Tech+577

INTRODUCTION=== Class at 451 Bailey This introductory class was designed to give both parts of the class an overview of the semester and our project goals. The class includes Face to Face class members who were present and WebIT class members who joined using the WIMBA connection.

Main class resource links are:

http://webit.utk.edu/moodle and http://lrs.coe.utk.edu/courses/tech577

We are to set up a log to record our progress throughout the course of the semester. I have determined to investigate the use of a new Wiki resource for my log. This resource is the free wiki space available through wikispace/file/view/libri-vox.jpgs at []

The rest of these posts will be made with the most recent at the top as scrolling on this wiki is not very user friendly.

April 23
I posted and sent out a Tip to all users on the subject of How to Cite and Reference non-traditional media like paintings. I also finished my presentation and almost finished my paper.

April 20
I received the question: Has the Reference section at the end of a research paper remained unchanged? Or are there new rules for that last page of References? I answered this with several comments about electronic resources and the use of DOIs as well as the discontinuation of the use of retrieved by dates.

April 19
I posted instructions on how to properly cite personal interviews and communications. Continue to work on paper.

April 16
The APA group started a TWITTER page. So I announced that on my Facebook site and included a link to the new Twitter. @http://twitter.com/APA_Style I sent a notice of this great event to the entire Facebook group also.

In addition to this, I posted a discussion of Gray Literature on the site.

April 10-13
I have continued to answer questions on Facebook. One person asked: What is the rule on using page numbers when you are citing in the text? I answered that and then sent out a discussion about that question to the entire Facebook group.

I have been working on my final paper.

April 9
I sent out a new Facebook message to group members about the proper use of quotation marks as per APA 6.0. I was prompted to do this because I noted some errors in a paper that I was editing for someone. It is correct to put quotation marks around an ironic statement. However, it is not correct to put quotes around a statement that is a hedge or a mitigating statement like: He is a slightly stupid person. //Slightly// should not be in quotes. In the last sentence (and this one) //slightly// should be in italics because it is citing the word as a linguistic example.

April 8
I took the advice of a friend and submitted the newsletter that I had created to the folks at Tennessee Today. They published a little blurb and link to the APA templates in the April 5 issue (bottom right corner). []

I was out of town when this was published and didn't see it. (Luckily my friend pointed it out to me.) I did notice that the analytic on the receiving page had had 56 hits in one day. That seemed really strange to me until I found out that this had been published.

April 4
I sent out a new message to the Facebook group members. It listed all the main changes that have been made in APA 6th Edition.

I began my Final Report. I completed most of the Abstract.

April 2 and 3
I think that my efforts in sending out an e-Newsletter for my APA facebook page/training site/template site was successful. I have upped the traffic (albeit in a small way) to each of the sites. I have also gotten really good email and verbal feedback from folks. That plus, learning how to create a solid e-Newsletter made the project an overall positive one. Since that time I've created two additional e-Newsletters and have thought about positive ways to use that application.

Meanwhile, I got another comment on the Facebook page (along with new members). That prompted a discussion posting on the subject of what overall changes have been made in the APA 6th edition of the manual.

I have been thinking about beginning to write my final project report. Because of my topic, I think I should use the APA template that I created so that I can give it a real test. That seems an appropriate conclusion to this thing. To some degree, applying all of the sections, etc to this material will be a little tongue in cheek, but nonetheless a good way of doing it. Perhaps, I should start today. . . Nah!

March 31 and April 1 - No Fooling
Yesterday I did a presentation at the Community of Pracice for Instructional Technology on using Camtasia. I used my Marshmallow Boy template help file info as one of the examples. The folks there were interested in that training too, so I sent them my newsletter linking to Facebook, the training, and the templates. One of them suggested that I send it to the TNToday newsletter, so I did.

Today, I sent out another Facebook Tip on [|How to Find an article Using DOI (Digital Object Identifier)].

The most response that I have gotten so far is to the post about how to reference Twitter and Facebook. People like that information, even if it is for references that, actually, should rarely be used. It's like how people enjoy obscure facts. As in, "I always wondered about that!"

March 30
I registered as a Distributed Reader for Project Gutenberg. Yesterday I did a trial proof of a page to see what it was like. Very easy to get involved. I need to read over the beginner's instructions that describe the style that the project uses for things.

