My friend and colleague Shelley Rodrigo recently published the 2009 MLA updated The Wadsworth Guide to Research with Susan Cochran-Miller. In that book she covers the big three at length: APA, MLA, and CSE. But the strong thing they did was begin to make these styles relevant. The citations are for things like Flickr comments, YouTube videos, etc… media and resources relevant today. There’s a subsequent website, too. Moreover, her book is more about how to build citations than just how to look them up in her book.

Shelley and I present together often, and we typically use Creative Commons images we find on Flickr for our presentations. When citing this work I’ve followed Shelley’s lead with citations, but for the traditionalist this can become concerning with authors like “ferretbaby” and “billybob69696″. In terms of Web 2.0 all students are also teachers, all writers are also authors, everyone with a camera becomes the photographer, and this is really ok albeit not everyone is ready to embrace non-refereed publication of the neophyte’s work.

As I continue to attend workshops, I watch how presentation images are cited. Sometimes there’s full pages in formal MLA or APA, other times there is a hodgepodge of information that may include the URL, may include the name of the creator, and may include date information. I say “may include” because many times this information isn’t there. I’ve seen huge discrepancies from all sorts of people to colleagues who model writing styles daily in their classes to some of the top instructional technologists in my field. I was surprised recently to realize 1) many of my high school colleagues don’t even know where to begin with writing styles and 2) many of them don’t teach documentation style at all.

Some presenters I see make up their own citation style based off of real styles. If we as educators learn to understand these styles, then when something new emerges, we can work through the citation format. Shelley and I have been pulling creative commons images from Flickr for most of this year now to use for presentations, and below you will see the citation style we use.

As you can see here the syntax is different than you’d expect, but you have the creative commons denotation (CC), the uploader’s name (we call this person uploader because we can’t differentiate who has shot the photo versus who has upload privileges), how we can to find the image, the title, and the link (embedded). One thing to note here is that it’s more important in understanding the different parts of a citation to learn how to do build this rather than just arbitrarily pasting a URL under a photo they snagged from who-knows-where on the web. That personally scares me. Of course, I always hear the argument of “why bother?”, but think of it this way. If I shot that photo, spent time downloading it, spent time composing it, and spent more time editing it in CS3, then you better damn well believe I want attribution. If we fail to keep this in mind, then powerful collective concepts like creative commons fails and you can go back to using clip art or buying stock photos. None of us want that.

Presenter at state conference whose data citation included ONLY the URL.

Notice that this man has used this famous image of Barack Obama and provides a link only. He didn’t even attribute the artist. This presentation image was shot by me at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in San Francisco in March 2009. Not even at this prestigious conference does some presenters both with writing style citations.

Now that MLA has released their 2009 updates, and with the recent release of the 2009 APA updated style guide and all of the controversy over the blatant errors with that guide, I have no idea where we’re headed. I do know only that as the few strive for consistency of the seas of writing, for me, the beacon of light of the holy writ of style guides is muddied by the clouds of the academy who cannot make up their minds.

The coolest part of the conference though was seeing PJ Haarsma, author of The Softwire Series, again. He and I have presented together a few other times, and I’ve written about my work with him HERE and HERE before. This time he brought fellow author, Frank Beddor, with him to Arizona. Frank’s primary, current work is The Looking Glass Wars. He, as I’ve written here, posited the What If Alice Liddell really did come from Wonderland and was in fact the last remain heir to the Hart throne, after her wicked Aunt Red (think Queen of Hearts) had her family slaughtered. This narrative became the The Looking Glass Wars series and the Hatter M comic series.

Jim Blasingame, board president of Kids Need to Read and ASU professor, invited several people to his home the evening of conference, including yours truly. PJ and Frank are those rare breed of author who truly cares to engage children in reading and finding innovative ways to excite children about reading. Moreover, they are just nice guys.

Frank Beddor

They both made worlds for their books, and to do that well, Frank said it took him two years to build his world, and as he wrote the narrative sometimes wholes filled into his world. It took him two years before he even began writing the first book. PJ’s books are sci-fi so he has to use more science for his book, and he has volumes of journals of science. He used that information for the background information. PJ hopes his book is a stepping stone towards science fiction for kids.

