E-Portfolio Term Project - Reminder

A few students have asked for the links to the e-portfolio and the e-portfolio rubric.


Here they are again:

The E-Portfolio Assignment: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QuA2S2tuOMJT_KZVtGFwbpnT5xMHZAtjzb-LT2U7J3c/edit?authkey=CMX7040E

The E-Portfolio Assignment Rubric:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1agxOkoNAUgpS8ZWVxe5VuoXbEEFpyMULe3K4oMG1pA0/edit

NOTE: There is NO post due at the end of the E-Portfolio week!!! See the syllabus for due dates for specific posts. This is an opportunity to work on the post of your choice AND/OR spruce up your blog template, colour scheme, twitter feed etc...

APA Style Reminder

As everyone knows, for the e-portfolio it is very important to cite all the images you include - even if you took the images yourself! Your reader won't necessarily know that and it's important to get into the habit of crediting work in an academic context.

We will have more in depth lectures on APA style but it is very simple and an excellent resource is the OWL Lab at Purdue which you can find here.

You will need to use APA style for all sorts of referencing but here is a bit about how to reference images (as figures!):

Drawings and photographs can be used to communicate very specific information about a subject. Thanks to software, both are now highly manipulable. For the sake of readability and simplicity, line drawings should be used, and photographs should have the highest possible contrast between the background and focal point. Cropping, cutting out extraneous detail, can be very beneficial for a photograph. Use software like GraphicConverter or Photoshop to convert color photographs to black and white before printing on a laser printer. Otherwise most printers will produce an image with poor contrast.

Photograph

Preparing Figures

In preparing figures, communication and readability must be the ultimate criteria. Avoid the temptation to use the special effects available in most advanced software packages. While three-dimensional effects, shading, and layered text may look interesting to the author, overuse, inconsistent use, and misuse may distort the data, and distract or even annoy readers. Design properly done is inconspicuous, almost invisible, because it supports communication. Design improperly, or amateurishly, done draws the reader’s attention from the data, and makes him or her question the author’s credibility.
The APA has determined specifications for the size of figures and the fonts used in them. Figures of one column must be between 2 and 3.25 inches wide (5 to 8.45 cm). Two-column figures must be between 4.25 and 6.875 inches wide (10.6 to 17.5 cm). The height of figures should not exceed the top and bottom margins. The text in a figure should be in a san serif font (such as Helvetica, Ariel, or Futura). The font size must be between eight and fourteen point. Use circles and squares to distinguish curves on a line graph (at the same font size as the other labels). (See examples above.)

Captions and Legends

For figures, make sure to include the figure number and a title with a legend and caption. These elements appear below the visual display. For the figure number, type Figure X. Then type the title of the figure in upper and lowercase letters. Follow the title with a legend that explains the symbols in the figure and a caption that explains the figure:

Figure 1. How to create figures in APA style. This figure illustrates effective elements in APA style figures. 

Captions serve as a brief, but complete, explanation and as a title. For example, “Figure 4. Population” is insufficient, whereas “Figure 4. Population of Grand Rapids, MI by race (1980)” is better. If the figure has a title in the image, crop it.

Citizen Science

Here is another example of citizen science - perhaps some of you would like to become "digital fishers" and help explore our ocean floor? This could be added to your cvs!!

Guest Lecture: Effective CV Writing

Hope all of you find this presentation helpful in case of making your CV

Effective cv writing

View more PowerPoint from Bibaswan Ghoshal

E-Portfolio Week

"Electronic Portfolios (e-Portfolios) are dynamic, developmental spaces representing your professional "self" on the Web. They are becoming standard practice for academics, students, and professionals and typically include examples of skills and achievements, as well as a reflective blog element. "

A reminder to all that the week AFTER Reading Week is our E-Portfolio week. This is your opportunity to add some of those important elements (think Twitter feed) and work on your reflective and own choice blog posts.

Here is the link to the e-portfolio rubric: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1agxOkoNAUgpS8ZWVxe5VuoXbEEFpyMULe3K4oMG1pA0/edit

And here is the e-portfolio assignment: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QuA2S2tuOMJT_KZVtGFwbpnT5xMHZAtjzb-LT2U7J3c/edit?authkey=CMX7040E

A reminder that certain posts for the e-portfolio have different requirements such as the Facebook Page you already created and the upcoming Wikipedia Stubb Assignment. All posts for the e-portofolio HOWEVER must include what is listed on the assignment sheet (image, internal, external links etc...)

