Category Archives: David Truss

Infographics – New and Improved

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Last week we looked at Infographics we like and don’t like.

Today, we are going to pick one of two that we didn’t like and make them better!

Here are the two infographics and some background to them to help guide you. You are welcome to do more research, but try to keep the purpose of the infographic the same on your improved version.

First of all, before you start to re-design, think about the message of the infographic. What ‘story’ do you want to tell, or what information are you trying to simplify or clarify?

Next, look back at the comments that your fellow students made about infographics they did like. What is it that makes an infographic interesting, compelling to read, and a good delivery of information? Think about your design, and not just the information you are sharing!

Here are the infographics, and some links to learn more. Click on the inographics to see the original versions.

To learn more: ~You have to pay for the actual study, so no link for that:(

The Candle Problem

Images: Try searching Google for silhouette clip art or add the word people or clock or candle (these are just examples, but does this infographic even need a clock?).

 

Original Source: http://www.uwec.edu/geography/ivogeler/w111/articles/Food-Pyramid-Federal-Subsidies.png

Federal Food Subsidies (In the US, which is what the infographic is about) – Notice the most subsidized item is corn/feed. This is used to feed the animals that we eat, so even though it is a vegetable that is subsidized, this is done to keep the cost of meat lower.

Images that are basic shapes like these can easily be duplicated on Powerpoint… but does this information need to be represented this way or are there more interesting ways to show this? What is confusing about this infographic? How can you change that? Also, notice the disconnect between what the two images are telling you and what the title of the infographic is. This infographic wants to tell you a good story… it just isn’t doing it well!

Work in teams of two or three and make one of these better! Share a copy of this version and your own improved version on at least one (or all) of your blogs. Be sure to include the names of everyone that worked on your new and improved infographic and share a link in the comments below. (Or share the link to this post on your post and the link-back will happen automatically.)

And of course, if you would rather choose a different infographic to improve, go right ahead… just don’t waste time looking for one when you’ve got two perfectly awful examples to improve above! 🙂

Infographics – DM101

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Infographics are used to visually display information in interesting ways. They use things like images, colours, and scale to provide context and meaning to information.

Watch the video above: “Let the data set change your mindset”. See more here: The Billion Pound-O-Gram

Here are 10 Tips for Designing Infographics.

Google search and find some infogragphics. Pick one you like and one you don’t like and discuss what makes one work while another one does not. Let’s create a list of our own tips in our comments to help us with our creation of infographics. Be sure to share links to both infograpics and clearly state which one you like, which one you don’t like, and design reasons for this (rather than liking or not liking the content of the infographic).

Here are a couple places you can look for infographics: http://dailyinfographic.com/ and http://davidwarlick.com/graphicaday/

Infographics can also be funny:

 

 

 

Applications of Digital Literacy

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DM101 – Digital Media

 

Course Synopsis:

In this course students will be required to demonstrate the ability to efficiently and effectively navigate the digital technologies required to accomplish specific goals and tasks. Primarily, the goal of digital literacy is that individuals are able to select the correct digital tool at the right time for the right purpose behaving ethically, responsibly and always protecting the personal security and privacy of themselves and others. There are 4 areas of study: Social Networking, Personal Learning Environments and Networks, and Principles of Digital Presentation and, Principles of Inquiry.

Rationale:

In 2012 it is imperative for citizens to be digitally literate in order to be successful contributors to their community and society. As existing and new digital technologies have become integrated into daily lives for social purposes, learning purposes, and community purposes, digital literacy is a requirement for full self-expression and participation in society. Digital literacy is defined as the ability to create, comprehend, edit, and utilize digital technologies presented through multiple formats to satisfy an intended purpose.

The course is taught through an inquiry stance requiring critical thinking, ethical decision making and reflective learning – What am I wanting to inquire in to and ..? Is it ethical/am I behaving ethically? Is it effective? Does it matter? To me? To others? Why? How do I know? Does it positively contribute to the community? What difference will my work make or do I hope to make?

