WebCite – The Answer to Disappearing URL References

WebCite^® is the answer to a major woe for anyone who’s ever published a web reference only to find that the URL is no longer valid. The webpage has been moved or deleted, and clicking the link brings up an error message.

WebCite^® is a simple, straightforward archiving service. It’s a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, and its services are free. Here’s how it works: (1) Log in to the submission form. (2) Paste the URL you want to archive. (3) Paste your email address. (4) Click on “Submit.” (5) On the next page, copy the reference info. (6) Paste it into your website. That’s it!

Clicking on the link, the reader is immediately taken to an archived copy of the page. If the original is deleted or moved, the WebCite link remains valid and displays an exact copy of the web source. The only way you’ll know that this is the archived version is the WebCite header that runs across the top.

You don’t have to sign up or register for the service. It’s completely on-demand.

If you want, you can add more information, or what they call “Metadata,” which is then added to your citation for a more robust reference. Here are the fields on the form. The first two are required; the remainder are optional:

URL to Archive [url]:
Your (citing author) E-mail Address [email]:

Metadata (optional)
These are Dublin Core elements. Entering these will help you to correctly cite the URL. Any information here will take precedence over metadata extracted from the cited webpage.
Title [title]:
Author(s) [author]:
Cited Author’s E-mail [authoremail]:
Publisher [source]:
Date [date]:
Subject Keywords [subject]:

The link can be inserted as is or added to a reference or works-cited entry, providing access to a permanent copy of the source. Here’s an example using this blog post, including the basic and optional metadata:

Shimabukuro, James. WebCite – The Answer to Disappearing URL References. Windblown Bytes. 2008-10-02. URL:http://windblownbytes.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/webcite-the-answer-to-disappearing-url-references/. Accessed: 2008-10-02. (Archived by WebCite^® at http://www.webcitation.org/5bGO5SzaR)

[Added 10.2.08] Here’s a caveat from MaryAnne Gobble, Innovate’s Managing Editor: “Just one note you may want to alert your faculty to: It only archives single pages, so articles spread over multiple pages have to be archived a page at a time. (The better answer — the one we use — is to archive the ‘printer-friendly’ version or the pdf.) Also, a lot of subscription resources, even those for which subscription is free, reject crawlers and so won’t archive. Still, it does work for just about everything else — )”

[Source for this post: See the reference that's attached to "Innovate-Ideagora: Introducing a New Feature in Innovate," in Innovate: Journal of Online Education (Oct-Nov 2008).]

Google’s Browser – Chrome

Chrome, Google’s challenge to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, is supposed to be ready for downloading today, within the next hour or so. Yes, they’ve decided to use a comic book to introduce the new web browser. (Click on the graphic below to view the comic book.) Yes, it’s open source. And they’re using Blogger to distribute announcements. I’ll post download info as it becomes available.

Update 9.2.08: Click here to download Chrome.

Click here for a PC World preview.

A New Model for Advising

On August 5, while reviewing my students’ papers in their blogs on one screen, a fascinating TECADV-L discussion on “tools for online advising” was occurring on the second screen. I left the papers for a while to read some of the messages and to post one of my own. The version below is pretty much what I posted, with a few minor edits in the large paragraph toward the end.

RE: Tools for online advising
From: James Shimabukuro [jamess@hawaii.edu]
Sent: Tue 8/5/2008 11:15 AM
To: ‘NACADA [National ACademic ADvising Association] Commission on Technology in Advising’
[mailto:TECADV-L@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU]

There’s a lot of tech out there that’ll help in online advising, but as I glance through the posts in this thread, I can’t help wondering if we’re not barking up the wrong tree. In the early stages of adoption of new tech, we go through an awkward phase in which the content of the new is the old tech. Thus we had talking heads in early TV, a throwback to radio. In online advising, we may be experiencing the same, trying to recreate or transport the F2F, one-on-one office model to the virtual world.

The  problem, however, is that this office model begs the question: If tech has made it possible for us to synchronously meet and communicate from anywhere (and asynchronously at any time), regardless of where we are on or off this planet, then why limit ourselves to the idea of office and the technology that it represents?

