Using Flipboard in Teaching

I really enjoy using Flipboard to curate articles though I must admit to being an abject failure engaging teachers in what I am curating.  I send emails to introduce Flipboard and talk about the articles but I see little evidence of them even occasionally looking at them.  I have been more successful in having educators and students outside of my school use them by posting on Twitter and a librarians’ facebook group.  Now that I have this time in Covid-19 lockdown I have decided that the moment has come to solve this problem and to show our teaching staff how useful Flipboard can be!

For those of you who haven’t encountered Flipboard yet, it is a social bookmarking site which allows you to curate articles, which appear on a page in a grid format.  


All you need to do is click on the image and you are taken to the article.  The curator is also able to write comments about the article they are ‘book marking’.

There are quite obvious uses for Flipboard.  I used to send links to teachers and administrators, relating to their subject area and/or interests.  However, as all educators know, we receive far too many emails.  When I came across Flipboard I realised that it was a way to cut down on the number of emails I was sending and that teachers were receiving.  I think that I expected teachers to sign up to follow the Flipboard relating to their subject area, but that proved not to be the case.  I need to try again to encourage them to do so.  I wonder if they have noticed yet that I haven’t been sending emails with links or did they never bother to read my emails in the first place.  Alas!  

Using Flipboard in Education

1. Curating articles for colleagues or students on a particular subject.

2. The ability to add comments about the articles would allow teachers to set a particular activity for the student to do, relating to the articles.  Teachers could ask questions, which might allow them to see how well a student understood what they had read.

3. Students could be given an assignment to curate their own set of articles on a particular topic.  As part of the curation they could be asked to comment on each of the sources they had added.  These comments might include information on the the author and their authority in writing the article; on the origin of the information the author had used (is there a WCL or bibliography); whether or not there was obvious bias.  The list could go on, depending on the aim of the assignment.  Students might also be asked to state what is compelling about the article they have chosen.

3. Each student could be asked to share their Flipboard with another student in the class.  In this way, they could make comments on each other’s sources and also find new sources they hadn’t come across yet.

4. Flipboards are another way for students to make their source lists or WCLs visible to others.  I have created an example for a grade 6 (year 7) science project on forensics.  My imaginary student has chosen to research and write about DNA Fingerprinting;  https://flipboard.com/@merrilibrarian/forensics-dna-fingerprinting-r6cdvnf6z?from=share

5. Teachers could curate their curriculum in a Flipboard magazine, with articles for students to read relating to each unit.

6. I really like this idea but it isn’t mine:  “Record a video of yourself giving out the assignment, upload it to Youtube, pull it into your Flipboard along with two or three articles pertaining to the assignment, and ask students to add two of their own, as well as commenting on two collected by other students. Ask if they can locate an appropriate content expert on twitter and pull that feed in as well. During your class discussion, ask students to converse on a Google Doc, then add that Google Doc to the magazine as well.”  (Homan)

Works Cited

Homan, Audrey. "4 Ways to Use Flipboard in your Flipped Classroom." Innovative Education in VT,     

     12 Sept. 2014, tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/4-ways-use-flipboard-flipped-classroom/. Accessed 8 June 

     2020

And now Easybib

And so I go back to The Onion and it's wonderful coverage of the declaration of war in 1914 to look at the accuracy of EasyBib's references for this source.

The link to this source is: https://www.theonion.com/august-5-1914-181958824 and the citation from EasyBib is:

The Onion. “August 5, 1914.” The Onion, The Onion, 11 Sept. 2018, www.theonion.com/august-5-1914-1819588242.

I was concerned about three aspects of this reference:

• Firstly, the Onion is given as a corporate author, despite the MLA 8th edition advice which is as follows: if a corporate author is also the publisher, give it as the publisher and not as the author.

• Secondly, there is no date of access given.  The MLA 8th edition handbook says: "Since online works typically can be changed or removed at anytime, the date on which you accessed online material is often an important indicator of the version you consulted."  If you are working at an IBO school, you know that students must include the access date.
• Finally, The Onion is repeated 3 times: once as the corporate author, once as the website and once as the publisher.  Again, the advice is to leave the publisher field blank if the publisher's name is the same as the site (container) name

Below is the Noodletools version following MLA 8th.
"August 5, 1914." The Onion, 3 Aug. 2006, www.theonion.com/august-5-1914-1819588242. Accessed 18 Sept. 2019.

