Yianni Yessios, Manager of Web Technology in the Instructional Technology Group [ITG], introduced Ynote, an application developed in-house at ITG. Ynote allows a group of researchers to share, manage and explore a shared pool of notes, thereby facilitating collaborative scholarship. It is also designed to allow instructors flexibility in organizing the database’s material to aid in classroom presentations and activities.

Yianni Yessios explained that Ynote is an application originally conceived of by Pericles Lewis, Professor of Comparative Literature and English, for his course on English Literary Modernism. Professor Lewis wanted to create a digital database with which Graduate students could engage together. Essentially, he wanted a tool for collective research.

For Professor Lewis, it was important that all the fruits of students’ research, archival or otherwise, (and not just the fruits of research that made it into their papers), be retained in a single repository that afforded a variety of ways to hierarchically stratify information. Since Professor Lewis turned to the sciences for models of collective research, the tool designed for his course in Modernism became known as “The Modernism Lab.”

Ken Panko, Manager of ITG, stated that as technologically advanced as the Modernism Lab would be, Professor Lewis still wanted the virtual research lab to refer back to some of the traditional research methodologies of old – getting note cards, jotting down notes while reading, and eventually going back and trying to make sense of and organize it all. In this way, the tool is as aimed at the individual researcher as it is at the collective of researchers contributing to the database. In this sense, Professor Lewis’ use of Ynote is truly informed by the laboratory model.

Once Ynote was created, Professor Lewis’ students participated collectively in a virtual laboratory environment dedicated to furthering the body of knowledge that constitutes Literary Modernism. One of the chief values of the Modernism Lab is that the body of knowledge contained within is added to with each subsequent offering of the course.

Ynote is also utilized by other professors and courses, such as Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen’s Kevin Roche Seminar, which features an architecture archive. Ynote can easily be adapted to a variety of disciplines and functions. In Ynote, Yianni clarified, an “object” is the essential unit of any database. An “object” is, simply put, the thing one is studying. It can be any or all combinations of the following: people, places, events, files, images, audio, video. Yianni tried to build Ynote such that one could add different objects as required by subject matter. A majority of fields can be customized according to the professor’s (and students’) sense of how he or she (or they) would like to structure the information flow of the database. Depending on how one chooses to stratify and organize the database, one can showcase and privilege information that would be lost, or at least subordinated, in a typical bibliographic entry in a program such as Endnote. In addition, Ynote allows researchers using the database to draw on and search for the relationships among various “objects.”

In The Modernism Lab, Professor Lewis and his students focused primarily on documenting a group of authors in the notecard field of Ynote. What emerged through using Ynote, however, was that the most notable developments in, or objects of, English Literary Modernism were actually events. Hence, most entries and relationships among objects in the Modernism Lab refer back to events.

Yianni then pointed out the anatomy of the Modernism Lab administrative view that allows collaborators to add information in a variety of ways. To create an entry, the first thing one does is to “add” an “event.” Then one adds information to the various fields listed under “event:”  “excerpt,” which allows one to input a quote from a primary source; “remarks,” a space for one’s own thoughts on the excerpt; “source,” a bibliographic-style entry which leads one to a new reference page where you can catalog the reference. Some fields are fill-in and others are drop-down. The “create a collection” page permits one to filter and collect objects pertinent to one’s own individual research. In this individual view, one can re-order objects as well as outline new hierarchies, and create tabbed entries.

Yianni underscored that Ynote is capable of handling thousands of entries. The Modernism Lab already has around 2500, one thousand of which are dedicated to Virginia Woolf. Appended to the Modernism Lab is a wiki that functions as a storehouse for the papers students produced in the course while contributing to the lab database. With each offering of the course, the body of knowledge that is Modernism is advanced, rather than repeated, with the aid of the lab and the wiki.