March 29
I have used Project Gutenberg as a source of material before, but now I'm looking at it as a collaborative work site. It is quite interesting. You can volunteer as a proofreader. This is more in line with my talents than the reading work at Librivox. Here are some of the instructions for proofreaders: > Note that, //at the same time//, others will be working on other pages from this book, or from different books. Each proofreader does just a bit (we suggest "a page a day"), but working together we can get a lot of books done! [In 2004, we average 300-400 proofreaders participating each day from countries all over the world, and we finish 4000-7000 pages per day. That's about 4 pages every minute of every day!] Project Gutenberg has been active since 1971. Full instructions for Distributed Proofreaders is found here.
 * 1) The website then shows you a webpage containing the scanned image of one page and the text from that image (as produced by OCR software). This allows you to easily compare the scanned text to the image of the page, so you can note the differences and fix them.
 * 2) You read the text, and correct it to match the page image. Basically fixing OCR errors, and marking things like bold or italic text, footnotes, etc. according to our guidelines (so we all mark them the same way).
 * 3) When done with that page, you save the page, and then either request another page to proofread or quit for the day.

March 28
I emailed the electronic newsletter to the UT Writing Center and to the administrative assistant at the UT Psychology Department.

March 26
Following some private tests with my eNewsletter, I sent it out to my co-workers to test it. They reported that it worked well for most of them. One user couldn't see the background gray color. The "back to top" anchor links do not work well. They should be eliminated.

After that, I made an email address list of everyone in the class and sent my eNewsletter to them. Next I sent a copy to a friend who is going to email it to her graduate school. Perhaps, over the weekend, I will email it to some other folks. The online version of the letter is here.

Electronic NewsletterAPA Style 6.0: Training Tips, and Templates

March 25

 * I have been working on an e-Newsletter to publicize the APA style guide resources that I have been promoting through my sites and Facebook. The piece looks like this.

This email newsletter was built using a template that I downloaded from Campaign Monitor. I went to a class offered by OIT and they trained us on the processes for designing email newsletters. The key is to use inline styles rather than calling styles from and external style sheet or the header.

However, you can still design the pieces using external styles. Then you run the html through something called a Premailer. The services that charge money do this for you. However, there is a free service at: []

Very slick, but the process is not totally intuitive. I will send this newsletter out in a day or two. || ||

Another thing that I did today was interact on the Bridging the Disconnect site about the subject of ePortfolios. I posted a blog entry.

March 23
I sent out another Facebook message to the APA resource group. This time A. P. Answer explained how to cite and reference Twitter and Facebook in proper APA style. I had the pleasure of running into one of my classmates at a training session at OIT. We talked about the class. She suggested that I send a newsletter to the UT graduate schools with information from my project. I may just do that.

March 22
I watched the video tutorial for the librivox upload process and figured out what I did incorrectly. I successfully uploaded to the following URL []

This is a link that may require a password to hear. I may read a poem next.

March 18
I registered for Librivox.org and submitted a test audio file. The upload didn't seem to work, so I sent an email asking about it.

I did some work on the LiveMocha site correcting people's submissions.

March 16
Along with a bit of language learning on the mocha site, I added a post on the Facebook page related to general guidelines for reducing language bias when writing in APA style. I posted this link to a style supplement posted by APA. []

March 14
Today I participated as an editor in the greatest online collaborative project of all time. I edited a Wikipedia article. I added this statement: //Donald Mackensie, who wrote the introduction for the Oxford World's Classics edition[2] of Puck of Pook's Hill in 1987, has described this book as an example of archaeological imagination that, in fragments, delivers a look at the history of England, climaxing with the signing of the Magna Carta. As Puck, calmly, concludes the series of stories, "Weland gave the Sword, The Sword gave the Treasure, and the Treasure gave the Law. It's as natural as an oak growing."// to this page: [|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_of_Pook%27s_Hill]I have messed around with Wiki before and have studied histories, etc., but I never actually added anything. It was very easy.

March 11-13
I have sent out my second email to the whole group on Facebook. The group now consists of 32 people. This time the email discussed APA 6.0's change in the way you treat the spacing after periods at the end of a sentence. In my discussions with people about the changes in APA style, this is the one that always raises people's eyebrows. Here is what I said in my email.

//Spacing!!

One of the changes in APA style that has been introduced with the 6th edition is in the category of "Just when we were getting used to the water, they tell us to get out of the pool."

When I was growing up, we always put two spaces after the punctuation at the end of a sentence. Then when I hit upper high school/college, they changed the rules on me. That is when I learned that APA style demanded that only one space follow punctuation at the end of a sentence.

