Grinding Out Citations

I know this is going to be a tough week; adjusting to the time change.  UGH!!  It is a little bit of a bummer to wake up and have it be dark.(sad face emoji)  The flip side is how light it is at night now!(hands in the air emoji)   Here are fun facts about Daylight Savings.
We will continue with our EasyBib Activity in Google Classroom.  I have been struggling with a way to make you understand how much simpler it is to use EasyBib than to be hand writing out citations.  I figured it out.  I am going to make you hand write out a citation.
You will end the week by creating and publishing a new blog post.  The final twist is you will be doing a self-evaluation of your blog.  As you can see, our week is very full.   We can get through this together.
  ~Mrs. White :)

Citations Take Two

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."  This is a line from a John Lennon song.  Others sources claim Allen Saunders is it's creator.  Check out Quote Investigator to help figure out this mystery.  My whole reason for bringing up this quote is it's meaning.  Even though I made some great plans for last week, "life" in the form of a snowstorm happened.  The results of the storm was an extra day off which in turn resulted in two ILT sections not having class at all.  So ILT #1 and ILT #3, you will be working on our citation lesson from last week.  It is an important lesson, and I don't want you to miss it.  I will be out today and Mr. Frazier will be leading you through this lesson.  Please use the information below to successfully complete your introduction to MLA citations.

You will start off class by watching the Prezi, "Plagiarism & Citing Sources."  If you don't know what a Prezi is, have no fear.  It is a great slideshow with a bit of a twist.  To move through the Prezi, you will need to click on the arrow at the bottom of the page.  Each click will "zoom" you to the next slide or piece of information.
Once you have finished this Prezi, you will then practice writing a MLA citation for the website,

"iPads in schools:  The right way to do it."  You will use the resource, "Citing Internet Sources." There is a hard copy of this resource in the Workstation Resource folder next to your workstation (it's yellow.)  If you take a look at the bottom of this document you will find a box.  At the top of the box is a sample citation.  Below it you will see a list of 6 items which you will need to find on the website with the iPad article.  Please create your citation on the notecard you have at your workstation.  Be sure to pay attention to all punctuation.  Each space, punctuation, etc. are all a part of the correct format.  Do not write each item on a separate line.  Refer to the sample citation at the top of the box.  Your's should look similar to it.   (Hint:  your citation should begin with - Mathis, Joel.)

When you have finished, take a look at the answer on the back board.  Okay so now that you have gone through the pain of writing out a citation, I have some great tools I think you will find very useful.  There are some online citation creation tools that will make creating citations much easier for you.  Check out Easybib, Bibme, and CitationCreation.

You will try creating a MLA citation using each of these 3 tools.  Which do you like the best?  Why? Be ready to share your answers to these questions with us at the end of class.

My friends in ILT #4 are a bit further along than ILT #1 and #3 because you had one class last week.  Please make sure you have finished these citation activities.  Once you have completed them, move on with the next step below.

If you should finish this before the end of class, please use the Blog Design Rubric (pink paper) in your Workstation Resource folder to start preparing your blog to be assessed.  Do a great job and I will be back for class 2 to answer any questions you may have.  

Correct Citations If You Please

I hope you all enjoyed having an extra day off this week.  Did you take any time to think about why we weren't in school today?  Did you do anything special to celebrate or honor Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.? Volunteers honored him all over the country. It is very hard for those of us living in 2014 to understand how much Dr. King did to change our country. Please find some time in your week to learn a little more about him and his legacy.

Moving on to the week at hand; Mother Nature seems to have another winter storm up her sleeve.  The forecast for Tuesday night in to Wednesday morning doesn't look very promising if you are a technology student trying to get information and learning experiences out to her students.  The weather forecasters are predicting, "Frigid with Fluff!"

Well on to the lesson for this week; Citations.  Up until this point, I have let you simply use a URL as a citation.  This week you will learn to write correct citations. Let's start by looking at a Prezi, "Plagiarism & Citing Sources." There are a couple of resources you will be using.  I found a good interactive Citation Flowchart that may help you with understanding of what to cite and what not to cite. The English Club has a great resource as well.  One of the best sites I have found is the Perdue OWL.

After exploring these resources, you will practice writing the correct citation for a website.  Please write the citation for theMacworld article, "iPads in Schools:  The Right Way to Do It" on a notecard. (There is a resource in your Workstation Resource folder.) I know this sounds tedious, but I really want you to "experience" what it feels like to write out a correctly formatted citation. This on line poster or this great cite, "Citing Internet Sources," will show you how to write a citation for a website.Okay so now that you have gone through the pain of writing out a citation, I have some great tools I think you will find very useful.  There are some online citation creation tools that will make creating citations much easier for you.  Check out Easybib, Bibme, and CitationCreation.
You will try creating a MLA citation using each of these tools.  Which do you like the best?  Why? Be ready to share your answers to these questions with us at the end of class.

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