Yianni finished by saying that Ynote is currently being used by two Yale faculty members and it is in development for Directed Studies courses, which will likely use a timeline feature as the front end for their Ynote instances. Students will simply have to click on a feature of the timeline to access information under a wide range of fields. In the future Yianni would also like to add “nodal” relationships, and data export features to Ynote.

Stacey Maples, GIS specialist in the Map Library, introduced the concept of geocoding. Geocoding assigns spatial coordinates to features in the landscape.

The method of recording line data was invented by Don Cook in New Haven in the 1970s for the New Haven census. GSP is a system of satellites maintained by the U.S. Department of Defense for navigational and security purposes. The satellites are atomic clocks with radios that send a message about position and the exact time the message was sent. The position is determined by trianaterlation.

Garmin units are used by the Map Library for most of their field work. The units collect coordinates as you move through space and record a time date stamp. You can take photographs with a time date stamp that can be geo-referenced to the Garmin units.

Colleen Murphy-Dunning, Director of Hixon Center for Urban Ecology, approached the Map Library with data from 2001 of all the street trees in New Haven. The original database needed to be written into ArcPad to be able to 2001 update records. The Map Library created custom forms for the units allowing the surveyor to revisit all the sites and verify old data and update any new data. A group of high school students, using Trimble units, discovered areas were trees should be planted and they planted the trees when approved.

Colleen explained the pedagogical advantages of using the GPS units. The student participants in the Forestry school learned how to manage data sets and develop community outreach skills. High school students were also involved as interns and worked in their own neighorhoods developing both technology skills and pride in their surroundings. The interns helped educate the city of New Haven staff about the use of these technologies.

Richard Brooks, from the Law School, used the Trimble Juno units to record beach-goers to examine issues of racial integration and notions of personal property. They chose beaches since there is no artificial boundaries on a beach…the beach-goers determine what space belongs to them. The Map Library developed a database for data collection and loaded the database onto the Trimble Junos so surveyors could record race, age, gender, cluster information, and proximity to those around them on the beach. This data collection made it possible to aggregate attributes of the beach-goers. There were 13,000 observations over 2 weeks.

Rick is an economist with a law degree and does econometric modeling. This project was initiated after Rick read an article in the New York Times by Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone. The article posited that when communities become more diverse, there is more isolation. Rick didn’t agree with this idea and the method by which Putnam arrived at his conclusions. This study grows out of the desire to utilize data collection and technology to develop a study that collects more accurate data. The data is being used to write an NSF grant.

Stacey finished by discussing the future of spatial data capture comparing it to the notion of cloud computing…GPS data and capture will be ubiquitous as more and more of us carry phones, cameras, and other portable devices.

Use this link to view Stace’s presentation slides (.pps file, 34MB).

12/03/08 A recent article on Facebook, http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/11/digital-youth/.

Facebook, http://www.facebook.com, is an online social networking website that was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg.

Robin Ladouceur, Instructional Design Specialist, introduced Facebook. Robin began by polling the audience about their use of Facebook. Results linked here. She also shared the 7 things you need to know about Facebook document. Facebook, was originally only available at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and Yale and then expanded to everyone. It is the 4th largest trafficked site on internet. There are over 100 million users worldwide and available in many languages. Robin showed campaign pages in Facebook for each candidate.

Barack Obama Facebook Page
John McCain Facebook Page
Facebook Politics?

Robin took users through the registration process. Users can have multiple accounts in Facebook if they have multiple email accounts. Registering with your Yale email will automatically include you in the Yale Facebook network. She took us on a tour of the anatomy of the Facebook page including the newsfeed, the profile, photos, the wall, virtual bookshelf and groups.

She suggests creating a separate account for teaching and telling students to give access to a limited profile, i.e. not having access to the student’s wall and photos. Also, creating a group for students is a good idea to keep the teaching aspect of Facebook separate.

