Free and Easy: A Rubric for Evaluating Everyday Technology

Free and Easy: A Rubric for Evaluating Everyday Technology

Before a recent school year, one of my oldest friends—who now teaches special education courses at a middle school outside of Detroit—shared his excitement of being granted a SMART Board interactive whiteboard in his classroom. The SMART board allows users to write in “digital ink,” mark-up electronic texts (such as Word documents and websites), and save the results for future reference or sharing. The company who produces the boards boasts claims of students’ increased engagement and motivation as a result of using the product ("SMART Technologies"), which undoubtedly translates into why educators like my friend and his school district were so enthusiastic to incorporate them into their classrooms.

 Though my friend had every reason to be excited (he’s an excellent teacher in one of the most underappreciated divisions of education) his news was barely off his lips before I began my protestation against SMART Boards. I provided every counter-argument I could imagine: SMART Boards cost more money than most school districts are willing to spend. They can be a teacher-driven technology, often too protected to be widely used by students in a consistently democratic fashion. They, like most new technology, may cause immediate excitement, but once the novelty wears off they’re likely to be used as glorified dry erase boards. As I continued, though, I realized the futility of my arguments; I realized, in fact, that I didn’t have any legitimate reason to offer why this technology couldn’t be used smartly and effectively in the classroom. Of course, there has been considerable research and discussion into the value (or not) of these boards (such as Stephanie McCrummen’s piece in a 2010 Washington Post article), but my kneejerk reaction came from one small detail my fellow teacher mentioned that is likely repeated dozens—if not hundreds—of times in writing classrooms across the country each year: through no fault of his own, he had no idea how he was going to use the technology to enhance his classroom. This small detail, it turns out, is not so small.

Eli Review's Lessons for Students on Feedback and Revision

Eli Review's Lessons for Students on Feedback and Revision

When Shift Happens: Teaching Adaptive, Reflective, and Confident Writers

When Shift Happens: Teaching Adaptive, Reflective, and Confident Writers

Did You Know? Shift Happens, 2014 remix

Summary or Paraphrase

Date:    Wed, 12 Aug 2015 18:05:41 +0000
From:    "Nelms, Jerry" <jerry.nelms@WRIGHT.EDU>
Subject: Summary or Paraphrase or something else?

Ran across a short description of the difference between summary and paraphrase that, once again, got me worrying over how to define these two actions in a way that is clear. The description is by John Manshire and can be found at Synonym.com, http://classroom.synonym.com/difference-between-paraphrase-summary-4704.html.<http://classroom.synonym.com/difference-between-paraphrase-summary-4704.html>

Manshire defines summary as "the process of providing an abridged version of an argument, narrative, or concept.  When one summarizes a text or other medium, the objective is to condense the whole of the text's content into a space that is more quickly digested while still presenting the object's central ideas or concepts in a clear and effective fashion." In short, it functions to condense/digest a "text" into its central ideas/concepts. But that begs the question, what ideas/concepts are "central." To me, the purpose of the text and the information/evidence used to support that purpose are central, but I'm not sure I've ever seen a definition that states that.

Manshire defines paraphrase as "recounting a source's primary material in words that are different than the original. It is essential, in paraphrasing," he continues, "to still communicate the central idea of the words, passage or text in question." For me, that definition just confuses matters. After all, summary, too, should be (would have to be) in words different from the original and also should communicate the central idea of the "text."

But Manshire does try to clarify the distinction:  While paraphrasing and summarizing are very similar actions, consisting of similar processes, they differ, he contends, in "their objectives." A summary, he says, is intended to be "a shorter form" of the the source material.  "Paraphrasing," he claims, "is not centrally concerned with length." This, by the way, contradicts what I learned paraphrasing to be. I was told a paraphrase should be about the same length as the original and should include all the major ideas/information in the original--a definition, by the way, that never made any operational sense to me. Under what conditions would I ever write such a paraphrase?  Manshire goes on to say that "paraphrasing is concerned primarily with the restatement of source material in a form that is different than the original." But so is summary, isn't it?

Reading Manshire's short description got me wondering if there is any real--that is, actually operational / functional--distinction between paraphrasing and summarizing.

I tend to fall back on Rick Wormeli's combination of the two in Summarization in Any Subject: 50 Techniques to Improve Student Learning (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005).  Summarization, he states, involves "restating the essence of a text or an experience in as few words as possible or in a new, yet efficient manner" (p. 2). Of course, this definition begs the question of what "the essence of a text or an experience" consists of," but I do like the allowance that length might not matter, if the summarization is "efficient." I think Wormeli captures what he means by "efficient" when he writes that summarizing is the ability "to read or perceive something [and] then make sense of it by manipulating the information, regrouping it, and applying it to a new situation" (pp. 5-6).