Hold onto your hats friends. That rule has been changed back to the old way. The APA 6th edition slips this information to us in the form of an "Exception" on page 88 of chapter 4. "Spacing twice after punctuation marks at the end of a sentence aids readers of draft manuscripts."

Are you screaming because you have a manuscript in process and have used a single space instead of a double? Don't fret. Use your word processor's find and replace. Search for dot-space and replace with dot-space-space. You won't be able to do a global change, but it won't take you too long.

A. P. Answer //

In watching my site analytics, I'm seeing a couple of things. First, I have a fairly high bounce rate, but I always expect that. A //bounce rate is:
 * Bounce rate** is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.//

My personal blog gets lots of hits--1,000 a month, but the bounce rate is over 80%. If someone goes directly to a page and reads and then leaves without clicking anywhere else in the site, the bounce rate will be high. More interesting to me is the amount of time spent on the site. On my training site, people are staying an average of a minute and a half. Because of the way the site is set up, there is no other page for them to click to, so the bounce is almost 90%. Even if people click through the whole training, they will be tracked as a bounce. With a Time on Site at over a minute, I think it indicates that some people are actually clicking into the training and reading some information.

The template site has a lower bounce rate--75%. That means that a quarter of the visitors are actually trying to look at or download a template as that is the only thing for them to do on the site.

I tried to use a coupon to buy a Facebook ad, but it didn't work. I may actually purchase a Facebook Ad, but I'm not really sure I want to spend the money.

March 5-10
I have been on a trip, so haven't been able to do too much related to this project except correct some people's submissions on Livemocha and check the analytics on the sites that I have posted. I have over 30 members on my facebook site, but not too many questions. I did send out a message mail to my group announcing the availability of the APA document template. The response was that over ten people visited the template site. I plan to put an ad on Facebook to generate some interest.

March 3 and 4
I have completed the construction of an APA 6.0 template. The URL for the template page is:

[]

The URL for one of the templates is: []

March 1 and 2
Yesterday I contributed to Ashley Raburn's and Corey Ramey's projects. It was easy. I just had to write out some observations/comments.

I have been working on an APA document template to post on my Facebook/APA training sites in answer to a request for a template.

February 28
I have been answering a few questions on my Facebook site. The most recent question was, "What is a DOI?"

February 25-26
I looked at an interesting collaborative online learning resource this week. It is adult learning, which is my primary interest, although non-adults can certainly use it too. It is at the web site www.librivox.org. The tag line for the site is "Accoustical Liberation of Books in the Public Domain." The purpose of the site is to establish a collaborative network of Listeners and Readers who together take the text of books and poetry in the public domain, record them, check them and then release them for free download to people who want to listen to them. On this website they provide a catalog of books and matter that has already been recorded, links to information on how to volunteer to become a reader or listener (Like an editor or checker) and also a link for donation.

February 23
I entered information about my Facebook group on the TappedIn white board. I haven't used TappedIn enough to know whether that is a legitimate use of the white board, but, I thought I would do it and see what happens. I may contact the moderator and ask if it is.

Meanwhile, I noted that the National Gallery of Writing, that I am following as one of the groups that I am participating in received an excellence award. See below: **"Thirteen Organizations Receive Award of Excellence in First Round of AAA Awards** NCTE has won a 2010 Associations Advance America (AAA) Award of Excellence from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) for its National Day on Writing and its National Gallery of Writing! The Council is also in the running for the ASAE Summit Award, the organization's top award for association programs. ASAE Website, February 22, 2010

There's no time like the present to submit to the Gallery and to be thinking about how you'll celebrate the 2010 National Day on Writing."

I forgot to mention that over the weekend I submitted recipe's to Christine Riggs recipe project. I really like her idea. Plus it seems like she is incorporating recipe stories along with the recipes, which is nice. I also corrected another assignment on LiveMocha.

February 21 and 22
For the last few days I have been answering questions on my Facebook group.

I created a YouTube video to answer the question, "How do you deal with citations for authors that have identical authors and dates?" The video is not clear. I made it with Camtasia. [] I now have 24 members in the group!

