I am working on a wiki page that is going to list a variety of New Story starter factoids that teachers and school administrators might use during the opening of schools and school open houses. I’ve drawn the items from a variety of sources, including the very fine “Did You Know” presentation slides that Karl Fisch generously shared with us through his blog.
I ran into a frustrating problem with some of the starters. When I researched the items, trying to find their sources, a number of the statements were posted in weblogs. They were attributed to some pundit or researcher, but there was no citation or direct reference to a primary source. There were also a number of references to conference speakers who had repeated something that some pundit or researcher had said. But again there were no references to primary sources in the resources made available by the speakers.
Now I am by no means consistent with citing the sources of the information that I use in my presentations and on my blog. But I try to be. I think that, at the same time that it is our ethical obligation to assure the reliability of the information that we access, it is equally important that we assure that the information that we share is also reliable. This means citing the sources as appropriately as possible.
It’s actually easy to do, as there are a number of web tools available that will help you generate standard citations. I have run one on Landmarks for Schools for a number of years called The Citation Machine. You simply select the type of citation (MLA or APA), select the type of source (web page, book, etc.) and then fill in the form. The tool then assemble the information you have type into a standard citation, which you can the copy and paste into your blog or your presentation slide.
I have also installed a WordPress extension on my blog that will generate five types of citations for any of the blog entries that might be worthy of citing. I think that it is a simple thing to do, and it is our responsibility to do it.
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We link to so many things on our pages, I guess we could do a better job. As educators, we MUST do a better job and set the standard for our students.
Thanks for saying what needed to be said.
… And it is for this reason that blogging does not have the credibility it could and should have as a potential source of information and is, hence, not yet respected in the academic community.
Where can we find the WordPress extensions, by the way?
I remember that as a student the most annoying part of turning in work was always tracking down a source and citing it. I knew the importance, but was so press for time to turn in work that was the last thing I was worried about. If I could cut corners in citing sources, I did. Today, I see bloggers everywhere not only cutting corners, but just cutting out citations all together. I appreciate linking because then atleast a source can be tracked down, but even then it’s a challenge. I took nearly an hour the other day practicing this: clicking through links, searching pages before I found an orginal article quoting the source. Even then, I hadn’t spoken with the original source. You’re right; we, as the educated, should stop taking short cuts and start citing our sources. In our world today, “word of mouth” has been re-created through linking — let’s just hope the ‘gossip’ doesn’t get out of hand.
The WordPress tool is called the WordPress Academic Citations Plugin, and it can be found at:
I feel uncertain about expecting an academic rigor to the conversational and chronological structure of blogging. I do try to embed links to the sources of my information, but I don\’t try to trace back to the original sources. When I think back to my college days I also remember how time consuming and important understanding the sequence and citing of primary sources was when writing papers. I remember that I was one of two citation/source checkers for one of my professors when she was writing a book because of how time consuming it was. Writing for my subject in college (art history) was not about having any truly new ideas but about putting together support for a thesis that lined up the experts like army men. The idea was to support some minor slightly unique point and had less to do with originality then showing you understood the positions of the academics. I can\’t imagine blogging with anything near this attitude. Reflection, impressions, new experiences and ideas that I might write about in a blog are not the same as a well structured academic paper. When my students write research reports they understand and we emphasize using multiple sources and citing the source. When we blog I\’m not so strict although maybe I need to rethink this. I just want my 4th and 5th grade students to enjoy writing to an audience of their peers and to having their ideas valued and shared. Maybe I\’m wrong in emphasizing these goals over a proper citing of sources.
Thanks for the pointer to this tool, David. I understand your frustrations, but like other commenters here, I’m not sure how the conversational medium of blogging is going to accommodate the rectitude of citations. What I will say, though, is that I’m sure the tool is going to prove very useful to me in my post-grad studies starting next month – it’s been an area I have always struggled with, because I was never really taught the hows and whys of citing and referencing, even in previous post-grad studies. This is a skill and a responsibility that should be taught to students. I’m not sure at what point, but it seems to me to be a great gaping gap.
I was glad to see you post this as I shared the same concern. I looked at his presentation, and while interesting, I was struck that there were no references or citations. It didn’t seem apparent to me that the author of the powerpoint used any of the 21st century skills that you advocate to check on the validity of the statements. One in particular was just flat out wrong.
According to his powerpoint, Nintendo spent $140 million on R&D. The only problem is that they spent only $41 million on research. By contrast, the U.S. government spent $111.8 billion on R&D (the 07 budget requests $137 billion in R&D which would amount to a 50% increase since 01). http://www.ostp.gov/html/ap08.pdf
Perhaps he was refering just to the education budget, but even there the numbers are higher than Nintendo. Funding spent on just research performed by the Department of ED was $172 million http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2002/02/02042002a.html The number only grows when you add in innovation funding, and education R&D funding provided by NASA, NOAA, and NSF.
I’ve seen this happen in other areas as well. Wesley Freyer spends months attacking DOPA without first reading the legislation. You and I have had a conversation about this too as I disagreed with your characterizing the Texas AG as a “force against children” simply because he issued a decision that the TX legislature clearly did not intend textbook funding to cover other costs.
I worry that this hurts the credibility of those of all of us who are pushing for 21st century skills. We’re not practicing what we’re preaching. If we don’t model it, who will?
When I introduced my Comp II students at Oakland Community College to Citation Machine last fall, they were absolutely amazed! Gone was the nightmarish hassling with an incorrectly placed comma or quotation mark, but better yet, students soon clearly understood exactly what reference information they need to supply and began to do so. However, the major issue I had to overcome was the students’ heavy reliance on secondary, even tertiary, sources. Students were happy to quote something thirdhand without a thought to (a) whether the primary sources was correctly quoted and (b) whether it was correctly interpreted. Consequently, I think we as educators need to model proper citation of sourses in our blogs and discussion board postings so students understand the importance of providing clear source information.