This week I am evaluating two online tools to determine how they can be incorporated into reading and writing curriculum. I evaluated Actively Learn and BibMe. I am going to talk about each tool one at a time and discuss how I could use each to emphasize reading and writing in a science curriculum.
Actively Learn is a website that allows students to read through content and engage with the information in various ways. Some of the features of this site include polls, in-text questions, definitions, translations, auditory aids, and opportunities to interact with the teacher and each other. The teacher’s side of Actively Learn includes a work space in which you can upload your own documents or import articles. You can also create classes within the site, so that you can assign work to individual classes.
I would use this to have my students read articles from the news involving science. I would have them answer questions on the topic as they read. I could also use polls to determine their opinions on different viewpoints. Actively Learn also allows you to make quizzes. I like the idea of questions within the text, followed by a quiz. I really like that Actively Learn allows students to define words that they don’t understand. If I print out articles then they would need further resources for finding definitions. Using ActivelyLearn, they could define key terms within the text easily, and I can also require that they define it as they are reading. It also allows students to translate. I think it easily lends itself to accommodations for students with the translate feature as well as an option to have the program read words out loud.
In Technology to Teach Literacy, the authors describe a variety of different tools and group them according to their function. I think that ActivelyLearn functions as both educational software in the form of a writing aid and a communications tool in that it allows for comments between classmates and teacher (Anderson et. al., 2008). It seems that my favorite technology tools today are the ones that kill two birds with one stone (like Edpuzzle that allows me to assess within video).
One of the most powerful sentences I read this week in the text Literacy 2.0 said that “technological tools…need to be continuously considered against the backdrop of old literacies: reading, writing, listening, and speaking” (Frey et. al.,2010, p. 72). I think Actively Learn supports old literacies. Students are actively reading. They are writing about what they read. They are able to listen to each other’s opinions, and they are able to speak their own opinions all through one tool.
I was really hoping this tool was more useful than easyBib or Citationmachine. It has some really helpful features BUT they are not free. BibMe has the ability to download your bibliography as a word document (instead of copying, pasting, and reformatting) but you have to pay for that. The plagiarism checker feature is also not free, which is pretty strange since there are so many free plagiarism tools out there anyway. I did notice that BibMe does allow you to make a title page. This feature is convenient although making a title page is usually not a stumbling point for most students. Furthermore, most of my students are not creating papers that require a title page. It would be good practice for college or just a good resource for them to be aware of. That was all the negatives. It is free for APA citations which typically cost on EasyBib. It allows students to make annotations which is convenient for them if they are producing an annotated bibliography.
In science, it is important for students to become familiar with APA format. I would use this tool to have them create annotated bibliographies so that I know they are truly reading the sources they cite for projects in my class. The practice with APA format would help prepare them for college as well as having them practice digital citizenship.
Reference
Anderson, R. S., Grant, M. M., & Speck, B. W. (2008). Technology to teach literacy: a resource for K-8 teachers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall.
Frey, N., Fisher, D., & Gonzalez, A. (2010). Literacy 2.0: reading and writing in 21st century classrooms. Moorabbin, Vic.: Hawker Brownlow Education.
April,
ReplyDeleteRE: "The practice with APA format would help prepare them for college as well as having them practice digital citizenship."
The ability to correctly cite sources is an important component of digital literacy. I teach one undergraduate technology course and I find that only about 10% of the students enter the course with knowledge of APA. I teach 6-7 graduate level edtech courses and I find that only about 50% of graduate students understand APA. It is admirable that you are introducing your students to APA and that you are incorporating tech tools to help them become successful with it's finicky format.
Dr. Dell
April,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like Actively Learn would be an amazing tool! I too, would really like being able to add questions to the text the students are reading and also create a quiz for the end, and translate for students when needed would also be a tremendous help.
Bibme is the tool I usually use for my papers. I have found that it does a much better job of finding my articles than EasyBib (Google Addon). And yes, I agree that the other features would be great to have, it is still pretty easy to use and accurate. Thank you for sharing.
April,
ReplyDeleteI also checked out Actively Learn and thought it had a lot of possibilities. I seems like a very engaging way to present them with notes as an alternate to posting them on a whiteboard for them to copy. I thought that putting in comments and questions or a quiz at the end would be a good incentive for them to read over them carefully. They could also refer back to them as needed which would be an added bonus! I also thought that that may be a good way to keep them interested in current events by making them for their classmates to read over and answer questions as well.
I have stumbled across Bibme before and I was also not super impressed, it puts a lot of the tools that the students need in one place, but since a lot of functions require payment, I ended up going in another direction.