#research

Although this assignment was officially supposed to be about evaluating one reference material in our collection, and then suggesting how we could upgrade that resource, with our instructor’s support I have shifted my lens slightly. Instead, I will evaluate two digital reference encyclopedias that we have access to in the division in which I am employed; Encyclopedia Britannica School (EB) and World Book Online (WBO).  

The division in which I work currently subscribes to two online reference encyclopedias that have completely replaced the gargantuan print copies that were weeded from our collection several years ago. Approximately 5 years ago (just at the beginning of my time in the library) the division moved from World Book Online to EB School as a way to reduce costs. We regained our World Book subscription recently, as part of a move to improve digital collections for online learning. Because we only recently obtained it, I am unfamiliar with World Book’s digital format.  

The goal for what follows is not so much for me to promote one over the other, but rather to identify the unique benefits of both so that they can be communicate with the teachers in my division, and effectively used by both staff and students. For those with more limited budgets who stumble across my blog, this could also be used to determine which of the two is a better fit for your program. 

My evaluation of each will be informed by a rubric that has been inspired by Riedling and Houston’s evaluation and selection criteria for Encyclopedias. They suggest the following seven criteria: 

• Accuracy – is the material correct and well-reviewed?
• Authority – who wrote the articles within the encyclopedias and what is their reputation (both publisher and author)?
• Currency – how up to date is it?
• Format – how is it designed?
• Indexing – how do you find information
• Objectivity – is the material biased, what is emphasized, excluded or not?
• Scope – is it appropriate for its intended audience? (Riedling & Houston, 2019 pp. 66-67)

In my rubric below, you will see that I have subsumed the indexing criteria into a new criterion that I have called Features, a section that highlights many of the parts of digital encyclopedias that would be impossible in their analog counterparts. You’ll notice that some criteria only have weak and strong ratings – for these areas I have thought of this rubric as more of a checklist where they either have them or they don’t.

At First Glance

Both EB and WBO contain access to articles at 3 levels of increasing complexity. In the EB ecosystem, this is called Elementary (1), Middle (2), and Secondary (3), while in WBO, it is Kids, Student, and Advanced. The EB main pages allow for searching any level directly from this page, while the WBO one does not.

Access to other features is also available from these main pages:

EB	WBO
ImageQuest (rights cleared search database)	Discover (marketed as differentiated content resource)
Enciclopedia Moderna (Spanish)	Timeline Builder
Encyclopaedia Universalis Junior (French)	Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos (Spanish)
Encyclopaedia Universalis (French)	L’Encyclopédie Découverte (French)

Cost

There is a significant cost differential between the two online subscriptions. Our division, which has a student population of around 15000 students, and pays a per student cost for both subscriptions.

Encylopedia Britannica School has a total cost of $7 012 (an approximate cost of $0.47 per student).

World Book Online has a total cost of $15 834 (an approximate cost of $1.06 per student) (M. Carlos, personal communication, February 7, 2022)

The Analysis

On each picture below, slide the bar up and down to see how EB School (blue) and World Book Online (green) were rated on each criterion.

Accuracy and Reputation

Both of these online encyclopedias have long histories and positive reputations. Britannica’s reputation leans a bit more scholarly than the World Book (Grossman, 2017), but its school version does not outwardly appear to be that way. This one is a coin toss.

Authority

In terms of authority once again, there seems to be little significant difference. Both give author/contributor information for articles written at the most advanced levels, but do not at the Elementary/Kids ones. EB provides slightly more bio materials on the contributors, while WBO does it more consistently at the Middle/Student level. They are both homes to well-respected editorial staff.

Currency

While all of the article citations I checked in WBO are listed as being from the year 2022, it is highly unlikely that they have updated their entire encyclopedia (or at least the 11 random curricular and student interest topics that I used for analyzing) in the one and a half months that have passed so far this year. All EB school entries that I checked, however, were marked with the date that the article was last updated. This is a layer of transparency that is necessary in a quickly changing world.

