The Scientific Literature Review

Once again I am happy to be working with the students in Mr. Kuzan's Capstone STEM class in helping them write their scientific literature reviews (SLR). What is an SLR? Well, it's a research paper that synthesizes the most recent information, found in general press and scholarly articles, about a particular topic and is used to by the students to decide the direction they want to take in completing their final capstone products. Because the capstone product has to be original, the SLR is used to inform the student, and his/her readers, about what has already been discovered or invented regarding their topic, so they do not have to re-invent the wheel.

The students look for newspapers and magazine articles in our science databases to see what the general public knows about the topic they are interested in researching. After reading those general press articles, the students then form a driving question to find out about the scientific studies that have been conducted regarding their topic. all along the way, the students document their search queries and take notes. They also learn how to create APA citations (no help from EasyBib, thank you very much) using a great citation maker found on the OSLIS website. My favorite part of this project is showing the students how to write in the APA format. While they take their notes, the students are encouraged to write one-paragraph summaries of the general press articles they read, but the summaries must be read in APA format. They use the Purdue OWL and Diana Hacker's APA handbook to see how they can incorporate in-text citations within their writing.

Here is the notes table I created for the general press articles. As the students read their articles, they are expected to complete these tables. In the summary section, they will write in-text citations following the APA format.

The journal articles have to be studies. These are not easy for the students to read because they often are written in technical jargon that is not easy to understand. So, upon reading their three studies, they are to answer six questions which keep them focused and make the reading less strenuous. Once they have read three studies, the students are asked to synthesize the information. Here is the organizer I created for that activity:

I learned about this project while attending a workshop led by Randall Schmidt at the NJEA Teachers' Convention in Atlantic City, NJ, a few years ago. Schmidt, among others, wrote Lessons for a Scientific Literature Review: Guiding the Inquiry which describes the steps involved in writing a SLR. Each chapter presents an easy to follow information literacy lesson that eases the dialogue between the librarian and the classroom teacher when planning. As the librarian, I know what information literacy skills to focus on for each step along the process. While Schmidt, et al. recommend eighteen lessons, you can make your own modifications by either extending or reducing the number of lessons.

This is such an awesome project that last year I shared it with all the other science teachers. So now every student in a science class in our school does a scientific literature review. However, there are some modifications and it is not as intense as what the STEM students have to do.

Vote for Reading

This election year you can vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton for president of the United States or you can "Vote for Reading."

From September through November the Library/Media Center is sponsoring a reading campaign to get more students to read independently. Those who sign up for the campaign can win a $10 iTunes gift card if they win in the drawing. The details for the contest can be found here.

Hopefully we will get a good turn out! More importantly, more students will come to enjoy reading for pleasure.

Here is the commercial I made for the campaign.

Google Sites

Remember when you brought that project or assignment home from school and shared it with your parents? Chances are that project or paper, with an "A+" affixed to it~ of course, was displayed prominently on the refrigerator door for the entire family to see and enjoy.

Times have changed. Using Google Sites, students can now share their work with the world.

But this is a different type of project for many other reasons as well. Students apply 21st century digital citizenship skills with this one. Digital citizenship? Looking at blogs, memes and social media these days, it seems as though people have forgotten, or never learned for that matter, proper netiquette. Teaching a project like website design affords the perfect opportunity to share with students, and other adults, how they can conduct themselves online and still have respect for themselves. After all, the Internet never forgets.

In addition to netiquette, students can also benefit from a refresher of copyright guidelines and know that fair use may not apply in a case like website design. Linking videos from YouTube is a plus, but finding copyright-free pictures with the help Google images or Creative Commons may be time consuming yet absolutely necessary. Furthermore, students are not to include pictures of themselves or anyone else~especially if the site is open to the public and not just the school.

The process of assembling the Website is fairly easy but the students need guidance the first time they make one. In fact, I tend to forget and rely on my notes before instructing a class. In a recent class, the students made websites for Dante's Inferno. Each group of students was assigned a circle and they had to analyze it and make connections to mythology and our modern world. What a great project! They found videos, wrote their ideas, hyperlinked their text to their sources, used our online eBook and print collection, and shared relevant pictures. The students were encouraged to make their own (i.e. student-created) videos, and use their own pictures (remembering the rule mentioned above). Now this is Common Core.

What are some creative ideas for using Google Sites?
1. A business class can create a fictitious business and design a website promoting it.
2. A world history class could make a museum site for a specific moment in history.
3. In an American literature class students can have a website that they add to throughout the year where they can evaluate the novels, plays and poems they read.
4. Students in a geometry class can apply how geometry relates to the world outside the classroom.

The CIA World Factbook

From time to time I want to share some awesome online resources that students and teachers may find useful....

A few years ago I bought a book of country reports in print from a well-known publisher (I won't name names) for approximately $118. However, I only bought it because I was offered a free online version of the book.

Fast-forward to three weeks ago when I began working with a class that had to write a research paper about a developing country. I suggested that the teacher use the aforementioned reference book as a great way for her students to write a research question. When I tried to visit the online version of the book, I noticed the link was dead. So I called the publisher and was told that I only had access to the online version of the book for two years. No such stipulation was ever made when I made the purchase. Needless to say, I'm still arguing my point with this publisher.