To Apogee or Not to Apogee!

[Apogee (aka Apogee 2|Citation Creator) is an extension for Chrome which can be used to reference sources and check on their credibility.]

To Apogee or Not to Apogee?  

Well, after investigating this extension to Chrome, I would give a resounding "No!".

I was asked the other day by a student if he could use Apogee 2, a Chrome extention to create his works cited list.  I said no, that he was required to use Noodletools.  However, I did promise to investigate it.

Just in case your students ask you about using it for citing, here is what I discovered. I added the app and then went into the settings.  The first thing to note is that Apogee tells the user that MLA 8 is not as popular as MLA 7.  In fact, not many people are using it.  I don't know about you but my school has been using it since it was first introduced.  

Next, I chose a web page that a student had recently used in his research.

Apogee gives its version of the MLA 8 reference but unfortunately it isn't correct.  Note the following mistakes:

1. The author's name is not inverted.  In a Works Cited List the author's last name comes first.
2. BBC News is included in the author's name.
3. The title of the article is completely wrong.
4. No date is given, despite the fact that there is one in the article:  20 May 2018.
5. The access date is given but is wrongly located.

Below is the MLA reference done in Noodletools MLA 8:

Next I looked at the credibility rating for an article which a student mistook for an authentic one from World War One, but which was actually from the Onion, an American satirical website:

This web page received a 100% credibility rating, whereas the BBC article was only given 80%.

I think I will rest my case there for the time being and check in with Apogee in 6 months to see if it has improved.

The Unknown Unknowns

It isn't uncommon these days for schools to replace qualified, trained, teacher librarians with unqualified, inexperienced teachers or clericals.  Therefore, when I received an email this week from someone identifying themselves as "a person who is going to be in charge of a library in the upcoming year', and who wanted information about giving reading levels to the collection's books, I couldn't help but write a response.  If you are a trained and qualified school librarian, you are well versed in the arguments and know why they are a bad idea.  If you a a complete novice to school libraries, it seems like a great way to ensure that students find a book at their reading level without having to know your collection. 

For me this is not just a question of 'to level or not to level' your collection.  It is more a matter of why someone in charge of a school library should know what they are doing.  I have found that the uninitiated either have no idea what a librarian does all day, or they think they know but miss the mark by a mile.  It is an overwhelming role once you start to dig down.  So much to learn, so many skills to acquire.  In fact I can't imagine starting in the role if you don't at least have a mentor.  You would fumble with the known unknowns and never discover the unknown unknowns (to paraphrase Joseph Luft (1916–2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916–1995).

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Reading levels, reading levels, reading levels. I know that there a lots of arguments for and against but this is mine against, in my library and for me: I have found that children find their own level. If the book is too difficult for them, they will often tell you it is 'boring' but that usually means that they found it too difficult to read. I then suggest something else. One of my questions to them, if I don't know them well, is to ask what the last book was that they read and really enjoyed. This information can often give me ideas of the type of book they enjoy and the level of difficulty they are comfortable with at this point. It takes a lot of work on your part, as a librarian, but having that personal relationship with a student can be the difference between them finding 'that book' would sets them alight or not. I make sure that I talk to students when they return books too. I ask if they enjoyed the book, why or why not? I try to point them in the direction of the next one. I can't do it with every student every day but by the end of the year I hope to have touched base with many of them.

Doing this also requires that you know your book collection well and that you read a lot of children's books. Quite time consuming but worth it! I remember my days as a university student, reading 6 to 8 children's books a week. Not feasible any more with a demanding job. However, I do read a lot and keep up with middle school and YA authors so that I know what I'm talking about.

Levelling books can make us feel confident that our students will find books at the right level without us helping them. However, it won't necessarily ensure they find the right book for them, nor will it stretch them to read more challenging books.

Someone is sure to comment that there are lots of studies which show that giving your books reading levels is not a good idea. I agree with that and can probably find you studies to back that up. However, for me it is the easy way out, the way which might slowly lead to me not carrying on these conversations. And finally we have to ask ourselves the question, how many wonderful books might we not have read if this had been the case when we went to school. Would I have read Dickens at 11? It certainly was above my reading level.

