http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/02/08/four-things-every-student-should-learn-%e2%80%a6-but-not-every-school-is-teaching/2/?_login=18038896f1?_login=18038896f1/

Four things every student should learn … but not every school is teaching

Education technology consultant Alan November reveals key lessons that today’s students must know in order to thrive in the Information Age

By Dennis Pierce, Editor

Feb 8th, 2010

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An awareness of the views of those in other countries, an understanding of how Google ranks the results of a web search, a knowledge of the permanence of information posted online: These are some of the lessons that every student should be learning in today’s schools, says education technology consultant Alan November—but not every middle or high school is teaching these lessons.

November was the featured speaker at a Jan. 14 luncheon session during the Florida Education Technology Conference (FETC) in Orlando. Although the session focused on how to balance safety and learning in the digital age, during the course of the discussion November also revealed several topics that he said every member of the Net Generation should learn:

1. Global empathy.

November said he was talking with a senior executive at a global investment bank recently, and he asked the executive: What is the most important skill for today’s students to learn so they are prepared to succeed in the new global economy? “Empathy,” the executive replied—the ability to understand and respect different points of view. Most of today’s companies do business with customers all over the world, and several also have branches in multiple countries. Chances are good that when students enter the workforce, they’ll be working with—or doing business with—someone from another nation, with its own culture and its own unique perspective, at some point in their career.It’s not hard to find people who are smart, the executive said. What is hard to find are employees who have to ability to empathize with, and be sensitive to the needs of, people from other countries.Fortunately, November said, technology makes it easy for today’s students to learn global empathy. Students can discover the current social and political conditions of other nations online, and they can interact with their peers from abroad and learn their perspectives on issues firsthand through web conferencing or eMail.

2. Social and ethical responsibility on the web.

Topics such as cyber bullying and sexting have made frequent headlines in recent years, and often with tragic consequences. The latest example occurred in western Massachusetts last month, when a 15-year-old freshman at South Hadley High School committed suicide after being harassed online. With several states passing laws to address cyber bullying, and a new federal law requiring schools to teach internet safety in order to receive e-Rate funding, many schools now highlight the dangers of inappropriate online behavior as part of their lessons. November weighed in on the importance of these lessons, calling out schools that neglect to teach online responsibility. By blocking access to social tools in the classroom, and not teaching students what constitutes socially and ethically responsible behavior online, schools are shirking a key responsibility, he said, adding: “Facebook might be blocked in your schools, but kids are still going to go home and use it.”

3. The permanence of information posted online.

Students are often careless about what they post on the web, November said, because they mistakenly believe that once they delete the information, it no longer can be found online.

But that simply isn’t true. To demonstrate, November opened a page on his web site, November Learning, and showed participants that it no longer contained an article from a few years ago. He then surfed over to the Internet Archive, a nonprofit initiative that indexes the internet for posterity, and typed the expired web address of the missing article into its Wayback Machine. Up popped the missing web page, preserved for anyone to see. “When I show this to students, I get a collective gasp,” he said. “They don’t know the web is archived every few days.” If you don’t show this tool to students yourself, November warned the assembled educators, “you are missing an important lesson” that could save them from ruining their lives.

4. Critical thinking about the information found online.

How many students understand how Google sorts and ranks its search results, November asked? Many students assume that the web links appearing at the top of their search results are the best, most reliable sources of information about the topic, but that’s not necessarily true. The two main criteria for whether a web site appears at or near the top of Google’s search results, November said, are (1) whether the search term appears within the web site’s URL (web address), and (2) the number of links coming in to the source from other web sites. “In other words, it’s nothing but a popularity contest,” he said. That might lead to a reliable source at the top of the results page—or it might not. Today’s students too often accept the validity of information on web sites that appear within the first few search results, November said, without thinking critically about these sources. If you’re going to teach anything in the Information Age, he said, shouldn’t it be how to find, evaluate, and use online information critically? “I think we’ve missed the information revolution in this country,” he said. “I can’t think of a single more important skill than being able to tear apart information on the web.”

Useful Guides for Writing and Formatting Research Papers

Tufts University Research Paper Navigator.  Time management guide for research papers.

http://tinyurl.com/research-paper-timeline 

Bedford St. Martin’s Press provides links to MLA, APA, and other citation formats.

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/citex.html

Capital Community College’s excellent “Guide to Writing Research Papers Based on Modern Language Association (MLA) Documentation” that takes you through all facets of the process of writing research papers.

http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/index.shtml

The Internet Public Library’s “Teenspace: A+ Research & Writing”offers step by step guidelines for writing research papers.

http://www.ipl.org/div/teen/aplus/step2.htm

Purdue University’s OWL Online Writing Lab. This handout provides detailed information about how to write research papers including discussing research papers as a genre, choosing topics, and finding sources. This resource was written by Sarah Hamid and Jack Raymond Baker.
Last full revision by Jack Raymond Baker. Last edited by Allen Brizee on April 14th 2009 at 12:08PM

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/01/

Citation Generators

The student is responsible for providing MLA citations that meet the requirements of Lansdale School of Business. All online generators issue disclaimers as to their accuracy. You may use the citations generated as a basis for your MLA citation, but you must make the necessary revisions. Keep in mind the EBSCOhost and CQ Researcher databases provide MLA citations.