The first step in trying to answer this question is to move outside the office model and really look at how our students are communicating with one another, or, more accurately, at the way info tech is changing the way they view the world, themselves, and others. From their perspective, driving miles through traffic congestion to attend a class, to borrow a book at a library, to see a video, to register for classes, to pay tuition, or to attend a meeting is tantamount to walking when the alternative is driving. Why, they wonder, can’t we simply do it via eletronic tech?

Which brings us back to the question: Is there a better way to advise online? Or, in keeping with the direction of this reply, Is there a better way to advise online with a new model that’s based on tech that our students are using?

The honest answer is, I’m not sure — but it wouldn’t hurt to explore and experiment.

For example, social networking (SN) really boils down to individuals creating a presence, identity, or persona in the virtual world. This isn’t a static, cardboard webpage but a dynamic, organic, interactive electronic persona “who” is there 24-7-365. And this persona can be adjusted for different audiences, e.g., for family, friends, classmates, professors, advisors, etc. Over time, students build this epersona to the point where it comprises the key elements that define who they are for particular audiences.

The question for us as educators is, How can we work within this realm of epersonas? How can we accomplish the ultimate purposes of advising via this virtual SN model of dynamic, interactive epersonas?

The answers are there for the taking, but without actually incorporating them into our personal lives, my guess is that they won’t seem “real” to most of us. We’ll continue to drive through morning traffic to sit in our offices, and we’ll continue to use our office model as a base for incorporating change — rather than the other way around. And we’ll continue to ask how we can use the new to perpetuate the old.

If we were to do the unthinkable and abandon our hallowed offices and move advising into the virtual world of epersonas, how would we function?

This is the question, I think, we ought to be asking. I don’t have the answer, but like the rest of you, I have ideas.

For example, one possibility is to create an advising environment that optimizes interaction between and among advisor and student epersonas. Yes, advisors would create and work “through” their epersonas. Thus, instead of meeting F2F or electronically in an office, they’ll interact via their epersonas or their online selves in the virtual world.

Before I go any further, I should say that I’m definitely not advocating virtual reality (or VR) models. These have their own built-in anachronisms that render them obsolete from the get go.

Back to the social networking (SN) model: Students would construct an advisee epersona and invest it with the kinds of info and features that would help them get the most out of online advising, and advisors would do the same on their end, i.e., build an advisor epersona that allows them to make the most of the SN model to provide advising services or, perhaps more accurately, advising guidance.

The key advantage of the SN advising model is that it extends the walls of the old office to incorporate the entire universe of information, services, and human resources in seamless links that expand outward indefinitely — in space and time. Thus, the advisor’s role changes dramatically from one who has the answers to one who can guide the student through the universe of answers to the ones that may best fit the student — but the student makes the actual decisions. And once the student understands this empowering process, she/he will become less dependent on the advisor and increasingly independent in her ability to explore and find her own answers — not just for academic, personal, or career decisions right now but for the rest of her life. Thus, students quickly become assets in the advising SN, able to serve as peer guides to classmates who’re asking similar questions. In this scenario, the advisor is not alone is providing guidance. The entire “village,” as it were, is part of the SN, and each member is a potential source of guidance.

I’d better stop here. My apologies for rambling, and if I’ve gotten way off topic, I apologize for that, too.

Now, I’ll have to get back to reviewing my students’ papers, which are sitting in their blogs.

Jim Shimabukuro (8.5.08)
Kapi`olani CC
james@hawaii.edu

[Shimabukuro, James. A New Model for Advising. Windblown Bytes. 2008-10-02. URL:http://windblownbytes.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/a-new-model-for-advising/. Accessed: 2008-10-02. (Archived by WebCite^® at http://www.webcitation.org/5bGIfPcki)]

‘Two Million Minutes’ – A Chilling Eye-Opener

Subj: Two Million Minutes
From: William W Reisner [reisner@hawaii.edu]
Sent: Sun 8/10/2008 7:30 AM
To: James Shimabukuro