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Going Up Stream to the Original Source

Going Up Stream to the Original Source



Activity #1

1. Provide an article from the Internet or a newspaper which is not the original source of the information or news story.  An example could be this article from the I newspaper in the UK. Interestingly, the print and the online version are not entirely the same, with the latter providing more information, and written slightly differently.  The advantage of an e-source would be the links that they provide, though that is not always the case.

2. You could proceed in two different ways, depending on the level of your students or the aims of the challenge.  If you want your students to work out themselves what they should do to fact check the story by finding the original, you could set them the following challenge.  My students would already have learned the following fact checking strategies which come from Mike Caulfield:

1. Investigate the website (heavy on Wikipedia)
2. Use a fact checking website
3. Go upstream to the original source of the story/information

So they would be asked to do this:

• Verify this story and show your evidence      

If students need more guidance, ask them to complete the following, which will take them through the process step by step:

• Check the newspaper from which you got the story to see if it is considered reliable.
• Look in the article to see if other possible sources of the story m
• Find the original source of the story and check that site's reliability
• Read the article and check any other sources mentioned in that article
• Decide whether facts of the story from the original source are reliable
• Compare the original story to its reincarnation in the article you were given (interesting to note how the facts or the emphasis may have changed)

Where to Start?

As I said in my previous post, I am struggling to decide how to help my students acquire the skills they need to find "reliable" sources for their information needs.  I put quotation marks around reliable because I'm still not sure if that is the correct word.  Almost any source could be considered reliable depending on the information need.  Would "appropriate" be a better?  Suggestions anyone? 

Mention of "information needs" leads me to think that this would be a good place to start in helping students to develop their research skills.  What is the topic?  What is the research question?  What is required to answer the question or questions?  Facts, statistics, opinions, maps, diagrams, academic articles, news articles, etc.  I realise that this is an obvious starting place but I do wonder if teachers actually discuss it with their students. 

Crap or is it CRAAP?

I go swimming several times a week.  It is one of the elements of my exercise routine and more than riding my bike, I find that it affords me the opportunity to think through things, which are and have been bothering me.  This morning I was pondering how crap my week had been when my mind wandered on to the question of CRAAP, the rubric used by many students, mainly at the prompting of their teachers, to ascertain whether or not an e-resource is 'reliable' or not.  Funny how your mind can hop scotch around!

Earlier in the day, I had been reading Mike Caulfield's blog post on CRAAP so that was probably the catalyst.  I wasn't entirely sold on this rubric before I read the article.  In fact, I had welcomed another one done by Zakir Hussain.  I added some ideas to it from Mike Caulfield and started using the end result instead of CRAAP.

Then, during the swim, I came to the realisation that it may all be a waste of time.  Students generally pay little attention to the rubric when they are searching for sources.  It would take too long.  In fact, do you ever search the internet with a rubric by your side?  Instead, they only look at it when a teacher asks them to justify the use of particular sources.  By that time, it is too late.  Students are past masters at being able to justify what they are using.  Unless the teacher looks at each source to see whether or not the justifications are valid, they will never know whether the student was right or not.  Would this be feasible for every student and every source?  No, obviously not.  So what is the answer?

I was at about lap 45 when I reached this point.  Now I am at home, still pondering this dilemma.  As long as we continue to include the justification of sources as part of the assessment of work, CRAAP and other such rubrics will continue to be used.  However, their use is not necessarily going to improve our students' research skills and ability to recognise when a source is reliable, if that is the word I want. 

Students need to be able to do what good researchers do.  I count myself in that category, though I am still learning.  Hence, this is my question now:  what do I do and how did I learn to do it?  It would be facile to say that I have all these years of experience when the skills I have developed in researching using the internet have developed only recently.  Admittedly, I am building on skills I already had as a researcher but searching library catalogues and indexes is not the same.  

How do I describe what I do when I look at a list of sources and recognise those I don't consider useful/reliable/whatever other words you want to use, and those which I want to investigate.  Perhaps the question goes back even further in the process.  Would it be better for me to start by asking how I identify what kinds of sources I need to find for a particular research task?  There is also the question of whether or not all researchers follow the same path.  

I feel as if I am about to plunge down the rabbit hole.  Not a place I want to go on a warm, sunny autumn day.  

Would you like to join in this conversation?  Perhaps we could find some way to facilitate the discussion for I feel that this is going to be the direction of my musings for quite some time to come.