Kathy Franz (Duke Chemistry) expects her students to gather resources from the chemistry literature, and share them in her course. She has tried some social bookmarking tools, but some have difficulty finding bibliographic data from her chemistry journals. She is now trying Zotero. Zotero is an extension on Firefox that helps you collect, manage and cite your research sources from your web browser. The latest version allows you to sync and back up Zotero libraries, and create public or private groups to share references.

Jonathan Mattingly (Duke Math) enthusiastically uses Zotero to collect bibliographic data, and format citations for his publications. He uses the group feature to share papers with his students, and to add to their reading lists as he finds references. He’s also experimenting with sharing a Zotero library with the Math department, to benefit students.

Features:

• Participants in a group can get an RSS feed to be notified when new documents are added to the library.
• For PDFs already stored on your computer, Zotero searches the internet for trusted bibliographic information, so you do not have type or copy-paste bibliographic information.
• Zotero learns how to resolve URLs to restricted sources.
• Zotero can output references in many different styles.
• Zotero can save searches across your saved references, so a saved search becomes like a continuously updating folder.
• Zotero is open-source, so it is continuously improving and anyone can add new features.

Want more?

• Watch the video to see how Zotero works, then download and try it.
• See some of Dr. Mattingly’s papers listed on Zotero to see the data Zotero saves for each source.
• Read more about it on the library hacks blog, and our blog (Zotero is a reason to use Firefox)

For keeping track of citations and managing your references, there are other options

CiteULike is also popular among researchers for managing and discovering scholarly references, and can provide sharing either publically or with devined groups. Unlike Zotero, CiteULike will work with any browser.

If you already have a computer full of PDFs, you might want to try Mendeley, It is both academic desktop software for managing & sharing research papers, and a website where you can back up and manage your research papers online, discover research trends, and connect to other researchers. Library Hacks explains the difference between Mendeley and Zotero.

Connotea is another online reference management system for researchers, put out by the Nature publishing group.

Duke has licensed EndNote and RefWorks, two commercial bilbliographic tools. Compare them with Zotero.

Because each tool handles references differently, evaluate them for your specific needs. Try each of them as you search for scholarly references in your field, to see how they handle your journals articles, and meet your needs for sharing.

Our colleagues in the Office of Information Technology, OIT, are working hard to improve their capture service (DukeCapture, aka Lectopia) and they would appreciate your feedback in the surveys linked below. Surveys are open until Friday November 13, 2009.

Instructor Survey

This survey is designed for use by Duke faculty, instructors and others with direct classroom instruction responsibilities. It is intended to elicit information about how instructors want to use capture (recording) in the classroom setting.

Staff Survey

This survey is intended to elicit general information about the specific features and requirements Duke technical staff would like to see be included in the centrally supported capture service moving forward. Lectopia site administrators and IT/classroom support staff who are currently supporting the use of DukeCapture (or a similar capture tool) in their local settings are most likely to have in interest in the questions this survey asks, although anyone is welcome to participate.

(more…)

Duke faculty  Jennifer Ahern-Dodson (Writing) and Kevin Caves (Biomedical Engineering) are featured in the article How Tiny Camcorders are Changing Education published in eLearn Magazine.

Ahern-Dodson and Caves participated in CIT’s  Instructional Technology Faculty Fellows program, to share ideas about teaching with video with other faculty.  In the article, they describe how they used Flip cameras from the Duke Digital Initiative for student projects in their courses.

Meet with other  Duke faculty and talk about ideas for using cell phones (or any small, mobile devices) in teaching, both in and outside the classroom.

At a previous meeting, participants discussed using these devices in class to engage students and foster interaction.  Owen Astrachan demonstrated how he used Poll Everywhere with his class of 344 students.  Poll Everywhere allows students to use their own devices as personal response systems, to give answers electronically in class.

Other participants discussed using applications that provide information relevant to the course, like Epocrates for accessing drug information, Labs 360 as a medical laboratory guide, or other applications for medical students.  Other examples might be using the mobile version of the Wall Street Journal in a business class,  flash cards for organic chemistry reactions, or spreadsheet applications for laboratories.

We discussed how instructors could incorporate the social networking and connectedness of applications like Smule’s Ocarina to engage students, and how Twitter could be used to build a community of students in an educational program.

Join us:

• Register for our next discussion at 10 am on October 13.
• E-mail Andrea Novicki to suggest topics.

The Department of Chemistry at Duke University invites you, your students and families to the 5th Annual Evening of Chemistry Demonstration Program.