I assign students to write summaries and responses a lot--and I mean a lot.  As Wormeli says, summarizing is considered one of the most highly valued skills in today's workplace (p. 5)--and in the academy, too, I would add. So, being able to clearly define summary--and define it in a way that will transfer to other academic and professional writing situations--is really important to me. But I keep stumbling into a dilemma. I end up wanting my students to produce something in-between paraphrase and summary. I want them to articulate the purpose of the "text" they are summarizing / paraphrasing and to "outline" / "list" / identify the support the author of the "text" provides--and I don't want them to care about the length. I want them to care about producing a clear description of the purpose and support / most important information and ideas of the source. I've toyed with the idea of using "synopsis" instead of summary or paraphrase, but that label comes with some problematic connotations these days (i.e., brevity and associations with narrative plot).

I wonder if others of you grapple with this distinction--or, should I say, lack of clear distinction. Is there a really good description of the distinction between summary and paraphrase? Or is there a better label that captures that in-between form that has nothing to do with length and everything to do with capturing content?

Jerry

Gerald Nelms
Academic Director of Developmental Writing
Wright State University


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Date:    Wed, 12 Aug 2015 18:20:21 +0000
From:    "Seifert, Eileen" <ESEIFERT@DEPAUL.EDU>
Subject: Re: Summary or Paraphrase or something else?

The distinction that makes sense to my students has to do with the purpose of summaries and paraphrases. Summaries provide major ideas in condensed form; paraphrases restate the original in language that may be more approachable or comprehensible to a given audience or more suitable to the context in which the paraphrase appears. I don't think any definition can settle what ideas are central. So often that judgment depends on the needs and point of view of the writer and audience.

Eileen B. Seifert
Associate Director of First Year Writing
Department of Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse
DePaul University

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Date:    Wed, 12 Aug 2015 14:38:05 -0400
From:    UGAWritingCenter Park Hall <ugawritingcenter@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Summary or Paraphrase or something else?

Hmm... the way I've always understood the difference dealt more with
context. A summary is a summation of an idea or set of ideas. If I were
explaining Butler's idea of gender performativity to someone who was
clueless about it, I would summarize the concept by condensing the entire
belief into digestible points.

However, let's say I wanted to emphasize a key idea from Butler in that
gender is the sytlized repetition of acts, a paraphrase would be concerned
with illustrating that sentence with a mind for maintaining specific
choices the original author had. Basically, that sentence becomes the focus
of a reconstruction.

Essentially, we don't ask people to paraphrase movies or books for a reason
whereas we do asks for summaries of them. Summary is for condensing, often
of longer work, and paraphrasing is a reframing of a short piece. Hope that
makes sense.

Warmly,
Robby Nadler
Associate Director of First-Year Composition
University of Georgia

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Date:    Wed, 12 Aug 2015 18:50:45 +0000
From:    "Maria L. Plochocki" <bastet801@ATT.NET>
Subject: Re: Summary or Paraphrase or something else?

I always explain the difference in terms of the length of the source text: you paraphrase a short passage, usually up to a paragraph, but you'd summarise something much longer, even an entire book. But I do find that students often have these confused initially (that is, when I ask, for ex., in the context of using sources appropriately, they seem to think of them in synonymous terms).

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Date:    Wed, 12 Aug 2015 14:39:30 -0500
From:    Galen Leonhardy <leonhardyg@ICLOUD.COM>
Subject: Re: Summary or Paraphrase or something else?

Humm... I was once asked to write a short book on summary writing for Jr. high school students. Figuring out how that might be done outlasted the offer, but, eventually, I did write something up for the students in my college classes.

In a nutshell...

Seems like a summary is a recounting of content.  Paraphrasing is a restating of content.  Both use reorganizing. The summary, however, is reliant on paraphrasing, reliant on the process of restating. The opposite does not seem to hold true.  That is paraphrasing is not reliant on having the skills to summarize. Is that overly simplified or incorrect?

Thinking of uses and teaching the skills...

Summary is used in daily conversation all the time.  Take the recounting of a movie, for example. And it is a process.

Summary can be a complicated theoretical topic, too. For example, the connective range (similarity and difference) between summarizing and narration is mushy (more mushy than, say, the contact area between summary and paraphrase). Morality is established in the narrative summary of daily events: "so and so did such and such," for example.  And summary writing can be explained as a variation of narrative strategy (beginning, middle, end--plot and theme).

Paraphrase and summary are always have an antecedent.  They are both reliant on their antecedent and, therefore, don't exist without the antecedent. I suppose we could debate if that is true for all of rhetoric. The requirement of an antecedent is certainly an obvious characteristic of both summary and paraphrase, just as it is for pronoun use.

Summary is a method of development, a topos of sorts. It is also a tool. That is, Summary can be an aspect of support, for example. Summary can be identified and culled. It is a structural pattern. And a process-oriented approach can be used to promote increased versatility with the construction and integration of the structure.

Topics associated with Summary I enjoy contemplating...

Metameaning expressed in summary is quite interesting.  So is looking at audience considerations (register and the dialectic between overtly opinionated and objective/factual/academic). Thinking about summary might point toward both cognitive condition/capability as well as cultural expectation. And, accordingly, maybe talking about what we don't summarize could tell us much about what we fear.