The expectation is that the units of this course will not be taught in a linear fashion but outcomes will be integrated throughout learning activities in this course or integrated within other courses and once mastered, are expected to be applied across learning environments/contexts and curricular areas – integration and relevant application are paramount. It is of particular importance that the ethical uses of information – copyright, privacy, plagiarism and digital citizenship are at the forefront throughout the teaching of this course.

Principles of Social Networking:

Unit 1:   In this unit students will analyse and evaluate their current digital footprint and continue to develop a digital footprint that is appropriate to the students’ developmental age and stage by effectively using a variety of social networking tools to accomplish specific purposes. Social networking literacy involves the use of networking tools for the purpose of developing a community and within communities to then connect, inquire, share and collaborate.

Students will be able to…

  • Use a variety of social networking tools for their intended purposes
  • Analyze a task, need or goal and determine whether social networking is required/advantageous
  • Demonstrate skills essential for safety and security in the digital world; protection of passwords, personal privacy, privacy of others etc.
  • Analyze and evaluate their digital footprint and continue to develop it at a level that is appropriate to their current developmental stage
  • Demonstrate transliterate competency – using language appropriate to the audience and/or tool – i.e. abbreviations for texting, one paragraph format for email etc.
  • Express personal views and perspectives of themselves and as an online author
  • Participate in online discussions in a value-added manner – reinforcing not repeating, constructive and thoughtful criticism and feedback, offering new information and alternate perspectives
  • Analyze, evaluate, and synthesize/filter for the purpose of curating information from various sources to develop a personal “infosumption” profile

Personal Learning Environments and Networks

Unit 2:   In this unit students will demonstrate the ability to learn in the digital environment by using tools to search and research, develop and follow inquiries and investigations and, organize, synthesize and reflect in a manner suited to a variety of tasks. Student will build personal networks of learning, for the purpose of sharing, collaborating and contributing to the learning of themselves and others. Learning effectively in the digital environment requires students to generate and share original thinking and perspective development via the social construction of knowledge and understanding as reflected through a dynamic portfolio.

Students will be able to:

  • Compare and evaluate a variety of digital learning tools for their intended purpose and as they reflect personal learning preferences and purposes  – i.e. process, create, investigate, organize, evaluate, curate, synthesize, collaborate, dialogue and discourse, etc.
  • Analyze, evaluate and select the appropriate learning tool to maximize effectiveness and efficiency of accomplishing a learning process
  • Organize, evaluate, analyse and synthesize learning via a digital curating tool – such as a digital portfolio
  • Use the available learning management system to maximize the goals and purposes of a variety of  learning tasks and processes
  • Create products that demonstrate types of online collaboration (coordination, cooperation, co-planning, co-implementation, co-creation, and co-evaluation) using online collaborative tools
  • Identify their personal digital learning profile/persona  – as it reflects personal learning styles and preferences
  • Adapt an inquiry plan to own learning style
  •  Articulate and evaluate the effectiveness of their preferred tools for learning, collaborating, sharing, networking  in relation to a learning goal

Principles of Digital Presentation

Unit 3: In this unit students will learn the principles of effective design as related to communicating effectively through all modalities appropriate to the task and the audience in the digital environment. A key component of this unit is protecting and respecting the intellectual property rights of themselves and others.

Students will be able to…

  • Express the views and perspectives of others by demonstrating respect for intellectual property by understanding copyright and plagiarism
  • Express personal views and perspectives of themselves as an author and contributor
  • Create and express digital content via storytelling
  • Demonstrate the understanding that the impact of design has on visual presentation

Principles of Digital Inquiry

Unit 4:   In this unit students will work in the digital environment through the points of inquiry as articulated in the BCTLA Framework for Information Literacy and the 21st Century Learner.

