom management techniques.