Random Plot Generator

Random Plot Generator: "Evil Overlord Plot Generator"

Spurl: What I Use for My Social Bookmarks

Social Bookmarking Tools (I): A General Review: "Spurl.net
Spurl.net (after 'SPecial URL') was authored by Hjalmar Gislason, and it is another example of an on-line bookmarking service and search engine. It currently has several thousands of active users. The first public version was released in February '04 by Spurl ehf., a company based in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Spurl.net, similarly to Furl, allows hosting of local copies of pages that have been bookmarked, the full text of which can then be searched. Spurl.net allows users to define their bookmarks as public (the default) or private, the latter being the most commonly selected setting. Spurl.net supports both multi-level categories, as well as user-assigned tags, and runs a special search engine Zniff that uses human information for ranking and indexing."

The 25 most difficult interview questions

The 25 most difficult questions: "1. Tell me about yourself.

Since this is often the opening question in an interview, be extracareful that you don't run off at the mouth. Keep your answer to a minute or two at most. Cover four topics: early years, education, work history, and recent career experience. Emphasize this last subject. Remember that this is likely to be a warm-up question. Don't waste your best points on it."

Creating Fearless Learner Requires Fearless Teachers

Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom :: ". And we're moving toward a time when collaboration will be central to our practice. All of this requires that we cede much of the control over learning to our students, that we act more as connectors to relevant information than distributors of it, that we model the effective consumption and creation of content, and that we focus on the basic skills and ideas of our disciplines in the context of a more individualized, inquiry based model that develops passionate, or as Alan calls them 'fearless' learners."

The Texas Lie

Schools Matter: The Miracle Inside the Miracle: "The Miracle Inside the Miracle

Before he was promoted to head the propaganda effort at the US DoE, Rod Paige was in charge of his own manufactured miracle in Houston, which was the centerpiece at the time of the larger Texas Miracle, the one that ended as the same lie, only on a grander scale. In Paige's pressure cooker that included draconian sanctions for failure (firing) and big bonuses for success (cash), school adminsitrators did what was necessary to deliver the numbers that Paige and Governor Bush demanded.

Unfortunately for the American people, that lie could not be exposed before it was used to set into motion the grandest demonstration of dimestore magic in American educational history, one that cnyically touts its commitment to children at the same time that it assures the failure of those children, that it then uses to demonstrate the need to replace their public schools with EMOs and their CEOs in that part of the corporate socialist establishment known as the education industry. "

Word of the Day

AskOxford: the free online dictionary resource from OUP: "asyndeton
audio pronunciation sndt()n
• noun (pl. asyndeta) [mass noun] the omission or absence of a conjunction between parts of a sentence, as in I came, I saw, I conquered."

Venn Diagram Generator

Venn Diagram

Response Planning Sheet

ht-planning.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Community College English: Outsourcing: A Spirited View , a Sunday Meander

Community College English: Outsourcing: A Spirited View , a Sunday Meander: "
But you know, what I also see is that if we are arguing about paper grading and are defining papers as the linear construct of the twentieth century and not the web-based dynamic creation that the new century brings, then maybe we should be asking 'What paper?'"

The Australian: Trainee teachers need remedial English classes [September 30, 2005]

The Australian: Trainee teachers need remedial English classes [September 30, 2005]: "Dr Rowe, a research director for the Australian Council for Educational Research, also warned that the health effects of poor literacy, which include depression and behavioural problems, were often overlooked."

One Secret to Better Test Scores: Make State Reading Tests Easier - New York Times

One Secret to Better Test Scores: Make State Reading Tests Easier - New York Times: "Ms. Rosenstein said such language was devastating for her urban Hispanic children. 'They're talking about a 'train' and they mean wagon train,' she said. 'Our kids know the subway. I walked into a class and there was a girl crying. I took the test booklet and read it. I thought, 'Oh, my God, we're in trouble.' '"

IT Conversations: Paula Le Dieu - Emerging Massive Media

IT Conversations: Paula Le Dieu - Emerging Massive Media: "The Internet has changed the way users watch and use media content. Users are no longer watching content passively but actively try to reuse, remix and then share their creations. Slowly but surely, the media world is changing from big broadcasters creating and distributing content to users creating content for mass consumption."

Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List: Sorted

acvocabulary2.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Less Robust Advanced Vocabulary Activity

advanced vocabulary exercises

Advanced Vocab: Some Ideas

Teacher Discussion Forums :: View topic - how to teach vocabulary to advanced students: "First figure out why they would want bigger vocabularies in the first place. Is it to pass a test? To succeed at work? To enjoy reading English novels? To impress their friends? The reason for the vocab increase will determine the way in which the vocab is taught. Figure out the context in which with vocab will be used, then pick words appropriate to that situation. I find that 10 words per day is an absolute maximum (and when I'm a student, I prefer more like 3 per day...). Then use the words in context in class. Have situation-specific dialogues. Ask lots of questions that either include the words or require the words in the answer. Have students write dialogues, stories, cartoon captions, etc. using the words. Words usually have to be used in at least 4 separate contexts before they are remembered at all. So have the students use the vocab words frequently."

Create Your Rubric - Customize Your Rubric: Now in Spanish

Here's a persuasive essay rubric in Spanish. How useful is that?

Create Your Rubric - Customize Your Rubric

Writing on Demand: Suggested Breakdown of Time

strategies.html: "Suggested breakdown of time for a one-hour exam:

10 min.Prewriting:

(1) Read the prompt carefully, circling key words.