As always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Here is a little video about e-portfolios from Penn State University. Although the video is geared to Penn State students, the narrator does show some important elements that we are including in our own e-portfolios:

Lecture 16: Folksonomy, Tagging and Data Visualisation

Lecture 16: Folksonomy and Tagging

View more presentations from Jessica Laccetti.

Great Talks: Nancy Duarte

Thanks to @JennWheeler27 for tweeting the link:

Wikipedia Improves Student Writing

I thought you #ALES204 students would be interested in this given our upcoming Wikipedia assignment:

Wikipedia improves students' work

Students become much more concerned with accuracy when their research is posted online

FREDERICTON, May 30 /CNW/ - A student writing an essay for their teacher may be tempted to plagiarize or leave facts unchecked. A new study shows that if you ask that same student to write something that will be posted on Wikipedia, he or she suddenly becomes determined to make the work as accurate as possible, and may actually do better research.

Brenna Gray, Image from Douglas College. 

Brenna Gray, an instructor at Douglas College in New Westminster, B.C., was presenting the results of the study at the 2011 Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.

She became interested in why students seem to adopt some technological innovations (Wikipedia, for example) and reject things their schools would like them to use, such as the student-teacher interface Blackboard. Gray says it's easy to criticize Wikipedia because of the unstructured way it is set up.

She says despite its faults, it does promote solid values for its writers, including precise citations, accurate research, editing and revision.

"Those ideals are the ones we espouse as English instructors," she said.

She decided to get first-year students in an English class to write short biographies of Canadian writers that would then be posted on Wikipedia.

What she found was that the moment the students realized their work was going public in a forum over which they had no control, they took the work a lot more seriously. They became concerned, for example, with the accuracy of facts.

Gray says it's not only the fact that their work was going public that stimulated the students, it was the realization that in producing the Wikipedia entries they were acquiring skills that were transferable to other parts of their lives.

Lecture 15: CV Writing

In today's lecture we will look at the main elements of an academic CV, some examples and think about what kinds of jobs you might apply for in the near future. This will help you all with this week's lab practise - creating your academic CV.

Lecture 15 2012 cv building

View more presentations from Jessica Laccetti.

Survey Responses from Lecture 12

Remember that survey I asked you to complete during Lecture 12 - about your favourite fonts etc...? Well, 108 of you responded to it - that's almost all of you. A big thank you to those of you who participated - excellent and keep up the good work.

I have created a spreadsheet with all the responses. It is quite interesting! Many of you like Times New Roman. Have a look here at the results.

Lecture 14: Peer Review

Today's lecture is brought to you by the letters ALES and by Pamela! She will be guest lecturing on the very important subject of peer-review (which we've already been talking about).

Please remember to send me (@JessL) three critically literate tweets - you want to show me how you're engaging with Pamela's lecture content.

Lecture 14 peer review

View more presentations from Jessica Laccetti.

Lecture 13: Engaging Presentations

Today we have a guest lecture from MC. She'll be showing us how to craft an engaging and professional-looking powerpoint. No "death by powerpoint" here!

Please remember to send @JessL at least three tweets (that demonstrate your critical thinking/engagement with the lecture content) related to MC's talk.

Lecture 13: Effective Presentations - Guest Lecture by Marie-Claude

View more presentations from Jessica Laccetti.

Art, Design & Science?

Conference: Human Ecology Students

              The Fashion Culture Network presents:

Read more here.

Lecture 12: Academic Posters

During the lecture, I will ask that you complete the following survey:

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Here is a funny video about some mistakes to avoid. In class we'll watch the first minute but if you carry on watching you'll hear some tips on making powerful poster presentations:

 


Watch the following video if you'd like step-by-step instructions on how to create a well laid-out poster:


 


Here is a google doc version of today's lecture. I'm afraid I have too many images so I couldn't upload it exactly as I showed it in class. As always, let me know if you have any questions:

 

Lecture 11: Public Speaking Guest Lecture from Marie-Claude

Today we had the pleasure of a lecture from MC which included some hilarious and very descriptive (!) photos of dogs!

Here is MC's powerpoint.

Thanks to all of you who tweeted to show your engagement with MC's presentation (even those tweets that arrived after the lecture - you're still engaging with the content).

Lecture 11: Public Speaking - Guest Lecture by marie-claude

View more presentations from Jessica Laccetti.

Labs: Module 5

As you know from the syllabus, you have an assignment next week in labs:

Lab session during Module 5, Week of February 6th Poster Presentation.  An impromptu group presentation of a poster will take place in a lab during the week of Module 5, and will be assessed by the TA. (10%)

In order to enable you to use your time most effectively, I suggest that you come to your lab having read one of the following articles. That way, you will be able to spend your time only on the creation and then presentation of your poster.