Jimmy,

Wondering if you heard of this documentary, Two Million Minutes (the time one is in high school).
It follows six students — two in China, two in India, and two in US through the rigors (or lack thereof) of their curriculum. I suggested to International Festival coordinator that he look into showing it next March. Need to find out more about it though.

http://www.2mminutes.com

Bill Reisner

[REPLY 8.10.08 4:00 PM]
Bill,

I hope you won’t mind if I share your email in Windblown Bytes. Until you mentioned it, I’d never heard of Two Million Minutes. I clicked on the URL and expected to watch the first few seconds and wasn’t prepared to be dumbfounded. I watched the trailer and the backstory at the site, then went to YouTube to grab versions that I could use in this blog. There, I found part 2 of the intro.

I haven’t seen more than these three brief pieces, but I have a feeling the full video will be just as good. This is a very compelling video. I agree with you that KCC’s International Festival coordinator should look into it. I would love to see the whole. Frankly, these short pieces have created a gnawing sense of doom in the pit of my stomach mainly because Bob Compton isn’t saying anything new. He’s simply confirming my worst nightmares that, as a nation, we’ve gotten soft in more ways than one. If we accept this premise, then the conclusion for the future of our country is frightening. For example, soon, we may become second class citizens in our own country when immigrants increasingly take over critical professional roles that we can no longer fill. And the chilling part is, we can already see this happening.

Interestingly, as I was watching the last quarter of the live US-China basketball game (Beijing Olympics) this morning, a similar thought struck me. What’s happening to the US that we have to send all of our elite NBA players to compete in an Olympic sport that we not only invented but dominated for decades with college players? On the progress scale, it’s almost as though we’ve been walking while the rest of the world has been running.

Two Million Minutes should be an eye-opener. Definitely worth watching. Thanks, Bill.

-Jimmy

New Trailer for Two Million Minutes

The Making of 2MM – by Bob Compton, Executive Producer

The Making of Two Million Minutes – PART 2

Beijing Olympics – Streaming Video

Beijing Olympics – live, streaming, free. Go to NBCOlympics.com, download the driver (Silverlight.2.0.exe), and you’re in. Just watched the last quarter of the US men beating Yao Ming and the Chinese team, 101-70.

The sign-up also asks for your zip code and local TV provider — not sure why they need the latter since the broadcast is independent of your TV connection.

[Added 8.10.08 4:45 PM] Aha! They use the info to personalize your login page, including local TV listings.

Boomers, Xers, Yers — How to Cope?

[Subject: Invitation to Attend Free Webinar: July 18, Friday, from 1-2 PM, Manono 104.]

From: Edward Valdez [mailto:edwardv@hawaii.edu]

Hi Everyone:

I would like to share this particular webinar with you:

Understanding and Leading Multiple Generations in the Workforce

For the first time in history, today’s leaders have to juggle four generations: Builders, Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials vote differently, work differently, buy differently, and want to be rewarded differently. In this free 1-hour webcast will you apply FranklinCovey leadership principles, processes and tools to better lead each age cohort or generational group. This Webinar will give you an overview on FranklinCovey content plus you will walk away that an understanding of the unique differences of the age groups and learn why and how all four generations respond differently in the workplace.

Objectives of the Seminar:

• Understand the unique differences in age groups.
• Learn simple yet highly effective ways to manage generational differences so that all age groups are satisfied.
• Understand why and how all four generations respond differently in the workplace.
• Apply leadership principles to help different cohorts find their voice, feel appreciated and feel that their contributions matter.

In behalf of my program, I would like to invite you to view this seminar on July 18, Friday, from 1-2 PM Manono 104.

Please call or e-mail  me to reserve a seat since I am also inviting the rest of the KCC staff and faculty, and my instructors.