BibMe is a free citation generator developed at Carnegie Mellon University that produces citations and bibliographies in APA, MLA, Chicago and Turabian styles. It has some features not found in other free citation generators, such as autofill and the ability to switch between citation styles.

 http://www.bibme.org/

KnightCite!

http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/index.php

Maintained by the Hekman Library at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI.

Landmark Son of Citation Machine
http://citationmachine.net/

NoodleBib Express

Just need one or two quick citations? No need to log in or subscribe — simply generate them in NoodleBib Express and copy and paste what you need into your document. Note: citations are not saved and cannot be exported to a word processor using this version of the tool.

http://www.noodletools.com/login.php

Style Wizard Currently under revision. Check after Oct. 2009.

http://www.stylewizard.com/mlaindex.html

Zotero Zotero is a free, open source utility that works in the Firefox browser to help users collect, manage and cite sources.

http://www.zotero.org/

Fee-based Citation Generators

EasyBib

This site formats and alphabetizes bibliographies for 37 types of sources in MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian style. The cost is $14.99/year for students. Users can save a bibliography online or import to Word. It includes a feature to upload journal article citations from databases. There is limited help. A free one week trial is available.

 http://www.easybib.com/

NoodleBib is an award winning site developed by librarian Debbie Abilock that formats and alphabetizes bibliographies in MLA, APA and Chicago/Turabian styles for over 50 types of sources. The cost is $8.00/year for students. Users can save bibliographies online or import to Word. NoodleBib includes fully integrated note-taking feature, which is very useful when writing papers.

http://www.noodletools.com/index.php

http://www.scholarsaid.com/

New purchase: $99.00 with upgrades available for $39.00.

 Video presentations:

http://liontv.blip.tv/file/621706/

Interactive tutorials:

http://www1.cpcc.edu/library/research-tools/DrCiteRight/library/research-tools/DrCiteRight/DCR-movie

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/plagiarismtutorial/default.asp (requires free registration)

 http://library.camden.rutgers.edu/EducationalModule/Plagiarism/whatisplagiarism.html

  http://library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/plagiarism/ 

http://library.villanova.edu/app/Web/userfiles/file/AIGateway/quizCommonKnowledge.htm

http://library.villanova.edu/app/Web/userfiles/file/AIGateway/quizParaphrase.htm

Be aware of privacy issues and social networking. Before you apply for a job type your name in quotation marks, “John Smith”, into a search engine such as Google, Ask, Yahoo, MSN, etc. and look at the results. If you have embarrassing pictures or unflattering or negative information displayed, you need to remove it from your MySpace or Facebook or blog pages. Keep in mind your information may be linked with other people, so add additional information to your name with which you have an association such as your school, blogs, bands, etc.

Websites ‘keeping deleted photos’

According to the BBC user photographs can still be found on many social networking sites even after people have deleted them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8060407.stm

Flesher, Jared. “How to Clean Up Your Digital Dirt Before It Trashes Your Job Search”
Job-Hunting Advice. 12 Jan. 2006. Career Journal.
http://www.careerjournal.com/jobhunting/usingnet/20060112-flesher.html
Flesher gives tips on removing or deemphasizing unwanted personal information on the Web.

Shaheed, Caroline. “Online Profiles May Put Brakes on Job Search.”
Top Stories.  6 Oct. 2007. CTV.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071004/ online_careers_071004/20071006?hub=TopStories
Shaheed offers information on removing personal information from search engine catches or archived sites such as the Waybackmachine. She also suggests strategies for establishing a positive and professional Web presence.

Perez, Juan Carlos. “Facebook’s Beacon More Intrusive Than Previously Thought.” Online Privacy.
30 Nov. 2007. PC World Online.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140182-c,onlineprivacy/article.html
“A Computer Associates security researcher says that Facebook’s controversial Beacon online system goes much further than expected in tracking people’s Web activities.”

Niccolai, James. “U.K. Youth Warned MySpace Isn’t Private (OMG!!!!).”  Security.
26 Nov. 2007. Computerworld.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticle Basic&articleId=9048718 “Young people are compromising their career prospects and opening the door to online fraud by posting personal information on social networking sites without thinking about the consequences, a U.K. privacy watchdog warned Friday.”

Tips to ensure privacy on MySpace:

http://www.profilepitstop.com/articles/myspace-help/how-to-make-your-myspace-account-private.php

http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/4246