Explore the chemistry of fire on Tuesday, September 29, 2009 (Oct. 1 Rain Date) from 7:15 to 8:30 PM on the front lawn of the French Family Science Center, 124 Science Drive.
Parking is available in the Chemistry Lot off of Circuit Drive.
Contact  Dr. Ken Lyle for more information.
Learn more about how the Department of Chemistry  shares Chemistry with the community

And, if you can’t get enough Chemistry,  Meet the Elements in this video from They Might Be Giants.

Julie Reynolds, in Duke’s Biology Department, was recently showcased on the Techsmith’s education blog for her innovative use of Jing, a program that captures images and video of your computer screen.

Dr. Reynolds uses Jing to comment on her students’ writing, and to have students comment on each others’ writing projects.  Dr. Reynolds pointed out that when it’s impossible to schedule face-to-face conferences, she can talk about students’ writing rather than simply to write comments in the margins.  Jing allows her to record highlighted passages for students to see while she talks about them. Her students also use Jing to comment on each others papers.

Read a fuller description on Techsmith’s blog.

See examples of Dr. Reynolds’ review and student peer review.

Trudi Abel, in History at Duke, wondered “How do they connect? The past and the present?”

CIT provided Trudi Abel with funding and student support to create digital versions of historic maps of Durham using Google Earth. Using high quality digital copies of maps from the late 1800’s, Abel worked with CIT staff to figure out the best methods for converting, importing and placing images as overlays into Google Earth. The “georectification” of these maps presented several obstacles, requiring the team to consult with local Durham mapping and historical experts to complete the placement and positioning of these maps.

Several of the resulting digital maps have recently been added to Abel’s ongoing project – the Digital Durham website. Google Earth files can be downloaded and opened on users’ computers for exploration. Visitors to the site can also access several high resolution screen captures of the map overlays without the need to open or use Google Earth. The resulting maps can also be used in Abel’s work with Duke and local high school students – providing a basis for student research projects. Audio pieces created on iPods, geotagged photography and even short video clips can be linked directly to their historical and/or present-day locations.

“I think these maps will help users visualize an industrializing city and gain a better understanding of the process of urbanization in this New South community.”

VIew the Digital Durham page for Sanborn 1884

VIew the Digital Durham page for Sanborn 1888

Presentations

See a video excerpt from the presentation “Everybody’s Doing It: Web-based Visualizations and Mashups in the Social Sciences” which CIT consultant Shawn Miller gave at Duke’s Visualization Forum in September 2008. The full video is available from the Visualization Forum website.

Trudi Abel also presented about the project and the larger Digital Durham project at a Visualization Forum in March 2009. The video from her talk is available here.

Abel and Miller discussed future possibilities for the Digital Durham project at Duke’s Tech and New Media Tuesdays forum. The presentation is accessible on iTunesU.

Articles about the project

The Digital Durham Project: Creating Community through History, Technology, and Service Learning by Trudi Abel

Duke News article: New Map Collaboration Helps Tell Story of Durham’s History

MyNC.com article: Duke, Durham Merge Google Earth technology with historic city maps

Duke Research Blog: Seeing Through Time: Historic Maps, Google Earth, and the Transformation of Durham

Independent article: What Google Earth doesn’t show you: A small movement of alternative mapmakers seek to revolutionize our understanding of the Triangle and the world

Guest post by Julie Reynolds, Duke University

Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, but I discovered it takes slightly more than 140 characters to convince colleagues of Twitter’s value. I’ll try to make my argument for why professionals should use Twitter, and I’ll do it in just 14 tweets. Here we go.

#1) Professional use of Twitter 1 of 3: Post URLs for blogs, articles, & events that you want to make public to a larger audience

• #2) To promote publications, ex: “When Communicating with Diverse Audiences, Use Velcro to Make Science Stick http://bit.ly/4GD4fX“
• #3) To publicize students’ work, ex: “#DukeEngage interns turn dung into fuel in India http://bit.ly/c3u1a”
• #4) To publicize events, ex: “Citizen Science Training Opportunity July 19, 2009 http://bit.ly/16NYgc”

#5) Professional use of Twitter 2 of 3: Network w/folks who share interests or are using similar pedagogy/technology/research method

• #6) Networking tip: be sure your Twitter profile has a descriptive bio so people can find you, ex: http://bit.ly/Vqepp
• #7) Twitter can be like a virtual business card. Be sure your profile bio and webpage are up-to-date and informative
• #8) Join a twibe to find similarly-minded people. Visit http://twibes.com/ to search and join twibes
• #9) Add yourself to http://wefollow.com twitter directory so people can find you (I use #scientist #conservation #educator)
• #10) I posted ex of students’ use of edu software, was contacted by software maker to ask if they could showcase my students’ work!
• #11) Retweet to share info & build community, ex: “RT @saprasanna: Our DukeEngage project is on Duke News: http://tinyurl.com/nmuxkz”
• #12) Search for keywords http://search.twitter.com/ (or via Tweetdeck, my fav Twitr app) & follow people who have interesting tweets

#13) Professional use of Twitter 3 of 3: Back-channel conversation at conferences for feedback on talks & updates on things you missed

• #14) Ex: search for #NECC09 for examples of rich conversation and information resulting from back-channel conversations at a conference

You can follow this conversation on Twitter by searching for #TwitValue. For professional updates, follow Julie at http://twitter.com/JulieReynolds88.

