Tech. Tuesday- April 8

Many of you already use the excellent web 2.0 tool called Turnitin.com.  One of your favorite parts of this tool is the Originality Check application that is capable of comparing uploaded student work to hundreds of thousands of websites for potential plagiarism.  I have used it myself and it is amazing.  However, some of you still feel that plagiarism remains a concern in your classes.  Let me invite you to check out this archived webinar from Turnitin.com:   Pushing Past Plagiarism with OriginalityCheck

By far, fewer of you utilize the online grading capabilities of Turnitin.com.  This application allows you to mark student work much quicker and easier without carrying around stacks of papers.  You can use the comments already included in the program or you can create your own and then place those comments on students' work with the click of the mouse.  If you are not convinced that GradeMark will make marking easier and faster for you, then check out this interactive tutorial.  https://demo-www.turnitin.com/dv?o=222980585&u=1007009245&lang=en_us&demo=1&cv=1&output=json&s=3

Using Google Docs to make Digital Kits for Projects 

While reading a March post of The Tempered Radical, I was intrigued by Mr. Ferriter's description of a way to use Google Docs to make Digital Project Kits for students.  I described Google Docs in a previous blog post (see Tech. Tuesday- December 20).  Using Google Docs to create a project kit for students, especially those in lower grades, seemed ingenious to me.  Basically, a digital kit is a collection of anything (i.e. photos, video clips, audio clips, passages of text, articles, documents, cartoons, etc.) connected to the project topic that teachers assemble for the students prior to the beginning of the project. Then, students use the content in digital kits to create their final products.  Now, before that furrowed brow that you have on your face becomes permanent, let me acknowledge that this would take some time to prepare on the part of the teacher, and explain why this would be time well spent.  First, it would speed up the process of the project.  As Mr. Ferriter describes, "Instead of spending days searching for content, students using pre-assembled digital kits are freed to think about the topic of study immediately." This would also give the teacher more control over the types of resources the students use in their projects.  Here's the best part though, if you search for images using Google Docs, Google only provides photos and images that are licensed for reuse and modification.  This means that no one has to worry about copyright infringement with these images!  Here are the steps for doing this (thanks to Mr. Ferriter):

1.  Start a new presentation in Google Docs

2.  Under Insert select Image

3.  In the Insert Image menu, select Google Image Search

4.  Type in your search term

5.  Google will only find images that are reusable without copyright infringement

6. After clicking on the image you want to use, find the link to the original image online found at the bottom of the image collection that Google has returned
7. Follow that link to find as much information about the original photographer as you can
8. Click on the Notes section of the slide to write a citation for the image.
9. When you are finished creating your digital kit, select the Share button in the top-right hand corner of your screen to make the file publicly available on the web
10. Copy the link that Google generates for your digital kit and share it with your students

 If you have a topic that you would like to see addressed in this blog, or if you would like to make a suggestion for training, please let me know!