Ed Valdez

Edward V. Valdez
Program Coordinator, Business Education Unit
Continuing Education- Business Management Program
Kapiolani Community College
4303 Diamond Head Road
Honolulu, HI 96816

Telephone: (808) 734-9153
Fax: (808) 7349-147
edwardv@hawaii.edu

Comment: Lori Sakaguchi, who forwarded the announcement above, attended the webinar and took the following notes:

This is my [Lori Sakaguchi's] interpretation of Covey’s seminar, “Leading Across Generations”:

Generations:

Traditional, Baby Boomers, Gen X and Millennials

Strategies that have been used for dealing with friction:

• Ignore them
• Fix them
• Cut a deal
• *Leadership

In the Leadership model, it is important to:

• Understand generational differences
• Resolve points of friction by looking at strengths of each generation
• Engage the whole person (not just work persona)

Traits of different generations. These are very general statements and some of your generational statements, you may not find apply to you. There are also some who are on the “cusps” between generations and may associate with one or the other. I forgot to get the dates, but I’m sure you can find plenty of info online about that.

Traditional

• Follow chain of command
• Faithful
• Save money and avoid credit
• Have confidence in experts
• Private with personal information
• Loyal, disciplined and patient

Boomers

• Shared experience through TV
• Questions authority
• Range of freedoms and opportunities
• Optimism
• Competitive

Gen X (this is actually a pretty small group)

• A focus on the family (because of high rate of divorce)
• More cynical
• Fear, mistrust of the organization (because of downsizing, jobs shipped overseas)
• Technology natives

Millennials

• Volunteer in great numbers
• Need work that is meaningful to them
• Focus on the present
• Confident (can be overly because of no-one-loses policies in school and sports)
• Little experience with failure
• Team oriented and especially online
• Believe in instant gratification (they have not been allowed to be bored)

The key seemed to be to understand the stereotypes and look at the strengths of each group. Here were some questions to ponder:

• What motivates this generation to work?
• How do they see work relationships?
• How do they see work/life balance?
• What do they think about job security?
• What do they think about leaving an organization?

Points of Friction:

• Respect
• Work ethic
• Fun at work
• Loyalty
• Training
• Feedback
• Communication
• Decision-making
• Dress code
• Knowledge transfer
• Policies

Laulima (Sakai) – First Impressions – More

Chat Room. I posted an announcement in the class blog this evening, inviting students to use the chat room. The idea is that I’d “sit” in the room from time to time, especially when the forum traffic is heavy, to give students an opportunity to drop in and chat. When they see an icon in front of my name, they’ll know I’m in. We tested it briefly tonight. A few students popped in to talk. While waiting, I opened a second Laulima window to participate in some of the asynchronous forums. This is when I learned that there’s an apparent glitch in the chat feature. For some reason, you can’t chat while a second Laulima window is open. If you try to do it, the names of all the participants don’t show up in the “Users in Chat” sidebar and some of the chat posts don’t appear. I didn’t realize this was happening until a student asked if I’d read her question. It didn’t appear on my chat screen. At that point I suspected the cause and quickly shut down the second Laulima login. The screen quickly filled up with dialogue that I hadn’t seen. This is a minor inconvenience, though, for a very useful tool. BTW, you can quickly and easily set up additional chat rooms to give students more chat options.

Adding Participants. This feature is for adding folks who are not officially registered in your class as students. Unfortunately, as is, the directions are inadequate. If you try to wing it with what’s there, you’ll keep getting error messages. I finally asked Craig Shiroma, my longtime friend and KCC’s IT guru who seems to be on the job 24-7-365, for help. Here are the steps: Click on “Site Info” and “Add Participants.” If the person has a hawaii.edu address, simply add the part before the @ symbol in the first box, e.g., “kimo” if the full address is kimo@hawaii.edu. Leave the second box blank. If the person has a non-hawaii.edu address, paste or type the full address, e.g., “kimo@gmail.com,” in the second box. Leave the first box blank. That’s it. Once the instructions are cleaned up, this feature will prove very useful.