Highlighted education sites for teaching uses for Facebook:

Educause Review: Facebook 2.0 by Tracy Mitrano
Teaching and Learning with Facebook
Course Connector
My Courses
Blackboard Sync for Facebook

No Sakai (i.e. Classesv2) sync for Facebook as of yet, so we are not able utilize

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy
Yes, even college English teachers fall for Facebook

Robin will be available Wednesday and Thursday, September 17 & 18, 2:00 – 3:00 pm at the Collaborative Learning Center service desk.

Michael Farina of the Italian Department has been teaching with Facebook for four years. He uses it to teach a language and he admits that language study is about developing relationships and therefore Facebook is a great tool to connect personally with students.

He started by having students write on their wall in Italian and now sees students updating their status in Italian. He recently arranged an entire conference on his wall in Facebook and now has people attending the conference based on seeing that information on his Facebook page.

He uses Facebook groups for students to embed images and video. Students would post assignments to Facebook so both the instructor and students can see the assignments. He wants to break down the barrier between in-class and out of class. He never friends students, he has students join groups instead. He also creates events to highlight department films, lectures, scrabble night in Italian. It is a great way to broadcast events to students where they spend a lot of time.

Facebook applications
Issuu application in Facebook allows you to upload documents within Facebook to share documents with students.

widgetbox.com helps you create an application and embed it in Facebook, such as a blog or other online application.

Facebook Connect will take over the login service for every site you use. Verifies identity and then connects all the sites. Video can be commented on via newsfeed in Facebook to get conversations around the content going among your students.

Geoffrey Little, Communications Coordinator in the Library, announced a YDN article that was written today about the new look of Facebook. University Library created a fan site in Facebook 6 weeks ago. Less formal and more extroverted presence for the University Library. Just search for Yale University Library within Facebook. Use events application for upcoming events such as Teaching w/ Technology Tuesdays. Created Library site as a fan site which means users have to become fans, rather than the Library entering their social space. Applications on the fan site include a JSTOR search, a Worldcat Search, and CiteMe, an application that creates citations for users in style format they choose. Thinking about using Facebook for Banned Books week to engage users around issues of censorship and other issues.

Copyright issues arose in the questions and answer period. The library can help sort out the issues of copyright and fair use.

When working with a class, is it better to create a group or fan site? African American Studies professor would like use in a class. Facebook becomes a bucket for posting assignments, documents, videos, etc.

Kari Swanson, Acting Head of the Science Libraries, took us on a tour of Second Life with her avatar Kari Meadowbrook. Second Life is a 3-dimensional online environment populated by graphical representations (avatars) of over 1 million people. Kari explained how Second Life offers the potential for radical changes in the way information and services are provided, and also in the way teaching and research are conducted in traditional and new, innovative ways. She walked us through some of education hotspots in Second Life such as Info Island, the New Media Consortium Island, and the ICT Library. While in the ICT Library she pointed out how users have access to educational materials such as powerpoints, blogs, flickr photos, posers, online newspapers, and other information sources. There is even something called Think Press, which allows Second Life users to publish a book in the virtual environment.

See Kari’s presentation for more information.

Kari explained that a Second Life account is free unless you want an island. The Instructional Technology Group at Yale has an Island, Elihu Island, where some experimentation is going on. Second Life offers free space to any first time teacher in the virtual environment and it was observed that distance education seems to be the primary educational use of Second Life.

Ken Panko, Manager of the Instructional Technology Group, spoke about ways in which his group has explored Second Life. He made it clear that, although there are many educational spots in Second Life, there are also many places and interactions that happen in Second Life that are not appropriate for education, i.e. mature content. Ken mentioned a few education projects:

1. student curated exhibitions using digitized images from the Yale University Art Gallery. The gallery walls were replicated in Second Life and students can hang an exhibit in the virtual space.
2. the industrial ecology department (engineering, environmental studies, and chemistry) is using Second Life for meetings and collaborations.
3. the Mudd Library may undergo renovations in the near future so the ITG group is partnering with the New Media Consortium to build a model of the Mudd Library in Second Life for planning purposes.