Students will be able to…

  • Analyze, evaluate and select the appropriate digital tools for a particular stage of inquiry
  • Demonstrate overtly the innate human drive to being an inquiry learner – connect/wonder, investigate, construct, express and reflect
  • Effectively utilize a research process when investigating an inquiry
  • Independently and strategically manage/control inquiry skills toward a particular goal or purpose
  • Evaluate the authenticity and reliability of information
  • Seek out and engage with mentors and experts

What makes a good discussion?

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These are the notes from our discussion on what makes a good forum discussion contribution. You can also consider these when thinking about blog post comments, and even class or group discussions.

Summary:

  • Agree with someone- and add more, support their ideas
  • Disagree with someone – don’t attack the person, give points/reasons why you disagree.
  • Add new ideas. (explain your evidence, suggest new topics, make a good thesis statement)
  • Share your opinion
  • Ask a question. (Extend the ideas or ask someone to explain theirs)
  • Give examples, quotes, cite sources.

Anything else?

Is there an expert in the house?

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Well, that depends on how big your ‘house’ is?

In this day and age, we have an incredible ability to reach out and connect to people who are considered experts in their field of study.

This morning, your task is to leave a comment on this blog that shares the following 3 or 4 things:

1. What is your inquiry question that you are currently working on?
2. Do some research and find out at least 1, but hopefully a few, ‘experts’ that you think could help you learn more about your topic. Try to find people that you think you might be able to contact. *Think about tools you can use to contact this person: email, twitter, Facebook, friend-of-a-friend, asking parents, asking teachers…
3. Will you make an effort to contact this person or these people? Why or why not?
Optional:
4. If you have a link to some information about your inquiry that you can share (a blog post for example), please share that as well.

Adding a ClustrMap to your blog Sidebar

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ClustrMaps are little maps that show you where in the world visitors to your blog have come from.

When you click on your map, it goes to a page that shows you your map in more detail.

This page also gives you details about countries, states and provinces visitors came from:

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Here are the instructions to get a map onto your blog.

First, go to your Dashboard…

Then follow these instructions.

Then:

Then you will get an email, (but you don’t really need to do anything with it.)

Your map will show up on your blog, and all your pages too!

Go to your blog to take a look at your map:

You are done. Start collecting dots! 🙂

Creating pages and menus in Edublogs

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The first video shows you the really easy way to create a page.

1. Go to your Edublogs dashboard.

2. Move your mouse over the ‘Pages’ link in the left side navigation bar, then click ‘Add New’. (You can also click on ‘Pages’ and ‘Add New’ will appear below ‘All Pages’.)

3. Choose a name for your page (keep it short).

4. Hit publish. Congratulations you have a new page!

Creating a Page


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(Link to the video in a new window)

Most themes will put the new page right into your MENU BAR at the top of your page like this:

If the page does not show up in the menu bar with your theme,

OR if you want these to be ordered in a way other than alphabetical,

OR if you want to have some pages show up as a drop-down menu option,

Or if you don’t want some pages to show up on your menu, then watch the next video.

Creating a Menu


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(Link to the video in a new window)

Questions? Please comment below.

Learning to cite and source – Scavenger hunt

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Greetings!

Here is a challenge for you! If you follow all these steps carefully and complete this scavenger hunt, you will also learn a few things about appropriate citation. Just for fun, the first 3 students to (completely) finish this get a prize! Also, for all students that complete all the tasks today, another 3 names will be randomly drawn to win prizes as well!

When you have done this scavenger hunt you will be able to:

• Create your own blog post with Categories and Tags.

• Link to blogs, websites and sources of quotes.

• Add images (and give appropriate credit for them).

Make sure you number all your items!

Create a blog post on your blog with the title “October Scavenger Hunt” and answer/do the following…READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS AS SOMETIMES THERE ARE LITTLE THINGS THAT YOU NEED TO DO TO COMPLETE THE TASK, WHICH ARE MENTIONED THROUGHOUT THE QUESTION. (For instance, to complete #1, you need to make sure you have read the last sentence in that section, or you might make a mistake.)

