Resource Review 3: Online Review Articles

I figured in doing a Resource Review project, probably one of the key places to look for another type of resource to review on my blog would be - quite obviously - other reviews about the tool. So quite simply, this entry will focus on the ins and outs of online review articles.

Article: Gapinski, James. (2009). A Review of EPals.com: Connecting Global Classrooms, Students, and Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/38129.aspx.

Article synopsis: I found this article on Bright Hub, a website that posts science and technology articles, buyer's guides, how-to tips and software reviews. In this review found in the K-12 Education tab, the author reviews EPals.com. He highlights the interactive and exciting features the website offers free of charge to teachers and administrations. His review spans the services, features, and user-friendliness of EPals.com, but while he emphasizes the site's central commitment to connecting global classrooms, the author cites what he sees are some drawbacks of the digital tool. He ends the article positively, however, with a recommendation to use the site while acknowledging potential shortcomings.

The "Resource Review" verdict: I believe this article balanced enough of the good with the less good in order to stray from any hint of bias. I appreciated the concrete examples he supplied to illustrate both the positive and negative aspects of the website. For example, he referred to African and American classooms' collaboration in book talks using the Chinua Achebe novel Things Fall Apart, and he pointed out the site's busy interface that may take an educator months to learn and to find ways to integrate different elements of it into his/her curriculum. His inclusion of these examples gave me a greater sense of the article's validity, as if to say, "This guy sure knows his stuff." Thus, using my own experience with the both the tool and other online articles discussing EPals.com, it is my opinion that the author provided a straightforward, authentic review of the tool.

So in closing...: Sensing how positively the author's specificity influenced my impression of his review opinion, I was reminded to evaluate my own review writing style for this blog. In general, I have found review articles of EPals.com to be helpful in exposing "both sides of the fence" and providing relatively thorough feedback. However, I realized that sometimes (if not most of the time), it depends on the site with which the article is associated whether the review is objective and/or helpful. All in all, I've found that when I find a good site for dependable reviews, bookmarking it now ensures I remember to check back with them later for more trustworthy, solid reviews of digital tools.

Resource Review 2: Internal Marketing Articles

Working three years in the Luther College Public Information Office gave me experience with and training in the art of marketing and public relations, the art of making your company or employer look really good. When EPals.com's cloud-nine press releases kept coming up in my searches for reviews of the site, I knew that people on their marketing team were doing their job while - at the same time - making my job as a reviewer much more difficult.

Article: Fash, Sandy. (2009). Epals honored with two 2009 EDDIE awards from ComputED Learning Center. Retrieved from http://www.cblohm.com/news/ePals/EP_091008/index.html.

Article synopsis: The article announced the two awards recently received by Epals for EPals.com and In2Books. In2Books, the site's literacy e-mentoring program, received the Annual Education Softward Review Award (EDDIES) for Best Language Arts Web Site for Early Elementary from the ComputED Learning Center, and EPals.com received the same award for Best Internet Communication Website in the Multi-Level category. The awards have been given for fourteen years and were chosen from an international applicant pool, awarding "innovative and content-rich programs and Web sites that provide parents and teachers with the technology to foster educational excellence."

The "Resource Review" verdict: Given the source of the article, it is to be understood that the primary purpose of the article is to help enhance EPals.com's image and credibility, providing affirmations of the overall ethos associated with it. Rather than news only being sent to those sites associated with education and collaborative learning, internal marketing seeks a wide reach in its consumer population in order to make people aware of the website and wow audiences with its prestige. The article discussed elements of In2Books that supports how it increases literacy and provides excerpts from the judges' comments, such as, "In2Books is a shining example of what thoughtful educators can do with best-practice methods without a whole lot of funds." Not to mention the article also referenced the site's reception of one of ComputED Learning Center's 2009 Annual Best Educational Software Awards (BESSIE) for Best Internet Communication Web site in the Multi-Level category, too! So this rich collection of evidence and statistics really does accentuate and draw attention to the digital tool and sparks curiosity for users to see what all the hype is about, making it a good source for reviewing the tool.

So in closing...: Let's face it. When asked to think critically about something, we're not looking to be fed all the feel-good fluff of greatness of the thing, person or subject we are reviewing; we're really just looking for a little dirt, some nugget of hard news to give people a "true" look at something. In light of this, internal marketing articles can be a nuisance and cloud our objective vision. But internal marketing is part and parcel to making a product or site known, and I think internal marketing news items are important resources for reviewing any digital tool. They serve as valuable access points to information about and, consequently, awareness of new technologies for a broad scope of potential users and supporters, as well as providing foundational legitimacy useful for building up a site's reputation and status in the Web 2.0 world.

Resource Review 1: Scholarly Journal Articles

Despite my technological deficiencies in not being able to successfully link retrieved journal articles from UW's academic databases to my Delicious account, I was still able to snag the journal article titles. As such, this entry will focus on the helpfulness of scholarly journal articles in reviewing the digital tool of EPals.com.

Article: Gersh, Sheila Offman. (2009). Global Projects and Digital Tools. MultiMedia & Internet@Schools, 16(1), 10-13.