Laulima (Sakai) – ‘The Keys to the Kingdom’

Did I say that Laulima is fabulous? For a treasure chest of tools (or “gadgets”) to add to your worksite, click on “Site Info” in the left sidebar. In the menubar that runs across the top of the screen, click on “Edit Tools” — and be prepared to let your jaw drop. The tools that are already on your site have a check mark. To add any of the others, add a check mark. After you’ve checked to your heart’s content, click on “continue” at the bottom, and you’re on your way. (To remove any of the tools, use the same process to uncheck items.) Here’s a list of the tools:

Home – Description of the project, recent announcements, discussion, and chat items.
Announcements -    For posting current, time-critical information.
Assignments – For posting, submitting and grading assignment(s) online.
Blogger – For a collaborative worksite blog
Chat Room – For real-time conversations in written form.
Discussion – For conversations in written form.
Discussion and Private Messages – Jforum-Discussion Tool, Foothill
Drop Box – For private file sharing between instructor and student.
Email Archive – For viewing email sent to the site.
Evaluation System – Tool for running site evaluations.
Forums – Display forums and topics of a particular site
Gradebook – For storing and computing assessment grades from Tests & Quizzes or that are manually entered.
Link Tool – A tool to link to external applications.
Mailtool – Send mail to groups in your course.(Attachment-enabled)
Messages – Display messages to/from users of a particular site
Modules – Modules – Melete Lesson Builder for creating and organizing learning sequences.
News – For viewing content from online sources.
Podcasts – For managing individual podcast and podcast feed information.
Polls – For anonymous polls or voting
Post’Em – For uploading .csv formatted file to display feedback (e.g., comments, grades) to site participants.
Presentation – For showing and viewing slideshows of image collections from Resources.
Resources – For posting documents, URLs to other websites, etc.
Roster – For viewing the site participants list.
Schedule – For posting and viewing deadlines, events, etc.
Site Info – For showing worksite information and site participants.
Site Stats – For showing site statistics by user, event, or resource.
Syllabus – For posting a summary outline and/or requirements for a site.
Tasks, Tests and Surveys – For authoring, publishing, delivering and grading assessments.
Tests & Quizzes – For creating and taking online tests and quizzes.
Web Content – For accessing content from http:// within the site.
Web Content – For accessing an external website within the site.
Wiki – For collaborative editing of pages and content

Quick comments: The “Blogger” in the list is not the same as Google’s Blogger. For my purposes, I’m asking my students to use the latter. I’ll have to explore the different tools, but based on an initial scan, there doesn’t seem to be a tool for inserting videos (e.g., from YouTube) and audio. With so much useful, timely, and dynamic videos available, hopefully these tools will soon be available. I realize that we can add links to these videos from within Laulima, but there’s nothing like being able to play them right there in your Laulima post.

Added 7.8.08: OK, “Web Content” is a way to view YouTube or any other video on your Laulima site. Add it as a tool, click on it, click on “options,” and add the URL and a title. It appears as a menu choice in the left sidebar. When a user clicks on it, the video plays in the Laulima opening page, replacing the left and right panels, leaving the left sidebar intact. Clicking on “Home” takes her/him back to the default panels. Not the most elegant solution. It’d be great if we could play videos in individual announcements or posts, too.

Laulima (Sakai) – First Impressions – continued

In the opening information and announcements page, the options (circled in red at the top) button allows us to reconfigure the display features. For the left information panel, we can adjust the height. Be careful. Too much height and the horizontal scroll bar is pushed off the bottom of the screen and the user will need to scroll down through white space to see it. I futzed with the height until the scroll bar appeared just below the image displayed in the window.

For the right announcements panel, we have a great set of options! We can decide how many announcements to display (I chose 7 — for now), how much of each announcement (if just a few lines, then users can click on an item to read the full post) to display, and for how long.

One of the coolest features in Laulima is the “who’s on live” display in the left sidebar. (See the item circled in red, on the left.) It lists everyone who happens to be live in my Laulima class at any given moment. I haven’t pursued it yet, but I’m guessing that we have the option to chat with them — and they with us.

Laulima (Sakai) – First Impressions

I can see why Sheldon Tawata has been raving about Laulima, Kapi`olani Community College’s version of the open source Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment for Education. (Obviously, a mouthful. “Sakai CMS” or just “Sakai” is probably the way to go.) It’s intuitively designed – simple, clear, and logical; and it seems to have been built with the classroom instructor in mind. Literally anyone, with little or no training or technical background, can set up a course and get it off the ground. It’s that simple. Yet, it’s also designed to grow with the user. Thus, whatever your level — beginner, intermediate, or advanced – you can jump right in and begin developing.