Teaching summary and paraphrasing is interesting to think about, too.  In terms of constructing a Bruner-ish scaffolding, paraphrase can begin with sentence combining and restating a sentence shared in a group. Summary can begin with the recounting of a movie plot and move to an NPR article.

Thank you for mentioning summary and paraphrase.  As always, I have thumb typed to much about the topic and revealed too much about my inability to spot errors on my cell phone screen as well as the limitations of my scholarship.  Still, it was a fun topic.

With respect,

Galen Leonhardy

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Date:    Wed, 12 Aug 2015 16:17:35 -0400
From:    Scott O'Callaghan <scottjocallaghan@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Summary or Paraphrase or something else?

Jerry (and the List)--

A former colleague of mine in History used to tell me that he expected
students to be able to describe an event or a historian's argument in a
sentence or a paragraph within a larger work or as a full essay, delving
into detail.  For this professor, the ability to zoom in or zoom out was
important to his concept of discussing history and was reflected in how he
assigned writing in History.  I would tell him that I could see much the
same thing happening in quotes and summaries: that one could take pieces to
quote, that one could summarize smaller chunks of argument or summarize
entire books or whatnot.

A summary provides a more focused version than the original.  This could be
seen as more 'purely' descriptive or representative or as more interpretive
and argumentative (even while some would argue whether there is a
distinction between those approaches).

The paraphrase, I tell students, takes a certain kind of passage and makes
it accessible to a more general audience.  Think when a teacher
"translates" a passage from Shakespeare or a poem, rendering the historic
and figurative language into something more direct and more
understandable.  Paraphrases seem important when you don't want to leave
details out: contracts or legal language, medical language (think the fine
print on the TV advertisements for any medication), historical language, or
sacred language.

To my mind, too, the paraphrase is a select subset of the summary, used for
certain types of texts with certain types of purposes in mind.  In the
wild, we need to paraphrase less frequently than we are called upon to
quote or summarize.

Paraphrases also allow us to reorder long and complicated passages,
especially when we want to highlight key ideas. When I teach this idea, I
often hand out the opening sentence of the Preamble of the Constitution and
ask students to 1) identify the number of key ideas contained there, 2)
move ideas around into a new sequence that makes more sense, and 3) find
new language that is more accessible, and 4) count up the number of words
in the new version.  Then, we can compare what folks did, allowing students
to argue for what they thought seemed important or what needed to be
stressed.  I point out that in the middle of that sentence, one could focus
on defense and peace just as one could focus on liberty and justice.  The
order of those ideas can be moved around in a paraphrase, depending on what
one wants to do with that passage.


I hope this is useful.

Scott O'Callaghan, PhD
Columbus State Community College

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Date:    Thu, 13 Aug 2015 18:29:55 +0000
From:    "Nelms, Jerry" <jerry.nelms@WRIGHT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Summary or Paraphrase or something else

Virginia,

I guess I'm wondering if all this energy that we as teachers expend distinguishing between summary and paraphrase and teaching the distinction between summary and paraphrase is unnecessary, wasted effort? After all, how many successful writers actually consciously question themselves as they are writing, "Should I summarize here or paraphrase?"

In a resource I've written for my students, I point out 3 common reasons for summarizing: (1) as a learning strategy, a way of deepening understanding of a source; (2) as a form of note-taking that, hopefully, will take the place of having to return to the text to recapture what the summarized text says; and (3) as a written assignment, addressing readers, in order to inform them of the purpose and main points of a source--and demonstrate to the teacher an understanding of that source. There are, of course, other reasons from summarizing, one of the most important being to provide annotations for sources in an annotated bibliography. I prefer to hold off on introducing that genre until that assignment is given. By then, students will have had plenty of practice summarizing and we can, then, talk about how to condense even more.

I also point out that for the 3 common reasons for summarizing, given above, do not really have any length requirements or audience expectations of length requirements--unless a teacher gives those requirements. The first two reasons are self-motivated, and there is no reason to make such requirements. And so, in fact, I write, "It's important to remember that simply being concise is not what's important! Being thorough in your selection of what to include in your summary IS what's important!" And of course, I go on to add that in addition to "selection," the other primary feature of a summary is the use of one's own words--although, even here, I introduce flexibility. It is, of course, absolutely okay to quote from the source, especially when introducing key concepts used in the source. But quoting entire sentences can be okay, especially if the sentences are particularly memorable and/or might be sentences that you will want to quote in your own writing.

So, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the distinction between summary and paraphrase is not well defined, even by experts, that the distinction is unnecessarily confusing, and that we teachers waste our time teaching the distinction. Better to just call it all "summary" or "summarization" or whatever and focus on how it functions for writers and the process of how to do it.

Jerry

Gerald Nelms
Academic Director of Developmental Writing
Wright State University

Transcribing!!!

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bell hooks' teaching trilogy

Teaching to Transgress
Teaching Community
Teaching Critical Thinking