Checklist for your blog post: (Read below for more details)

  • 1. Link to this post (not just this Community blog, but this post on the blog).
  • 2. a) What does “by-nc-sa” mean? Use your own words!
  • 2. b) Find and share a link to a Creative Commons photo finding site. 
  • 3. Create a ‘poster’ with a Creative Commons licensed photo and a quote or a saying.
  • 4. Properly quote Bloggers’ Legal Guide and find the answer to this question: “Am I free to copy facts and ideas?”
  • 5. “Publish” your post with a Category ‘DM101’ and a Tag ‘scavenger-hunt’, (and other categories & tags if you want).

1. Hyperlinking and Quoting

On your post, add a hyperlink to this post, using the post title: ‘Learning to cite and source – Scavenger hunt’ as the linking term.

You need to use the chain-link tool, but this does not show up until you highlight some text. In the example image below, you will see that I plan to make ‘Wikipedia:Plagiarism’ a hyperlink, and because I’ve highlighted the text, the chain-link has shown up.

Here is where you can find out some good information about plagiarism: Wikipedia:Plagiarism.

Remember I was only using this as an example, you don’t need to link to wikipedia, you need to link to this post!

1b) Providing a source for information you quote:

Plagiarism can be a huge problem in school (and actually in the working world too). I think it is a problem for two complimentary reasons:

  • It is easy to do! Copy -> Paste
  • It is easy to catch! Click here to see how quickly I can find out that the information below is from Wikipedia and not my own words.

According to Wikipedia:

“You can avoid inadvertent plagiarism by following these three rules:

  • INCITE: Cite your sources in the form of an inline citation after the phrase, sentence, or paragraph in question.
  • INTEXT: Add in-text attribution when you copy or closely paraphrase a source’s words (see below for attributing public-domain sources).
  • INTEGRITY: Maintain text-source integrity by placing your inline citations in a way that makes clear which source supports which part of the text.”

(Wikipdia, Oct. 11, 2012)

Notice how this quote is clearly different than my own writing. I introduce it, I indent it, I italicize it, I changed the text colour, I used quotes, and I linked to the original source. You don’t have to do all of these things, but you do want to make sure that you are properly citing and linking to the source of other people’s work.

One of the features of Edublogs is that there is a quote icon you can use after highlighting a section of text.

 

For this theme, it makes the text look like this. However, how this looks can change from theme to theme, so I prefer to use my own strategies above.

When using Wikipedia, I always include the date that I retrieved the information because Wikipedia text changes over time, whereas something like this blog post will likely stay the same, and the post is already dated.

I like to think of Wikipedia as ‘the first place to look for information’, but not the only place! Search the web for a good quote about plagiarism, share it in your blog post, and make sure you properly cite and source it.

*To complete part 1, the link to this blog post must open in a new tab or window!

2. Using photos.

Except for photos of my family, when I share photos online I share them with a ‘creative commons’ license:

Creative Commons License

a) What does “by-nc-sa” mean? Use your own words!

(Hint: summarize the section titled “Under the following conditions:”)

[Are you working on your blog post right now? If you have not clicked ‘Save Draft’ yet, do it now… Remember to keep saving your work!]

There are two places that I like to search for Creative Commons photos. I usually search ‘by-nc-sa’ because that’s the most popular one… but if you just searched ‘by’ (Attribution) that means you only have to share who it is by, not anything else… but even then I like to link back to the original source as a ‘thanks’ to the person for sharing.