Article synopsis: This article examines the use of digital tool in classroom/learning settings, primarily with those tools that provide learning engagement through project-based methods. The author does an overview of using digital tools, especially Web 2.0 tools, and references EPals.com a few times as a good site to use for collaborative learning. The author highlights some of the challenges that may be associated with implementing digital tools into an educator's curriculum, but also provides a helpful list of resources one can access for different options of digital tools available.

The "Resource Review" verdict: Although the article wasn't helpful in providing extensive information about EPals.com explicitly, I found the article to be - on the whole - useful because it fit the use of digital tools in classrooms into a larger context of meaning and importance. By listing EPals.com among those tools cited by the author as being good digital tools to use in the classroom, EPals.com is getting important academic placement and recognition among a very broad pool of options. With a change in research interests to cause/effect topics (at least the shift I've seen in my years of undergraduate research - less focus on exploring and defining a subject topic and more of a movement toward a sociology-type base of how or why a subject topic brings about certain social influences, responses, etc.), I think it's safe to assume that articles exploring an individual digital tool are on the outs, while research studying their use and effect, and collaborative uses and influences across disciplines, will be expected moreso.

So in closing...: All in all, I found that searching journal articles on UW's E-Resource gateway was very helpful for reviewing my digital tool because the articles provide subject headings either directly correlating to those issued by Library or Congress or some type of subject heading that gives the user more direction in finding information similar or related to the given article. This helped a lot for me in concept mapping for my search query, which has proven beneficial for the topic of EPals.com specifically given that the site itself is relatively new and therefore hasn't been studied much in academic research published in peer-reviewed journals.

EPals.com: Resource Review

One of the ongoing assignments in my Digital Tools, Trends and Databses (LIS644) course is called a Resource Review. Students were instructed to focus on a digital tool or product and identify, bookmark, review and share quality resources via the social bookmarking site Delicious.com and their blogs. In addition to presentations presenting and demonstrating their digital tool of choice to the class, each student will write a paper synthesizing the materials to produce an overarching review of the tool.

At first, in my defensive anti-technology mood, I grumbled at the thought of this assignment and fretted over my lack of basic skills in order to complete the assignment. I didn't even know what was considered a digital tool and what wasn't, let alone thought myself capable enough to demonstrate the thing to my whole class of what seem to be tech-savvy experts. So I initially thought, "Google Docs. I can do Google Docs because it's something I actually do use on a daily basis and am good at." Because researching something you already know is the reason you go to graduate school, right? :)

So I planted myself at square #1 and googled "digital tools" to just cast a line and find out what exactly my "options" were for this assignment topic. It turns out there are lists out there of digital tools - not just a few, but countless digital tools! (And for those of you snappy-pants who knew this before you could do algebra, great. But I'm still learning, so a little slack and celebrate with me, please!) :) Given my interest in building connections between people in learning communities as well as international relations, I was immediately attracted to EPals.com and chose it for the focus of my resource review.

EPals.com is a collaborative learning site where teachers or administrators in schools around the world are paired up with a school/classroom in another country or region, and their students participate in interactive blogging, emails, lessons and share photos, experiences and stories. These cross-cultural connections make up what EPals.com claims to be "the Internet's largest global community of connected classrooms" in a completely secure and protected site managed by the teachers and integrated into syllabi. In some aspects, the site reflects many of the social networking functions now popular in other tools like facebook and myspace, in tools like chat, video, email pen-pals and messaging.

I've tagged a number of websites that discuss/review EPals.com on my Delicious account (username: westka04) and I'll be posting responses periodically here to get some of my thoughts on these reviews "down on paper." Until then, feel free to check out EPals.com to get a feel for the benefits of its opportunities and any potential shortcomings it presents. Collaborative learning - an everyday phenomenon with unlimited and awesome potential, in my opinion. :) Enjoy!

Confession: Technology is NOT my thing!

To be honest, I was not excited about taking this class and even less enthused about this project--digital tools? Demonstrating technology to the class? Delicious what? I'm not a technophobe, but I do think I was born a generation or two late. Technology and the digital world has never really sparked my fancy, but rather held an unprivileged position at the top of my "Unnecessary" list, despite the countless conveniences - and more often, necessities - that I take advantage of as a result of advanced technology. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's an aversion to social trend bandwagoning, maybe it's complete idiocy; but the facts remain--technology typically confuses, overwhelms and frustrates me. So why am I in this class?

As an librarian and information professional, it is my job to not only grapple with the conveniences and challenges of technology in order to better serve as an educator for communities I serve, but also to welcome the changing face of information distribution so as to not be left behind in ignorant existence while the rest of the progressive world moves ahead. While I am becoming increasingly open to adapting to, and perhaps even becoming fond of, the digital world, I still maintain an air of caution in supporting too strongly the go-ahead with tech advances because of my own experience with the digital divide between a place like the United States and developing nations like Tanzania.

Discussions and readings in LIS644 have been an immense influence on my perspective and ideas about technology, information distribution and the world of libraries both domestically and internationally, and as it turns out, I am loving the class! I look forward to each session in order to better educate myself on useful tools and helpful strategies for assessing and implementing appropriate technologies in a dynamic professional field.