In the meantime I had to find an online reference source to do the job. SIRS and Global Issues in Context, two databases we have and I promote, had background information but do not have quick ready-reference sources. This brought me to the CIA's World Factbook. This a is a free resource that gives students vital, and current, statistics about every country in the world. The students can see a map of each particular country, its flag and some photos. More importantly, students can browse each country's statistics by its geography, people, economy, transportation, communication, etc... Wow! Awesome and free.

So how can we use this site?

For the class writing the research papers, students had to find how the developing country of their choice differed from the US. The information they collected was to be used as introductory material for their research paper and it was used to give them an idea of how far behind, economically speaking, developing countries are in comparison to the US. From that point, the students went to Global Issues in Context and read more background information about the current economic situation in the countries of their choosing. They had to develop a question for research based on what they found in their reading. There sources included video, magazine and newspaper sources.

Of course, social studies classes can use this site when discussing current events; math classes may use this to create Excel worksheets (scratch that, we don't have Excel because we are a Google school) Google Sheets along with charts and graphs comparing various economic or statistical information between/among countries; and World Language students can use it for quick reference information when making PowerPoint Google Slides presentations. With the CIA World Factbook he possibilities are endless.

2016 Summer Reading List

It's finally finished!

This year, the Student Reading Committee (SRC) chose forty-two books for the summer reading list. We reviewed almost 100 books between November and April. Talk about being particular.  But all joking aside, I think it is awesome that our student members recommended each book on this list. The list has quite an eclectic group of titles. They include memoirs, realistic fiction, science fiction, thrillers, history, biography, and cosmology...just to name a few.

To see the books on this year's summer reading list, click here. When students are finished reading their book or books, they must complete a questionnaire for each book they read so they can get credit from their 2016-17 ELA teacher. The questionnaire can be found here.

While the SRC can vouch for the quality of all the books on this list, there are some I really liked. Even though it was published in 2003 and might seem dated, Ghost ship: the mysterious true story of the Mary Celeste and her missing crew by Brian Hicks is still an enthralling mystery that offers a new, heart-wrenching theory about how the crew and passengers disappeared. Was this ship haunted? After all every captain who manned the Mary Celeste died under dubious circumstances. This is an edge-of your seat thriller.




How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon is told from multiple points of view as each character gives their interpretation of how Tariq Johnson was killed. This is a timely novel and will help to open up a much need discussion about race relations in the United States today.




We have four classics on this year's list. The rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells is a story about how to "make it in America," but Silas Lapham learns that ethics are more important than business. It was recommended to our 11th graders. Years ago I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and recommended it to one of our student members. She loved it; it's a story about survival while living in totalitarian, Soviet society. Finally, our 12th graders will read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte; this is a truly Gothic romance about unrequited love.

The other books that received much admiration from our students included Nazi Hunters by Neal Bascomb; The Storm and the Tide by Lars Anderson; Jackaby by William Ritter; and The Circle by Dave Eggers.

Needless to say, there is something for everyone in this year's summer reading list!

Please enjoy the following production I put together to promote summer reading.

Podcasting

So what is a podcast?

Some students know, others may not. Basically it is a radio show and it's a great way to get the word out about a topic, concern or interest. If you're a teacher who wants his/her students to research but does not want to assign the typical paper, this is perfect. Plus, if your students are camera shy but have something awesome to share, it's exactly for them.

Over the past couple of weeks I introduced software to the students to help them create podcasts. The software used to make the podcasts was generally easy to use but the process of creating the podcasts took a lot of preparation time. The most time-consuming aspect, undoubtedly, was the research component of the assignment. Students had to gather sources, read them and form conclusions. When they had their stories, they had to write a script. Therefore, this early process resembled the writing of a research paper, i.e. the need for a thesis, evidence to support the thesis and a conclusion. But instead of handing in their final product on paper with MLA citations, etc..., the students delivered their findings as a podcast.

Because they are using Chromebooks, the students needed an audio editor that would be compatible with their devices. My education tech specialist suggested Beautiful Audio Editor. The software is free and can be found in the Chrome Web Store. Students had to visit the site once and were able to access the editor again by going into their Google Drive. Due to the fact that Beautiful Audio Editor is free, I had to warn the students about saving their work properly. I showed them two ways: 1.) saving the project as an .audioproject file and 2.) as a WAV or MP3 file.

I also used this as an opportunity to discuss copyright and how to find audio files that were not in violation of copyright. Students looked at the site Free Music Archive which provides music with Creative Commons licenses that allowed them to reuse music as long as they gave attribution to the musicians. It was also a great way to discover a new sound or use music that is not cliche. Students can also find royalty-free music searching by searching the Creative Commons website.

In addition to music, the students were encouraged to add portions of audio clips of speeches, interviews, dialogue, etc... from videos. The students used a YouTube video converter to make MP3 files and imported them into the audio editor to extract the audio they wanted. Then they had to save those audio files and add them to their podcasts. As I stated earlier, this is quite a lengthy process yet the students learned how to work with new technologies within their ELA curriculum.

Project ideas:
1. An ELA class had to analyze a famous speech in US history. After reading the speech and gathering information about it, the students had to create a podcast about it. They had to have excerpts of the actual speech, interviews with experts, etc...

2. Another ELA class heard a presentation by Regina Calcaterra, author of Etched in Sand, a moving memoir about Calcaterra's experiences growing up on Long Island. After reading Etched in Sand and researching the topic of foster care, the students created podcasts analyzing the pros and cons of foster care.

So give it a try. I will guarantee that it will be a rewarding experience for you and your students.