MS Word - a great educational tool

I have been a Microsoft Word user since high school. I have felt pretty comfortable with it for some time. However, familiarity breeds contempt and I never thought Word would be very capable at visual designs. I have always used Microsoft Publisher for these types of applications. While I’m not sold on Word over Publisher, I was surprised at what I was able to produce on Word. I really enjoyed playing with the options for photos. Below, I have links to a riding lesson flyer I made last year in Publisher and one I created this week in Word. I think the lessons I learned about design have made the flyer much more visually interesting. I’ll post more about design and my newsletter in my next blog post.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51623819/2010-family-clinic-flyer3

http://www.scribd.com/doc/51625377/2011-Family-Riding-Clinic

            Personally, I love MS Word as an educational tool. Before this week, I was still a little leery of using MS Word 2007 since I had been using the older versions of Word. I never had a great grasp of “The Ribbon.” After this week, I think I can use and explain its functions to students. In our online discussions, I mentioned the Outline mode of Word. It is a great way to organize information when drafting a composition. With the new features of MS Word 2007, I bet teachers could create great graphic organizers. For example, a quick Google search brought me to this file:

http://www.schoollink.org/twin/Creating%20Graphic%20Organizers%20Using%20Microsoft%20Word.pdf

Unit Two - Web Search Engines

When folks think of internet information searches, I’d wager most people think of Google, Yahoo, or Wikipedia. While these tools are fantastic, they barely scratch the surface of what is available on the web. This week’s unit opened my eyes to the vast amount of resources available. Most web searches are easier than periodical database searches because they use natural language features. Web searches are good for finding quick but not necessarily thorough answers to questions. The web is a great resource for practical questions such as lesson plan ideas or finding examples classroom layout designs. They are also excellent resources for networking, like listservs, chatrooms, and bulletin boards.

This week’s unit also reinforced my belief that teachers must guide student’s research online. Learning how to use web searches effectively is an excellent way to develop critical thinking skills, such as synthesizing data. Many students come into the classroom with plenty of experience with social media and the web but don’t understand how to filter through the avalanche of information available. In addition to teaching how to search effectively, teachers must show students how to evaluate the information on websites. Anyone can post to the internet, which is both a benefit and drawback. It means all information must be looked at with a discerning eye.

One search engine I tried this week was Yippy.com, a site I had never heard of before. Yippy.com is a metasearch engine. It queries Ask, Open Directory, Gigablast and others. It groups similar results into clouds. According to yippy.com, “Clouds help you see a topical overview of your search results so you can hone in on exactly what you’re looking for or discover unexpected relationships between items” (http://search.yippy.com/help-clusteranatomy). I was surprised that Yippy.com provided the best resources. My “periodical database education” search retrieved over 9,400,000 results total and Yippy provided the top 207.

Yippy’s cloud feature reminded me of the search subject feature I used in the periodical databases. From my original search, Yippy created over 20 clouds of related information. Clicking on one cloud gave me smaller results of 12 to 20 related topics. Picking one of the clouds brought me to an ERIC link for an article titled, “Six Online Databases: A Librarian’s View” by Harry Willems (Source Book Report, v17 n5 p47-51 Mar-Apr 1999). However, the full text was not available through the web search. I went back to the Hatch Library databases and searched the EBSCO database and found the full article, which my inner geek thought was totally cool.

Unit One - Periodical Databases

Periodical databases are a crucial resource for effective research. I believe periodical databases aren’t as initially user friendly as web based searches. However, like most skills, periodical database searching becomes easier through practice. It is a skill that requires a solid foundation of understanding before moving on to more advanced techniques. Beginners should start with simple keyword phrases while advanced students can learn how to refine and/or add depth to their searches.

Learning how to use periodical databases is an important skill to teach in the classroom. As stated above, there are many techniques to craft an effective search. Most students are not likely to practice these skills in their free time. This is one of the many online literacies teachers must develop in their students. It is important students understand the difference between “googling” it and thorough academic research.  

While I had some practice in search techniques, I had never thought about exploring the “about” and “help” section of the databases. I have always treated periodical databases similar to a Google search in that respect. I’d plug in my Boolean search words in the keyword field and cross my fingers. I had never checked which journals my databases used. Also, I realized how helpful the subject lines could be. Instead of trying endless variations of keyword searches, I clicked on related subject terms within appropriate articles. This brought me to a wider pool of articles and helped me refine my search.

The biggest “aha” moment for me during this assignment was realizing you don’t have to go to the library to do basic research any more. While I had done many Lexis-Nexis or Eric searches during my undergrad years, these electronic searches only gave you the citations, not the articles. This meant finding promising article abstracts then trekking through the stacks in the bowels of the library to find the actual article. Then, if the article ended up being what you hoped, which was a 50/50 proposition sometimes, you had to lug the journals to the copier machine, have a pocket full of change and make copies to bring home to your dorm. Now, most of the databases have full text options and you can print the article at home and never change out of your PJs (although I was known to show up at the library in green flannel PJ pants during finals).  

Unit Three - Blogs

I’ve been aware of blogs for many years now. However, I never really thought how I could use them. I joke that my father is a member of the right wing conservative blogosphere. He’s been blogging for years.  I’d often hear news reports or radio personalities citing information from blogs but I’d never check them out. I’ve always viewed the internet from “traditional” website that I found from Google searches.

One of my personal interests is animals. Unfortunately, my husband is allergic to dogs. I have spent countless hours pouring over the Google results of “hypoallergenic dog” searches. I never thought to look at blogs for people’s personal experiences dealing with allergies. Blogs are also a great professional tool for me. I can find blogs about horse care, riding instruction, and therapeutic riding. I am also really excited to continue exploring RSS feeds. I’ve always had a growing list of favorite websites on my tool bar that I visit on a regular basis (usually to kill time instead of doing homework). Now I can have a lot of that information directed to one central place. I could connect that to my blog and share my interests with others, a very cool feature. Again, this is another thing my dad is about five years ahead of me on.

I agree with Will Richardson, blogs are yet another important educational tool created by the digital revolution. They can change how students, teachers, parents, and administrators interact. Blogs can add a whole new dimension to the classroom and be used for a multitude of reasons and purposes. The uses for blogs are limited only by the imagination of the teacher and his or her students. Lisa Zawilinski has written an excellent article titled, “HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Thinking.” She describes why blogging develops higher order thinking in students and how to implement blogs in the classroom. She states, “On the internet, writing is intrinsically integrated with the reading comprehension process. As online readers gather information to solve a problem, they frequently analyze information, critically evaluate, synthesize across multiple texts and communicate with others” (Zawilinski , p.652) 

Zawilinski has created a step by step process to develop these critical thinking skills. This practical application described in the article makes it easier to understand how to apply this new technology in the classroom; an endeavor I am excited to undertake.

Works Cited

Zawilinski, Lisa. "HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking." Reading Teacher 62.8 (2009): 650-661. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 19 Mar. 2011.

Here We Go...

So this is my initial foray into the blogosphere. I've have never been much of a blog reader and never an author. Sometimes I read or post to website bulletin boards or the occasional chat but I have never created my own blog. Look for my answers to the class assignment soon.