Format

Here Encyclopedia Britannica School gets the edge. Access to ImageQuest significantly improves media access compared World Book. Interestingly, while both have hyperlinks at the upper two levels of complexity, only EB does so at the lowest one. Perhaps this is meant as a way to reduce distractions, or as a way to ensure that the built in dictionary works on all words.

EB School also makes it significantly easier to level up and down through article complexities, which you can view in the video below.

Objectivity

Both of these encyclopedias have significant reputations, and I really debated how to rate World Book in this manner, but I took into consideration Riedling and Harlow’s recommendation to look into coverage of controversial topics (2019, p. 23). To test this, I searched for abortion, transgender, and capital punishment in both, and received the following results:

Topic	EB	WBO
abortion	* no article at Elementary level, balanced articles at Middle/High	* no article at Kids level, balanced articles at Student and Advanced levels
transgender	* articles at all levels	* no article at Kids level, the same article at both Student and Advanced
capital punishment	* articles at all levels	* no article at Kids level, balanced articles at Student and Advanced levels

Interestingly, searching for abortion in World Book Online Kids does pull up results, but only to politicians and political parties that strongly oppose it. Also, EB School has an entry for World Book, but the reverse is not true (Encyclopedia Britannica School, 2016).

Scope

The biggest downside to both encyclopedias is that for a Grade 5-9 school, many of the articles contained within both are written at a level far outside of the independent range of younger learners. To test this, I copied and pasted encyclopedia articles out of both, and obtained readability statistics from Microsoft Word. Most materials, even from Elementary (EB) and Kids (WBO) levels were written at a Grade 8 or higher level.

Limited materials can be found on topics like Minecraft, Roblox, or k-pop artists BTS. This is not unusual for academic resources, but it is an area that could be expanded on to improve student engagement.

Features

In terms of features, World Book takes a slight edge, although it should be noted that some of them look at bit dated (like its world atlas). Teacher training is also a strength, with a much more utilitarian and useful support page – that includes videos and sign-ups for online seminars. Both offer translation features, but WB stands out as having more translations that are not reliant on computer translation programs, and the ability to have articles read aloud in languages other than English, Spanish, and French. The citation builder available in World Book is another feature that EB does not have (it only provides citations for the articles and materials found within it), but it isn’t especially user friendly or utilitarian, especially when compared to free online options like mybib.

Reflection

Both of these sources are highly reputable and well respected sources of encyclopedic information. I am thankful that our students have access to both, as between the two we have significant coverage of both curricular and student interest topics, although there is room for improvement in both. EB’s ease of use and the simplicity of jumping between entry complexities, and World Book’s Translations and Voice features and advanced search functions are strengths of both that are all helpful for student differentiation and lacking in the other. While the articles themselves are quite balanced and bias free, I do worry about the search bias, and bias of omission that is shown in World Book results. Ultimately, it seems to me that Encyclopedia Britannica School comes out as a significantly better value for money, especially in a elementary or middle school where some of the pricey features that differentiate between the two are less useful.

References

Carlos, M. (2022, February 7). Question for assignment! [Email to Morgan Arksey].

Encyclopedia Britannica School. (2016, January 26). World Book Encyclopedia. School.eb.com. https://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/World-Book-Encyclopedia/77483

Grossman, R. (2017, December 7). Long before Google, there was the encyclopedia. Chicago Tribune. https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-flash-encyclopedia-world-book-britannica-1210-20171205-story.html

Riedling, A. M., & Houston, C. (2019). Reference skills for the school librarian : tools and tips. Libraries Unlimited.

World Book Online training. (n.d.). World Book Online. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.worldbookonline.com/training/

This week I was working with a class of Grade 7 students on a writing project. Like many teachers, I’ve always struggled with the fact that middle schoolers often join us with a pretty set view of themselves as writers. And for the most part – it isn’t such a great one. As I struggled for the hook to catch them, and hopefully help them take more risks with their work, I remembered a video that condensed the history of the planet Earth into 24 hours. In that video, we learn that in that super shrunk day, humans have only been around for one minute and 17 seconds.