Flickr Creative Commons is a great place to search for photos you’d like to use. But some topics are filled with uninteresting photos. My favourite place is Compfight.com which uses Flickr, but somehow finds the best pictures to share. These are the settings I use for Compfight:

Here is a recommended way to share a photo. First the photo:

Same-Space-by-George-Couros-gcouros-on-Flickr-BY-NC-SA

I went to the Flickr page for this photo, clicked on the image I wanted and when I got to the page, I chose ‘View all sizes’ on the top right side of the page. I then chose a good size to download (too big and it slows your page down when loading. Too small and you can’t see it well or it gets blurry when you make it larger. 500 is a good width for blog posts!

I found the size I wanted, right-clicked on the image and saved as: Same-Space-by-George-Couros-gcouros-on-Flickr-BY-NC-SA.jpg -When I up this to my blog, it became this file: https://community.inquiryhub.org/files/2012/10/Same-Space-by-George-Couros-gcouros-on-Flickr-BY-NC-SA-ptaa6x.jpg

This is a ‘way overboard’ way to save the document, but I like doing this way so that if someone tries to copy the image from my site it comes with:

  • The Title: Same Space
  • The Artist: George Couros,
  • The Location (where I got it): gcouros on Flickr
  • The License: BY-NC-SA
  • The Link: (If you click on the image, it goes to the page I got the photo from.)

Note: This photo is actually a poster that George made using a Creative Commons image that he mentions right on the image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24258698@N04/3765608622/ and also a quote, with the person he is quoting: Nick Bilton. This is another great way to appropriately site a photo!

You can also check out the MorgueFile. These are free to use photos, with different or even no license, but even there they ask:

“The morguefile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site. To acknowledge the artist’s accomplishments, we ask that you credit the photographer when possible. Any questions regarding liabilities should be directed to the specific photographer.”

So far, all you had to do for this section is answer this question: What does “by-nc-sa” mean? Use your own words!

Now, one more task:

b) Find another place that you can search for Creative Commons photos or free to use photos, and share the link. Compare this site you have found to the ones I suggest above.

3.Create a motivational poster or poster to go with a favourite quote and share it in your post.

You must use a Creative Commons photo and give appropriate credit to the photographer. If you are using a quote rather than your own words, you must give credit to the person you are quoting.

Hint: You can save an image in Powerpoint, then write your quote or phrase on it, then “Save As’ a .jpg file.

[If you have not clicked ‘Save Draft’ in a while, do it now… Remember to keep saving your work!]

4. Here is a tip from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a post called: Bloggers’ Legal Guide:

“When can I borrow someone’s images for my blog post?

“Images are subject to the same copyright and fair use laws as written materials, so here too you’ll want to think about the fair use factors that might apply. Is the image used in a transformative way? Are you taking only what’s necessary to convey your point? A thumbnail (reduced-size) image, or a portion of a larger image is more likely to be fair use than taking an entire full-size image.”

So, taking a full copyrighted image and adding it to your blog is not considered fair use and you should not do it. You can use a smaller version or part of an image to make your point.

*Note that I linked to the page and I also -> indented the text, italicized the font and put the words in quotes. These are all ways that I show that the words above are not mine, and that I am quoting the website I linked to.

For #4, go to the Bloggers’ Legal Guide and find the answer to this question: “Am I free to copy facts and ideas?”

Link to the page, quote the answer, and then explain what this means, just like I did above for images.

5. Publish your blog post. Before you hit “Publish” create a category in the right column named ‘DM101’ and check it. We will talk more about categories later. Also, tag your post with ‘scavenger-hunt’,  (Post Tags are in the box below Categories). Your blog post should have both of these for your task to be completed.

Note: This post has 2 categories: ‘DM101’, and ‘David Truss’, you can see this at the top of the post, under the title. It also has 3 tags: ‘scavenger-hunt’,  ‘Creative Commons’ and ‘blogging’, you can see this at the bottom of the post.  You can add more categories and tags on your post, but you must have a Category: ‘DM101’ and a Tag: ‘scavenger-hunt’.

Check over your post for mistakes and hit the ‘Publish’ button. – Way to go!

Congratulations you are done! :-)