February 17C
I bookmarked this site on delicious.com

February 17B
I posted this online training on www.merlot.org at http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=433689 Then I submitted the material to Curriki.org. It is available at: http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_degeorgeb/WritinginStyle-APAStyleManual6thEditionTraining?bc=

February 17
I posted my first answer to a real question from someone who had participated in the Go To Meeting session that we conducted on Thursday February 11. About 6 people participated in that session. We went through the material rather quickly. One person later reported that we had moved too quickly. Not as many questions were generated in that session as in the face to face session.

The question that was raised related to the integration of APA 6.0 with EndNote. I posted the answer on the Facebook site and also delivered it to the person who asked via email.  EndNote, the Bibliographic management software, available at:

@http://www.endnote.com/

has provided an EndNote style update for APA 6.0 at:

http://www.endnote.com/sup port/enapa6thstyle.asp

 This update demands that you refresh both the APA 6th Output style (an .ens file named APA 6th.ens) and an EndNote Reference Type Matrix (named APA6th_RefTypes.xml). The download comes with a set of instructions. Make sure to read the instructions. This is not hard, but neither is it totally straightforward.

If you have difficulties, just ask here!

Another question that A.P. Answer received about EndNote relates to changing some of the default settings in EndNote. For example the user wanted to cite Bibliographic references in the text as footnotes rather than within the body of the paper. She planned to have a full reference list at the end also.

The EndNote default for footnote citations is to present the full details of the reference at the place where it is first cited. At subsequent points of citation, the abbreviated citation format is used. The user who raised this question did not want the full citation to be presented in the footnotes at all.

Let me point everyone to a good reference web site for our answer here.

http://www.library.uq.edu. au/endnote/footnote.html

This page on the University of Queensland site.

That site recommends configuring EndNote in the following way. Note that a similar procedure can be used to configure any form of the output style (i.e. the way the information from the EndNote library is formatted in your paper.)

“EndNote output styles can be configured to produce either type of referencing. To find out how a particular output style handles footnotes: · In EndNote, click on Edit on the top menu bar, then Output Styles>Open Style Manager · Highlight the relevant output style and click on Edit · When the edit window opens, go to Footnotes in the left-hand pane, and click on the subheading Templates. · On the right-hand side of the edit window, you will see a drop-down menu showing how EndNote formats citations in the footnotes.”

The drop down menu gives 3 choices: 1. Same as citations 2. Same as bibliography, and 3. Using footnote format.

Take a look at this in your own system. These changes can be applied to APA 6.0 or any of the output styles in EndNote.

February 16
I added a Google Analytic to my main training site so I could track whether it gets any hits or not. On my first check of the analytic, I found that a user from Athens, Alabama had visited the site and spent 3 minutes with the material.

February 15
I changed the name of my Facebook group and added an image. I also added my main training piece to the site. I am feeling like facebook may not be have all the features I wish it had to highlight the training piece as well as to generate Q&As, but, we'll see. Maybe I'll have to use multiple sources to drive people to the training. The new site name is: **APA 6.0 Resources - Ask A.P. Answer APA 6.0 Resources - Ask A.P. Answer**

I have a cute little icon that I developed from an image that we bought from iStockphoto while developing the training.

I contacted Linda Phillips and Melanie Feltner-Reichert, librarians at UT yesterday to ask about the use of DOIs by the UT library system. Linda answered that she has been thinking about this, but has not yet taken any action.

February 14 B
I established a Facebook group entitled: [|APA 6.0 Resources - References and Citations How-To] I also posted an initial discussion that listed good resources that help people to use APA 6.0 to create references and citations correctly. I also finished getting the training piece that I have been preparing with one of my co-workers ready to be posted online. We had the training finished, but I completed the feedback form today.

February 14
I took some time to do written and audio responses for livemocha again today. Very fun. I received a response from the NCTE Gallery of Writing. The piece of writing that I submitted is now published on the Gallery. Here is the information they sent by email: Name of Contribution: Bonnie Always Lied to Me ID of Contribution: #1949181 Gallery Name: Gallery of NCTE Gallery URL/Location: [] Congratulations! Your writing contribution has been accepted into the following gallery: Gallery of NCTE.

They also sent more NCTE resources including a discussion Ning. Get Connected By clicking the link below, you will be invited to register and enter this discussion space. National Day on Writing -- General Discussion [] Additional Resources
 * National Gallery of Writing Website: []
 * National Day on Writing Website: []
 * National Day on Writing on Facebook: []

February 12
I got a request from LiveMocha to review an exercise by Alex [] The system is great. Alex did a reading exercise that he recorded. I commented on it and recorded some pronunciation corrections back. So cool. Alex lives in Brazil and speaks Portuguese.