Which got me to thinking: if the history of just homo sapiens was miniaturized into 24 hours, how long have we been able to read and write? While it seems like such a long time to us, we are (from an evolutionary perspective) only wee infants. So, I crunched some numbers and if we use pre-cuneiform writing of Sumerians (3400 BCE at its earliest estimated date) as the first instance of writing, humanity has only been able to read for 39 minutes! And even then, it was a very niche skillset. In fact, over half of the world’s population has only been considered literate since the 1950s, or for 30 seconds of those 24 hours.

I hope that my speech connected with some students, and helped them realize that their reading and writing skills are truly miraculous. I did heavily emphasize that the newness of these skills doesn’t in any way excuse you from working towards improving them – just that you can be a little bit kinder to yourself when things aren’t that easy.

But it also got me to thinking about how young our model of education is in terms of humanity. And how did we teach each other before reading and writing made this model possible? Through experience and story, which I hope is a thread that can be carried on as we move education towards its future.

The Assignment

After much of brainstorming, detailed in my last post here, I loosely nailed down my interest in doing some reading and research on digital storytelling, storytelling tools, multimodal forms and cognitive load management. I think that these terms could be combined into projects and activities that I could run in any classroom and/or course at my school. I’m especially drawn to the idea of digital storytelling, because I think it is just as possible to tell a story through coding, or podcasting, as it is through video applications, and that stories exist in ELA and Social Studies just as much as they do in Woods, Math and PE. There’s just something about the ways that stories bring us together that I’m drawn to – and I think it allows many ways for me to incorporate various technologies and applications. 

I decided to start with a search through academic journals and papers, and stumbled upon the following articles: 

What is Digital Storytelling?

1) “Digital Storytelling in Language Education”, by Hamzeh Moradi and Hefang Chen. Published December 9, 2019 in Behavioral Sciences 

This 10-page paper, written by university professors in Guangzhou, China gives the best academic overview of Digital Storytelling that I can find on the topic. With 37 referenced sources, which also provide some useful jumping off points of their own, this paper seeks to review the use and implementation of digital storytelling in education. It gives a basic definition, sets out the benefits, explains the stages, sets out the elements of effective examples, describes the steps for creating, and discusses the opportunities for enhancement of achievement in using DST in education. I think the article provides a good foundation of knowledge on the what and why, but it still left me wishing for more of the how and with what. So, onward I must go on my search. 

Why should I use DST?

2) “The effects of digital storytelling on student achievement, social presence, and attitude in online collaborative learning environments”, by Chang Woo Nam. Published January 2016 in Interactive Learning Environments 

This 17-page paper written by an education professor at Dong-A University in Busan, South Korea caught my eye because one of the conclusions from the previous article was about the lack of research into the effectiveness of the format. This research, although small in study size, followed two groups of middle school students taking a chemistry course. They were split into two groups; both being taught by the same instructor. The first group took part in an online collaborative digital storytelling unit of study, while the second was focused on conventional online collaborative learning. At the end of the study, students self-reported on a survey that was used to determine three factors potentially influenced by their modes of study: their achievement, social presence, and student attitudes. While showing no significant differences in terms of achievement and student attitudes, there was a significant difference in terms of social presence. The author noted significant evidence for improved interactivity, online communication and privacy. The author does note that other studies have shown impact on achievement and attitudes with DST. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see studies and statistics that imply that DST will help students move towards achieving so many aspects of NCTEs ‘Definition of Literacy in a Digital Age’. And doubtlessly, although there is no way to quantify it, the project allows students to meet these literacy goals in many other ways. 

With what do I make DSTs?

3) “30 Sites and Apps for Digital Storytelling”, by David Kaupler. Published October 2018 in Tech & Learning 

After reading and annotating my way through several longer academic articles and spending some time testing the waters of YouTube, this brief one-pager was truly a sight for sore eyes. As its title clearly sets out, this is more of a list of useful websites and tools for use in digital storytelling projects. Listed options include photo narration apps, comic creation tools, sock puppets, storyboarding support, animated film apps, and script writing tools. I really enjoyed how the list was hyperlinked. I’m sure that there are more tools out there since this was released onto the world a year and a bit ago, but most seem to be established programs/apps and none that I can see are out of business. There’s a good mix of free and paid tools as well. It will give me some good jumping off points for formats and applications to test drive with students. 