I began using Laulima to set up my second session summer classes yesterday (June 30) so I’ll cover the basics only in this article.

Once you’re in your class workspace, you’ll notice two main panels and a thin navigational sidebar on the left. One way to approach this main page is to think of it as a blog page. The right panel (announcements) is a cumulative list of posts. The left panel is a static page for course info. If I could have it my way, I’d omit the thin, static navigational sidebar altogether and replace it with a live sidebar. I’d then pour the navigational items into the new sidebar. I‘d also eliminate the left panel and move the course info feature into the new sidebar – or, alternately, into a tabbed “about” page. This would free up valuable development territory in the main part of the page and add a useful customizable sidebar. This would leave the announcements with a lot more room to stretch out – space that could be used for more dramatic multimedia, graphics, etc.

As is, however, the left panel does have some uses. It can be used to house a webpage, but the width is so narrow that you’d end up constantly using the scroll bar to move from side to side. You could design a very narrow webpage that would fit in this space, but that’d take time and know-how. To get some dynamic use out of that space, I simply created a blog with a very narrow format that more or less fits in the space when you stretch the page out on a widescreen LCD. When I’m logged in to the blog as administrator, I’m able to edit the contents right there in the Laulima panel. Still, I can’t help but think that the left panel is misplaced as far as function and functionality goes. A single, wider announcements panel would, IMHO, be a lot more useful. Then again, the designers might have had a reason for this set up that I haven’t discovered yet.

Laulima is powerful! You can quickly and easily upload photos and files into online Laulima folders, and you can just as quickly and easily access those folders and files to insert them directly or as links into your posts. You can link to or display webpages and blogs from outside the system. For example, my course blogs are in WordPress, and they work without a hiccup as links and direct live displays within Laulima. Editing is a snap, too, intuitive, efficient, logical.

Perhaps the most valuable feature in Laulima is the discussion forums! The ability to futz with the categories and the forums gives you all the flexibility you’ll ever need to create and organize your own discussion universe. If you can think of a customization, Laulima provides a way. You can stay with the default categories or build your own. The same with the forums. And you can edit and rearrange the parts to your heart’s content. As a writing instructor, discussion forums are at the center of my online classes so the ability to tweak them in an almost infinite number of ways is critical.

Right now, I have the discussion section set up in two categories, “General Forums” and “Forums with Deadlines.” The former’s for ongoing discussions on topics that are relevant throughout the semester. The latter, for discussions with specific start-end dates, useful for sequential, linear class learning activities. I’m not sure if I’ll stay with this, but if I change my mind, it’s a snap to make changes, additions, etc.

BTW, one feature that I really like in the forums design menu is the ability to click “up” or “down” to change the order of forums. (A sweet departure from WebCT.)

Closing Thoughts

I wish there was a way to make the narrow navigational sidebar on the left disappear and reappear with a single click. This would free up more space for the main panels.

Not a big deal, but there’s a quirk in the “options” feature for the worksite info and recent announcements panels. When you click on “options” to add to or edit a panel, linking back to the workspace homepage could be a problem.  If you make changes, clicking on “update options” takes you back to the homepage. But if you don’t make any changes and just want to return, you have to click on “cancel.” I learned this the hard way. I automatically clicked on the left “back” arrow at the top of the browser and ended up at the Laulima greetings page. When I clicked on the class to return to the workspace homepage, I ended up back at the options editing page, where I had started. The “home” link in the sidebar is inactive when you’re in the options mode so this logical step is out.  This is when I decided to try “cancel,” which took me home.

A simple solution would be to activate the “home” link in the sidebar when in the panel options mode, or to make sure that the “back” arrow actually points to the workspace homepage.

Another quirk — a cool feature in options for the left panel is the ability to change the header. But, oddly, this same ability is missing from the right panel.  I wanted to switch “Recent Announcements” to simply “Announcements,” but couldn’t.

Like Sheldon, I love what I’ve seen of Laulima and look forward to playing with it. The UH Laulima development staff has done an amazing job in a very short period of time, and they’ve done it right by keeping the instructor-as-developer in mind.

Great job, guys.