APA Reference

Indenting the second line on your reference can be challenging in a blog.  When you are editing your post, the "WYSIWYG" (what you see is what you get) rule doesn't apply.  You will need to type in your reference without the indents, then go to "preview" to see where the line breaks occur.  The come back to the edit mode and place a "return" at the first line break.  On the second line, put your cursor in front of the first letter and space 5-6 times.  Go back to preview to see where the next line break is.  Repeat this until your reference looks correct in the preview mode.  Be sure to check to see that you followed the APA format like the sample shown below.  Then publish your post.

Mulholland, R. (2006). Creating the environment for middle school 8th
      graders to be engaged. Reading Matrix: An International Online
      Journal, 6(2), 106-115. Retrieved September 9, 2009 from EBSCO
      Host Academic Search Complete.

Common problems I've seen with citations:

1. Typing author's first name instead of initial,,,
2. Capitalizing the title of the complete journal article, not just the first letter and subsequent proper nouns...
3. Forgetting to include the name of the journal or forgetting to italicize it...
4. Adding "pages" or "p" before the page numbers...
5. Choosing an entry in a journal that is not an article - such as an "Editor's Letter", a"Software Review", or a brief one to two page informational piece...

Don't forget to check your spelling, grammar, capitalization and punctuation before posting to your blog!!!

Make sure your summaries are each between 100-150 words long.  You can copy and paste your summary into a Word document - choose the "Review" tab and then click on "Word Count".  You wll then get a pop-up wndw with the number of words in your summary, as well as some other interesting statistics.

Reflective Blog #2: Research in Educational Technology

Students will be reviewing/critiquing at least five journal articles related to educational technology.  They will prepare an annotated bibliography for their second blog assignment using APA style guidelines.

The purpose of an annotated bibliography is to describe, summarize, and/or evaluate a source to:

• place original research in context
• review works relevant to a particular topic
• provide examples of sources relevant to a particular topic
• demonstrate the quality and scope of original research
• show why a particular source is relevant to a particular topic
• give supplementary information about relevant resources

I look forward to reading our winter cohorts' blogs in the next few weeks.

Reflective Blogs: Fall Quarter

The students in our fall TIE 300 course all created an individual blog to complete their reflective blog assignments.  They added a variety gadgets to their blogs and reviewed other educational blogs.    In their second reflective blog, they commented on the blog sites of other students in their class.

For their third reflective blog, they read about cyberbullying, cyberharassment, and cyberstalking.  Afterwards, they discussed how technology might allow behavior that would not occur in other settings.  In addition, they answered questions such as "Does the Internet allow users to act in ways that are not acceptable in other situations?"  "What about hate group websites?" "How would you avoid these problems in your classroom?"  "What is the parents' role in reducing the problem?"  Students also added links with brief descriptions that might help others with cyerbullying, cyberharassment, and/or cyberstalking.