Personal Branding for College Graduates

Personal branding - what a great concept to differentiate yourself from others in a competitive job market. Read this blog post to get some ideas of how to market yourself.

http://newgradlife.blogspot.com/2009/11/10-online-personal-branding-tips-for_24.html

High tech jobs still the best

Money magazine surveyed workers on their job satisfaction, salary and benefits, opportunity for growth, and flexible hours. Read this article to see what they found.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/2009/

Must Watch: Big Brother/Big Business

For those interested in issues of privacy and data security, you must see CNBC documentary "Big Brother/Big Business". My MIS students and I recently watched this together and discussed the various systems and their uses. And, of course, there were many concerns about the mis-use of this information. We all concluded that the technology is here now to bring Big Brother as predicted by George Orwell in 1984 to life.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232/?video=1193494033&play=1

Online Tools for Student Citations

Thank you to Dr. Robert Burkhardt, Director of Library Services, for this posting.

Online tools to help students get their citations in correct format:

FROM: http://instructify.com/2009/07/16/top-5-citation-applications/

Top 5 citation applications

July 16, 2009

BY BILL FERRIS
Back in my day we had to figure out arcane citation formats by poring through dusty old style manuals. This was during that awkward window after people started putting good information on the internet, but before the style manuals told you how to cite web documents.
Your students don’t know how lucky they are to have handy pieces of software to do this arduous work for them. Below is Instructify’s list of the five best bibliography and citation applications out there. Pass these on to your students and spare them the agony of building bibliographies the hard way.

1. BibMe: There can be only one number one, and BibMe is it. BibMe is the easiest citation app out there, incorporating many of the best features of its competitors. It lets you search by ISBN, title, or author. You can format your citation for books, journals, newspapers, periodicals, the web, whatever you need. It has an autofill function to save time. BibMe will format your bibliography for MLA, APA, Chicago or Turabian, then export it all to Microsoft Word for easy insertion into a research paper. If there’s a better bibliography application out there, it probably does your taxes or something, too.

http://www.bibme.org/

Free, includes advertising

2. Citation Machine: Though you can’t search by ISBN, that’s about the only thing Citation Machine doesn’t do. Just enter basic info like the title, author, publisher, type of work, all that stuff, and Citation Machine will give you your citation in whatever format you require. It’s simple, straightforward, free, and as a bonus, its name tells you exactly what it does (something that’s always worth a few points in my book).

http://citationmachine.net/

Free, includes advertising

3. EasyBib: EasyBib goes far beyond the usual assortment of sources. It lets you easily cite federal testimony, photographs, emails, patents, paintings, executive orders, and literally dozens more types of documents. Unless you’re trying to cite something scrawled on the back of a napkin at Chili’s, Easybib has you covered. It too lets you search by ISBN. EasyBib loses points, however, for only citing MLA format for free — if you’re writing in APA or Chicago style, you’ll have to pay up nine bucks per year, which isn’t a lot, but you can find other apps to cite those formats for free.

http://www.easybib.com/

Free, includes advertising (the site say no banners or advertising – but it DOES include ads on the opening webpage)

4. OttoBib: OttoBib is like Saran Wrap — its best feature is its worst. If you know a book’s ISBN number, that’s all you need for OttoBib to build a citation for you in the format you need. If you don’t, or if you’re citing something that’s not a book, you’ll need to find another application. However, OttoBib’s simplicity is useful enough for you and your students to bookmark come term-paper time.

http://www.ottobib.com/

Free – the opening webpage includes a link to another free site that requires registration- but no other advertising is on the opening page.)

5. Word 2007: Number five on our list really isn’t an application at all, as it’s part of Microsoft Word 2007. While not everybody has a copy of Word 2007, the folks that do don’t even have to leave their word processor to generate a professional-looking bibliography. If you don’t use Word, check out the next four apps.
POSTED TO THIS LIST BY SUE MEDINA, Network of Alabama Academic Libraries
Email: sue.medina@ache.alabama.gov

Net Gen Students and the Future of Learning

I just returned from a trip to Atlanta to attend the Southeastern Regional Educause Conference. Among the most fascinating topics explored was the workshop on "Building a Blueprint: Net Gen Students, Web 2.0, and the future of Learning" conducted by Carie Page, ELI Program Administrator.

Here are some of the fascinating topics with related links that were discussed:

1) Living and Learning with New Media

2) Students and Information Technology (Educause Center for Applied Research):

• more than 85% of undergraduates are logging onto social networking sites like Facebook.
• More than 83% are text messaging from their phones.
• more than 2/3 are downloading music and videos from the web with 77.3% creating and sharing web content
• Almost half are contributing to sites like Flickr and YouTube
• Approximately 38% are contributing to blogs and wikis
• Almost 1/3 are acessing web content from handheld devices like mobile phones with internet connectivity

3) Still hadn't caught the Twitter bug yet. Any suggestions on ways to incorporate it into higher education classroom?

4) Top 100 Tools for Learning, 2009

5) 7 THings you Should Know About

Jeremy Tuck, An Athens State Success Story

Just recently I ran into a former student, Jeremy Tuck, a graduate of Athens State's computer science program. It warms my heart to see how successful, both personally and professionally, students like Jeremy have become.

First, he was awarded the Outstanding CIS Student award from his Masters Degree program at Florida Institute of Technology. I feel proud that Jeremy has continued to meet with academic and professional success. See article to the left.

In addition, he volunteers his time to help students at Morris Elementary School with reading and other skills. Read about the program here: http://www.whoswhoinhuntsvilletechnology.com/wwhsvtechmag_issue9/wwhsvtechmag_stories_issue9.htm#Lockheed

Way to go, Jeremy! You are an inspiration to us all.

Wikipedia as Academic Source

Often times, I'm asked by students why they can't use Wikipedia as a source for information systems research for papers and project. Read this article for an understanding of why this isn't sound source of academic research information. The piece shows why we also should not rely on popular media for facts of any import.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30699302/

Thank you to Dr. David Nye, Professor of Human Resource Management for sharing this resource.

Wiki for Collaboration

On March 20, I had the opportunity to present a paper titled "Collaborate, Engage, and Interact in Online Learning: Successes at Athens State University" at the Instructional Technology Conference held at Middle Tennessee State University. The presentation received rave reviews and I am excited to share our paper, presentation, and resources with you

Colbert on Wikiality - Gotta See this One

Thanks to Dr. Robert Burkhardt, Director, Athens State University, for sharing this one.


Link for the Colbert Report on Wikiality :
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=72347