Making Citations Cool

Building citations is like long division, a great process to know, but one to be avoided if at all possible. I’m sorry if this offends the MLA or the APA, but these two organizations seem to be in an arms race for making citations as confusing as possible. Oh, the APA introduced a new element to their citation style? Fear not, the MLA will introduce 274 new punctuation marks next week! While I would certainly encourage students to use the citation assistance technology of their choice, I know that it is also beneficial for them to have a basic understanding of what they are constructing and why. This isn’t some weird form of humor cooked up by MLA members with nothing better to do…at least not in its entirety. Citations do serve a very useful purpose, but in this digitally connected world we can reduce citations to a globally unique identifier like an ISBN with a link to our meta catalog of choice for additional details.

That said, let me set the scene for my recent MLA citation lesson. 12th grade English class (after Winter break, mind you), tracked classes with this being the least accelerated group, last period of the day. Let me pause here while the secondary librarians reading this shudder – go to your happy place! But not to worry, this isn’t meant to be a scary story. The lesson was incredible. Direct quote from one of the students: “Well s**t, why didn’t anybody ever explain it like this before?” In other words, they got it. They loved it. They lived for MLA style citations! The secret? An incredibly engaging lesson envisioned by a master teacher-librarian that used an interactive whiteboard as a tool to facilitate learning.

Along with a standard MLA citation sheet, the students were provided with a whole group practice session. The amazing bit about using the interactive whiteboard as that I found all of the students were fully engaged in what was happening. Just an informal observation, but it certainly seemed like the students who weren’t up at the board were much more attentive. Sure, this could have been done on paper or with sentence strips, but the technology of the digital board enhances the learning by facilitating the back-end work. Students could simply walk up to the board and drag citation elements from a bank into a citation formation section on the screen. A punctuation bank provided any necessary marks.

Teacher-librarian Maryalice Kilbourne from Avoca Central School has been an incredible cooperating librarian for my practicum experience. She is providing excellent examples of library instruction that uses technology to create more powerful learning experiences. I am hoping that we will be able to collaborate on an article to share more of her interactive whiteboard ideas, but this was just too cool not to share!

Screenshots and the Smart Notebook file to follow soon…

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