DiRT: Digital Research Tools
Today, I showed my students a GREAT wiki created on a the free pbwiki platform called DiRT: Digital Research Tools Wiki.
This wiki is EXCELLENT, and of course, since it’s a wiki, you can also sign up and contribute. The types of tools are listed by what the user might want to do. For instance, you might wat to “analyze statistics” or “blog” or “brainstorm.” From those needs arises a number of great tools to choose from. For instance, if you click “Create a mashup” you get these tools:
Tools:
- Google Mashup Editor (in beta; limited access)
- Microsoft Popfly
- Mozilla Ubiquity: ”a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.” Currently requires some programming knowledge. (in beta; free; cross-platform)
- SEASR – tools & frameworks for sharing data and research (including mashups) in virtual work environments
- Yahoo Pipes
Resources
- Brian Lamb, “Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix,” Educause Review, vol. 42, no. 4 (July/August 2007): 12–25
- Mashup Awards
- Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (Google Books), Franco Moretti. Published 2005.
- Programmable Web
I’m having my students investigate at least 10 digital tools from this resource that they might use in their content area (these are pre-service teachers). Then, they are putting these resources in a database that’s super-duper easy to use with Google Sites, the “list” format. (But that’s a discussion for another post.) They also need to provide information and critique the tools they’ve selected. The DiRT site lists some very helpful criteria to consider when investigating and deciding whether or not to use a certain digital tool:
- Determine your needs. What do you need the software to do? Why? What desired features are most important?
- Features: Does the tool do what you need it to do? How well? What does it not do? How important is that?
- Performance: Is the software buggy? Sluggish? Does it make you more or less efficient?
- Cost: How much does the tool cost? Are there ongoing maintenance fees? Is it worth it? How is it priced in comparison to its competitors?
- Support: How good is the user support? Are there active user forums? Are training materials available?
- User community: Have a lot of people adopted the tool? How enthusiastic are they? What do reviewers say about the tool?
- Sustainability: Web 2.0 tools come and go. The developers could end support, or change their business model and splash ads for diet pills all over your pages hosted on their site. Is there reason to believe that this tool will be around for a while–for instance, is it associated with a healthy company or research group? Have a lot of folks adopted the tool?
- Export/import: Can you easily get data into and out of the tool in standard formats such as plain text and XML? If the tool is no longer supported by its developer, will you be stuck?
Barbara Schroeder