Regarding the poster format, you can use any computer programme you prefer but previous students noted PowerPoint as easy to use.

Please see here for more information about the assignment and the rubric.


Note: We have tried to choose articles that will be of interest to all disciplines in our ALES204 class.


List of Articles:

(For CSL Students) Points of light: The State of the Alberta Non Profit Sector.

Pollination services in the UK: How important are honeybees? T.D. Breezea,∗, A.P. Baileyb, K.G. Balcombec, S.G. Pottsa,   Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 142 (2011) 137–143
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/agee, 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2011.03.020

Sex at sea: alternative mating system in an extremely polygynous mammal P. J. N. de Bruyn a, *, C. A. Tosh a, M. N. Bester a, E. Z. Cameron a, b, T. McIntyre a, I. S. Wilkinson c,1, Animal Behaviour 82 (2011) 445e451
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/anbehav, he Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.06.006 

Separating the effect of crop from herbicide on soil microbial communities in glyphosate-resistant corn,  Miranda M. Harta,􏰀, Jeff R. Powellf, Robert H. Guldene, Kari E. Dunfieldd, K. Peter Paulsb, Clarence J. Swantonb, John N. Klironomosa,
Pedro M. Antunesf, Alexander M. Kocha, Jack T. Trevorsc, Pedobiologia 52 (2009) 253—262
www.elsevier.de/pedobi, doi:10.1016/j.pedobi.2008.10.005

Title:	Every Child Matters: discourses of challenging behaviour.
Authors:	Wright, Anne-Marie1 a.wright@chester.ac.uk
Source:	Pastoral Care in Education; Dec2009, Vol. 27 Issue 4, p279-290, 12p

• Jiyun Kang and
 
• Haesun Park-Poaps

Motivational Antecedents of Social Shopping for Fashion and its Contribution to Shopping SatisfactionClothing and Textiles Research Journal October 2011 29: 331-347, first published on October 11, 2011 doi:10.1177/0887302X11422443

• Abstract
 
• Full Text (PDF)
 
• References

The Association between Perceived Sweetness Intensity and Dietary Intake in Young Adults

1. Sara Cicerale, 
2. Lynnette J. Riddell, 
3. Russell S.J. Keast

Article first published online: 2 DEC 2011

DOI: 10.1111/j.1750-3841.2011.02473.x

© 2011 Institute of Food Technologists^®

Issue

Journal of Food Science

Volume 77, Issue 1, pages H31–H35, January 2012

Nutrition & Food Science Students: Professorial Lecture

Providing Enough Food for All: An African Perspective (TODAY)

Prof. Judi Wakhungu, Executive Director of African Centre for Technology Studies
12:30 PM - 1:50 PM
Dentistry / Pharmacy Centre 1030

We are producing more food than ever before, yet almost a billion people in the world are hungry. Though greater productivity and economic returns on agriculture have immediate effects on hunger and poverty, the depletion of natural resources and declining soil fertility threaten these benefits. Holistic progress requires a strong understanding of diverse farming methods and a range of options for small-scale farmers rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. In Africa, women grow 80 percent of the food, but are marginalized in formal agricultural knowledge and science. How can these issues be addressed by leveraging the diverse experiences of the poor?

Prof. Judi Wakhungu
Executive Director of the African Centre for Technology Studies in Nairobi, an independent, inter-governmental science, technology, and environmental policy think tank that generates and disseminates knowledge through policy analysis and capacity building. Prof. Wakhungu serves on several national and international boards, task forces, and committees, including the African Conservation Centre, the GoDown Arts Centre, the Legatum Centre at M.I.T, amongst several others.

Lecture 10: Public Speaking Continued

After our last class I have seen an improvement in your tweets, comments and e-mails. Good work everyone - you're showing how you engage with class content (lectures and readings) and analyse your opinions.

Also, a few students have shared some interesting class-related pecha kucha's and speeches. I encourage you to let me know of any interesting conferences, talks, papers, presentations, books, etc... and I will post them here on the blog for all of us to read.

One example is from @AlanaSoderberg who tweeted about a speech on sustainability in the textile industry. Here is the Danish Minister of the Environment:





Also, Courtney Milford (@CourtMilford), [who you'll remember from Monday's class (she gave us a demo of her public speaking skills!) - arg! wrong! It was Chelsea Livingstone @raydeeoh_who gave us a great example of public speaking - apologies Chelsea and thanks again!] shared this link of a pecha kucha about the importance of signs. Something we'll be talking about in today's lecture (signposting in presentations):

ALES204 2012: Public Speaking Continued

View more presentations from Jessica Laccetti.