What can DST projects look like?

4) Twitter hashtag searches for #digitalstorytelling, by all those who Tweet. Published all the time on the internet 

I’ve been making a concerted effort to dig my way into educational Twitter since the course began (and I finally reset my lost Twitter password). I’ve decided that I particularly like being able to scan through and see recent posts. By searching the #digitalstorytelling hashtag I have been able to find some prominent Tweeters in the digital storytelling movement, as well as find finished examples that students have put out to the world. These projects are great to have in the toolkit to show students as they begin to brainstorm and make their own creations to tell their own stories.  The two tweets below give me examples of projects, as well as handy tips for troubleshooting during their creation.

Our school partner @AlbaresColegio created this video to document their #socialinnovation project.
With limited technical resources, students, staff and parents worked collectively, using #digitalstorytelling to spread the word about their project.#nemesischangemakers pic.twitter.com/v2DVxaKGof

— NEMESIS – Social Innovation Education (@nemesis_edu) January 16, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

#digitalstorytelling tip!! If you’re ever stuck for a quiet space to record audio you can always try the chair and duvet/blanket technique! It works! Honest!! #whodhavethought pic.twitter.com/xhjHHM9dK7

— Curiosity Creative (@Cur_Creative) January 17, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

How do I teach people to digital storytell?

5)“Digital storytelling in the classroom: how to tell students to tell a story” by Alexios Brailas. Published January 2017 in International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies 

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After the rest of my digging around I had lots of ideas, but I was still at a loss for how to frame the process with students; and a handy Google search for “Digital + storytelling + classroom + outline” got me where I needed to go. The author shared many of my concerns and issues – many of the apps and technology required subscriptions that can be cost prohibitive, or required more time than would be available with a class. Thus, he settled on using Scratch and StoryboardThat as DST tools. While I would not probably set up assignments like these ones, I found it useful to gain insight into the thought process and steps that a teacher took while planning and engaging their students in DST work. 

Bonus – How do I make one?

6) “Powerful Tools for Teaching and Learning: Digital Storytelling” a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Coursera.org from the University of Houston. 

I think I feel pretty okay with the idea of story-boarding and curating video, images and audio – but if I did not, I think that this would be an interesting use of my time in preparation (in practice I tend to be more of a try things out and troubleshoot as I go with students person, but for those who are not that type, this might be for them). I had heard the term MOOC in passing before, but it stuck out to me in Why School (Loc 118), and then while stumbling around on the internet here was another one directly connected to the topic I am interested in. The internet really does have everything. Maybe this is a task for my spring break? 

I still need materials regarding skills for Cognitive Load Management, but ultimately, I feel like this list is a good start on my interests. 

Until next week! 

Sources

Brailas, A. (2017). Digital storytelling in the classroom: How to tell students to tell a story. International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies, 1(1), 1. doi: 10.1504/ijtcs.2017.10003059

Kaupler, D. (2018). 30 Sites and Apps for Digital Storytelling. Tech & Learning, 39(3), 8. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=132130210&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Moradi, H., & Chen, H. (2019). Digital Storytelling in Language Education. Behavioral Sciences (2076-328X), 9(12), 147. https://doi-org.wpl-dbs.winnipeg.ca/10.3390/bs9120147

Nam, C. W. (2017). The effects of digital storytelling on student achievement, social presence, and attitude in online collaborative learning environments. Interactive Learning Environments, 25(3), 412–427. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/10.1080/10494820.2015.1135173

NCTE. (2019, November 7). Definition of Literacy in a Digital Age. Retrieved from https://ncte.org/statement/nctes-definition-literacy-digital-age/

Richardson, W. (2012). Why school: how education must change when learning and information are everywhere. New York, NY: TED Conferences.

Cover Image Source

Zuni rock art that depict the celebration of corn planting and corn harvesting and how important the sun was to Zuni survival. [Photograph]. Retrieved from Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest.
https://quest.eb.com/search/110_364871/1/110_364871/cite