Project Proposal Refinement Organization - Scope of the Project Pursuit or Implementation - Data Generation Wrap-up

This is what I have to do.

The Proposal is this, I guess Proposal.

February 11
I posted my project outline on the Moodle site. I joined the wikispaces and ning sites for Bridging the Disconnect on Technology Integration set up by our classmates Julie King and Virginia Britt. I read article entitled: The Young Prefer Facebook to blogging, Twitter by M.B. Marcus of USA Today.

February 8
I joined the Yahoo group entitled Electronic Portfolios in Education moderated by Helen Barrett. [] To start sending messages to members of this group, simply send email to eportfolios@yahoogroups.com

February 7
One of the folks in class suggested joining the website livemocha.com to do interactive language learning. That sounded really interesting, so I signed up for that. I will either work on French or Swedish. I'm registered for both. Here is an image of the interface with the group of online friends that you can interact with. The intro is sent via an autogenerated email:



"If you're learning a new language, you'll see immediately how Livemocha is different: - Enroll in Courses: With our fun and holistic online language courses you'll develop all the skills and confidence to begin conversing with native speakers. - Make Friends: The Livemocha community is full of friendly, like-minded, and motivated language learners looking to practice their skills. Don't be shy - introduce yourself and start practicing! - Receive Tips from Native Speakers: Have your speaking and writing submissions reviewed and scored by native speakers. They will rate your proficiency, give you tips for improvement, and help you meet your language-learning goals. - Stay Motivated: Learning a new language is tough! Track your weekly goals, earn points for completing exercises, and compare your progress with that of your friends for some friendly competition."

The response I received from my submission to the National Gallery of Writing autogenerated a response that game me an ID# (ID #1949181) and told me that I would be notified in 30 days about the submission. This space allows teachers to set up what they call a "Local Gallery" so that they can host a group of documents--for instance, everyone in the 5th grade. "**For those having trouble getting started**, NCTE has created [|Tips for Writers] and made some [|sample writings] available. **For those needing inspiration**, popular authors and celebrities, such as Sarah McCoy who tells us "a day without writing is like a day without food," [|talk about writing]." The space started in October 2009 and ends in June 2010. So far they have collected 18,000 pieces in 1,800 galleries.

February 6
The National Council of Teachers of English has established a National Writing Gallery. As part of my assignment to become a part of several interactive learning projects, I submitted an essay to the main gallery. In the National Gallery of Writing they are collecting all kinds of writing from people from all walks of life. Any one can submit stories, poems, recipes, emails, blogs, even audio, video, and artwork. I submitted a piece I wrote a while ago and will track the process.

//Bonnie Always Lied to Me// []
 * 1) **The Gallery of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)** represents a broad cross-section of writing hosted by the National Council of Teachers of English.
 * 2) **National Partner Galleries** include writing that corresponds to a theme or purpose identified by National Partners participating in this initiative.
 * 3) **Local Partner Galleries** include works from writers in a classroom, school, club, workplace, city, or other local entity.

February 5
//On-line learning, on-line communities// //Proposal Stage Planning Guide// //Organizing Educational Network Interactions: Steps towards a Theory of Network-Based Learning Environments//

February 3
//Telecommunications in the Classroom: Keys to Successful Telecomputing// //Learning Circles: Virtual Communities for Elementary and Secondary Schools//

February 2
//Group Interaction and Student Questioning Patterns in an Instructional Telecommunications Course for Teachers// [] [] []

January 31
//al Literacy in a Gutenberg Culture// //The Definition of High-End Learning//

January 30
//Understanding the Lifecycles of Network-based Learning Communities//

**January 29**
http://greetingsfromtheworld.wikispaces.com/

January 28
//Keys to Successful Projects// //Organizing and Facilitating Telecollaborative Projects//

**January 27**
//The Impact of Computers in Classrooms//

January 26
//TeleScience Activities: Educational Uses of Electronic Networks// //Science Instruction on Electronic Message Networks// //Teleapprenticeship Partners Program: The Lunch Project//

January 25
//Organizing Electronic Network-Based Instructional Interactions: Successful Strategies and Tactics////Part I// //Organizing Electronic Network-Based Instructional Interactions: Interpersonal Strategies////Part II// //Observation on Electronic Networks: Appropriate Activities for Learning//

January 24
//Supporting Knowledge Creation: Using Wikis for Group Collaboration//