Many of us are familiar with the most basic capabilities of Google Maps: finding a street, getting driving directions, and switching to “Satellite” view to see our homes and other favorite places from above.

In this week’s Teaching with Technology Tuesdays presentation, Sandy Isenstadt, Assistant Professor in History of Art, shared two examples of activities he conducted with his students that made use of Google’s tools for creating custom maps.

First, Sandy showed his class blog for BRST440, Modern British Architecture, from summer 2007. The blog linked to a custom Google Map of London, which showed the locations of building students had chosen for their final projects: studying and writing about buildings on which no secondary literature was available. Locations on the map can link to notes and other information about the buildings.

This spring, students in the course HSAR462, Shops and Shopping, are using Google Maps to organize their study of the histories of New Haven retail establishments. As he planned the course, Sandy knew he wanted to impress upon students that where things occur in space matters to their histories. Google Maps met his need for a visualization tool–a way to help students become accustomed to thinking in urban terms. Students used a variety of sources found online and in Yale’s own collections (such as directories, athletic programs, and student publications) to conduct a spacial and temporal study of New Haven shops. The class’s Google Map shows retail locations and their movements over time, and links to detailed write-ups submitted by students.

( A portion of the custom map created by the students in the Shops and Shopping course.)

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Seth Fein, Professor of History, demonstrated and discussed how class blogs have been used for the last few semesters in his classes. In his current course on Film and History he and his students are using a WordPress blog set up with the help of Yale’s Instructional Technology Group. Fein uses a lot of multimedia in his teaching and the blog offers an easy-to-use tool for him and his students to engage with primary source material, creating posts that include images and video clips (some of which the students have created and edited).

Fein was careful to point out that the use of the blog technology is driven by the pedagogical objectives of his course which include understanding history beyond the screen and analyzing how historical periods, particularly the 1930s, are portrayed in film. The blog enables students to spend more time with the media used in class, and are therefore more engaged with that media. He cited three impacts the use of the blogs is having in his courses. They improve the use of class time because students are more prepared; the uploading of video clips prepare students for a final project involving the production of a video; and finally, the public forum of the blog has seemed to encourage the creativity and quality of the students’ writing.

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Gregory Eow, Kaplanoff Librarian for American History, demonstrated Zotero’s features and discussed the research and teaching applications of Zotero. He explained that Zotero was developed at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Zotero is Albanian for “to grab.” It is a free extension for Firefox that helps with digital research to collection, manage, and cite research sources. Similar to Refworks and Endnote, Zotero allows you to retrieve citations from library catalogs, Amazon, and databases. Unlike Refwords and Endnote, Zotero allows you to go beyond citations enabling tagging, annotations, the downloading of full-text articles, and capturing images and other media (tour of functionality).

Greg demonstrated how you can bring in citations from Orbis, the Yale Library Catalog, and from Historical Newspapers Complete. Zotero is only 18 months old so there are issues related to the import of citations that are not fully worked out yet. Some catalogs and databases work better than others. Another caveat that Greg gave is that Zotero is at the moment essentially client-based, meaning all your saved citations, notes, tags, etc. are all saved to you computer, not to a server as they are with Endnote and Refworks. This means you can only use Zotero from your own computer and you have to back up your Zotero files occasionally in case something happens to your computer. A server version of Zotero is forthcoming that will solve both these problems.

Zotero supports all media files including video, audio, and images. A snapshot features enables you to capture full text articles from databases such as JSTOR. When you have captured the snapshot you can then highlight within the article and also insert annotations. It is possible to import citations form Endnote or Refworks directly into Zotero.

For those interested in a hands-on demonstration of Zotero, there will be a workshop on April 11 from 11:-00 – 12:00 in Bass Library L06. Please bring your laptop if you have one so we can help install Zotero on your computer.