Editors don’t understand social networking and multimedia. Many times the authors who know those things were working in the classrooms, and the publishers weren’t listening. The publishers wouldn’t even put PJ’s website on his first book. PJ had so much tension with his publisher that he met with the president. The publishers only think about making books, but they don’t think beyond that. Publishers don’t contribute money to books but just to funds, and there is a disconnect between publishers and sellers. The publishers don’t have any control where books are placed in bookstores, even.

PJ Haarsma

Kids aren’t getting excited by the titles presented to them. When these authors go into schools and make kids excited about reading, then they read more. PJ even started a non-profit called http://www.kidsneedtoread.org/ to promote exciting kids about reading. Authors like Frank and PJ are changing the way students read, and someways include graphic novels, video games, chunking book text into the games, ereaders, and other ideas that they’ve not shared.

Frank said he understood and tried to nail down the structure in the Alyss books, and as he became more confident in book 2 and book 3 he moved away from the structure and became more confident in his writing. The first book took five years, but the second and third one only took 18 months each.

Science Fiction is difficult to get into, and PJ’s purpose with The Softwire Series was to make a jumping point towards heavier sci-fi. He clearly kept the names simple instead of using more difficult name. After The Softwire PJ recommends moving towards Asimov, Hienlen, and Card, as a pathway to heavier sic-fi, like Cyberpunk.

Someone asked about how to make archetypes work within the literature. PJ said you should first nail down the story first and then massage the characters into the narrative, while Frank focuses on the characters first and through them the stories emerge.

They went on to answer more questions and then thanked everyone before leaving the stage.

Laura J. Gurak (Chair), Dawn M. Armfield (“On the Go: Mobile Technologies and Literacy”, Daisy Pignetti, “What are you doing? Teaching with Twitter!”, Kimberly A. Schultz (“Social presence in the online writing classroom: is student customizable content an answer?”)

At the next panel now, and I am pretty excited. Looks like a good group of presenters up front. Armfield is talking about mobile pedagogy. Scott Campbell is writing on using mobiles in the classroom, and research shows this is not an uncommon occurrence. We’re talking about mobiles & iPod touch/iPhones. She’s talking about how a one time fee to buy an iPod touch then wifi is used to connect wherever you are. Olga Cariff said that a well done cell phone with a keyboard may replace laptops in classrooms. Using laptops in classes is less engaging than mobiles because the monitor screen is between student and teacher. How else do we engage the students and make meaning of pedagogy with their phones? An argument is that students may be writing more, but are they writing well. Armfield asserts that they are, and I would agree. Albeit I personally teach AUDIENCE so they know how to write which ways when they write in those ways. When using all attributes that mobiles have, we have a full mulit-modal tool. (Texting, Image, Video, etc…) These lead to great mashup projects just using these small devices. “Digital kids” are creating a new digital literacy by trying out new online identities and really do consider what they’re doing in online spaces. Here the learner is also the teacher & producer. This is really important for the students as owners of their creations.

Pignetti is talking Twitter now. Awesome. Love the stickers on her computer. She’s interested in Twitter in crisis situations (e.g. post Katrina). She uses Twitter for public journaling with her students. At her university, it’s a laptop campus. She said her students are also FB addicts. With Digital Natives, these kids do not any other way of life albeit Pignetti said many of these students are returning students who are not DN. She uses LeFever’s video and the Daily Show to teach Twitter, and, tongue in cheek, she said Twitter is blogging for lazy people. She has some great information and I will have to wait for the electronic version.

Kimberly Schultz is up now, and I swear I know her. She’s talking informal social media to enhance pedagogy. The key is “informal” here. Schultz is talking about “spoken text” and the intersection between speech, writing and technology. Laura Gurak is beginning a discussing with Schultz about iTunes U at their university. They’re talking about universities who are trying to make their own “itunes u” rather than using the real thing, and how they don’t work very well. They’re suggesting that 75% of students today have online presences somewhere.

Overall great presentation!