Students in Victoria Szabo and Richard Lucic’s capstone course ISIS 200 have produced a “mapping toolkit” that includes a list of devices, directions for using the devices to collect mappable data, directions for creating maps with Google Earth, and a website to organize this material.

The initial purpose of this mapping toolkit is for Duke Engage students in partnership with WISER (Women’s Institute of Secondary Education and Research) to produce useful maps to facilitate the planning of community facilities and ways to impact gender disparities in health and education in Muhuru Bay, Kenya.

Students produced a helpful website:

The mission of ISISmapping.org is to help you map your world. We believe that maps are power, a power that should be shared by everyone.

During this course, students investigated mapping technology and devices, and decided which ones should go to Kenya as part of the toolkit, based on the needs of the project and the conditions in Kenya. They produced documentation and worked out best practices for mapping, in consultation with researchers in Kenya. The recommendations and documentation they produced can be used by anyone who’d like to map their world.

Watch Victoria Szabo, Sherryl Broverman and students in the course talk about the project.

At the final presentation of the project, students were asked about the challenges they faced when exploring the technology and creating the project. They described the challenges of coming together as a team, keeping up with rapidly changing technology to determine the best way to map, and creating a way for people in Kenya to make maps with their data despite intermittent electricity and rare access to the internet.

How is our relationship to physical space changing as space becomes “virtual”? What do virtual spaces reveal about the people and circumstances that create them? Those are questions asked by Annabel Wharton, Professor in Art, Art History & Visual Studies, in her research on Medieval and Modern Architecture.

Over the past few months, Wharton has explored Second Life, an immersive world inhabited by several million avatars representing real life humans, as well as Assassin’s Creed, a popular video game set in thirteenth century Palestine and Syria. She is examining the effects of digital architectures on those who navigate those virtual realms. In Fall 2009, she plans to teach a course on Jerusalem in which students will join her in investigating the power of architecture in these new media.

For the past four years, Wharton has been studying “pathological architectures,” seeking to understand and describe the ways that “sick” buildings affect the people who occupy them. More broadly, she is interested in how architectures act as agents in modifying the way humans live. Her work in exploring architectures in Second Life and video games is preparation for the last chapter of her book.

“It’s impossible to understand space conventionally any longer; digital worlds and immersive spaces play too large part in our economy and culture to ignore,” Wharton said.

“I expected myself to be a kind of tourist in Second Life and in video games. But the space is invasive; it doesn’t allow you to be simply an objective observer. I have become subjectively engaged, in a way that surprised me. ”

Wharton also noted that, in Second Life, the spaces are created by the avatars themselves; both shaping and acting is an expression of their producers. As opposed to “real” life, objects retain reference to those who made them. A chair or a house in real life is anonymous; a chair or a house in Second Life, with a click of the mouse, reveals its creator. Search engines allow you to invite those makers to talk to you about their work.

For example, during the recent presidential campaign, Wharton explored the Second Life spaces created by Democrats and Republicans. Democratic spaces were functional, open, modern, information-centered. Republican sites were architecturally elaborate with classicizing buildings and the intimacy of Main Street. She drew from her observations conclusions about the working of the “public sphere” in immersive worlds.

For faculty thinking about integrating Google Earth, Second Life or video games into a course, Wharton suggests becoming familiar with the technology first. She compares it to learning a new language or visiting a new city with its own culture and conventions. Each technology may take several weeks of learning its mechanisms and exploring its the territory to feel “at home”.

With Second Life, Wharton recommends having students to visit a variety of spaces, some connected directly with the course contents and some not, in order to accustom themselves to navigating the space and interacting with other residents. But finally students can construct the historical sites they are studying in three dimensions so that they and other avatars may walk through them.

Most residents of Second Life are “in world” for social purposes or for entertainment—from soft-porn to “dancing for Jesus.” But groups engaged in politics, education, art and music are also active there. Avatars can walk around the Sistine Chapel and the Temple at Karnak or they can attend discussions of Obama’s Cairo speech with Egyptians, Turks, Iranians and other Muslims from around the real world. The first brief piece that Wharton wrote about Second Life described her first visit during the Gaza War to the newly opened Palestine Holocaust Museum (article at iReport).

“It is really worth investigating digital technologies,” Wharton says, “They give you a new means of rethinking your old assumptions—a central concern of education.”