(2) Cluster or list to determine your main supporting points and strongest evidence; be sure you have a working thesis and topic sentences.

40 min.Write the essay:

(4) Write your essay following the outline.

(5) Skip lines in case you want to make some changes when you'reproofreading after you complete the essay.

10 min. Proofreading:

(6) Proofread your essay carefully adding missed evidence, catching misspellings, putting in left out words, revising confusing sentences, joining sentences where appropriate, etc. "

Treat Writer's Block Like a Recovering Athelete Might

things that might help: "TREAT YOURSELF LIKE A RECOVERING ATHLETE

This doesn't mean WALK IT OFF. This means take your writer's block difficulty seriously. Writer's block can be a career threatening injury, so you don't want to rush the comeback and risk a relapse or re-injury. Nor, on the other hand, do you want to leave the healing to chance and neglect. By taking an active role in your own recovery -- by understanding the problem, keeping in mind your goal of returning to work and progressing toward that goal at a pace appropriate for you -- you improve your chances of being able to go back to being the impassioned, hopeful and committed writer you started out to be.

In fact, you stand a good chance of coming back even stronger than before. Writer's block, as Victoria Nelson points out, is not just an obstacle, it's a sign to the writer that there is something that needs fixing. As with an athlete whose injury is caused by bad form or poor technique, if the training works to correct that inadequacy, the athlete returns with less chance of reinjury. This then is your opportunity to not only tape yourself back together, but to actually get yourself in prime writing shape, ready to tackle the projects that excite and challenge you. "

Dissolving Writer's Block

Eight suggestions for Writers Block. Here are two of them:

Dissolving Writer's Block: "# Shake off 'Impostor Syndrome'

Everyone communicates, and a lot of people write, but few people dare to call themselves 'writers'. If you feel like an impostor, take a deep breath and remind yourself of your unique purpose and how important it is. Or take on a fictional persona and write through that mask.

# Conjure Your True Voice

If you're at a loss for words, try meeting a friend for tea and talking your way through the material, or even talking out loud to yourself. Your spoken words might not be publishable, but once you've got 'em down on paper, you can edit to your heart's content."

Robert Boice's Principles on Establishing Momementum for Research

This guy is the real deal:

Step 1: Establish ideas and momentum for research

Once under way, projects build their own momentum; the biggest difficulty for most faculty is getting started. The insights above tell us that a primary obstacle to momentum is self-consciousness. One of the most effective solutions for self-consciousness is simply beginning to write quickly without editing, effectively silencing your internal editor. Peter Elbow (1973) explains the free writing process: "The idea is simply to write for ten minutes.... Don't stop for anything. Go quickly without rushing. Never stop to look back, to cross something out...to wonder what word or thought to use, or to think about what you are doing. If you can't think of a word or a spelling, just use a squiggle or else write 'I can't think of it.' Just put down something" (p. 1).

Step 2: Establish a regimen

While free writing can get you started, it cannot assure regular writing, and it can (without adequate assessment) result in a false sense of productivity. Faculty often put off working on research projects because they believe that doing so will result in a better project because it will be done and written at some ideal time. However, the pressing matters of meeting classes each day, service responsibilities and family commitments create significant roadblocks to finding long, uninterrupted periods free for research activities.

The research literature (Boice 1989) indicates that as faculty we are trained, particularly in graduate school, to believe that, "the best research is done in big blocks of undisrupted time and only after the writer is fully prepared, highly motivated and in possession of a clever idea. Done properly, [faculty believe] these 'binges' require substantial warm-up time. They believe the best times for writing are vacations and sabbaticals." The research shows that this "bingeing" point of view corresponds to low research productivity. High productivity is found among faculty who view research as an activity deserving moderate priority, one that can be handled in brief daily sessions amid other, more pressing tasks. These faculty know that when a project is worked on every day, little or no warm-up time is needed; perfectionism is best reserved for final revisions, not in initial drafts; and that projects are best undertaken as a leap of faith, because one never feels truly ready.

In fact, literature on research productivity shows that new faculty and others are far more productive when following a regimen of brief daily sessions than in a binge pattern. Research (Boice 1987) with new faculty shows that those who find only an hour per weekday to work on their research generally manage to submit about 1.5 manuscripts per year, an output level consistent with the expectations of tenure and promotion committees on many campuses. Moreover, faculty who adopt the regimen of brief daily periods for research projects typically experience fewer feelings of stress at managing their time and lives.

Step 3: Establish comfort

Regimen is great, but works only to a point. It does increase productivity, but does nothing to increase comfort with research activity. Nearly two-thirds of faculty studied who experienced "writers' block" had negative attitudes about their progress (for example, "This will probably be rejected"). Research and writing have become aversive to many of us because of the negative stressful expectations we create around it. Looming deadlines for post-tenure or promotion and tenure reviews connect stressful stimuli with the activity we want to do. Positive attitudes toward the research process can be built through both self-management and collaboration with colleagues.

Step 4: Make writing a socially skilled act

It is important to seek out experienced colleagues who can share their expertise on how to cope with the editorial process and the inevitable disappointments of revisions and rejections. Sharing plans for your projects, as well as outlines and drafts for manuscripts makes writing less private. Early feedback both improves the quality of the work as well as providing experience in a review and revision process that mirrors the editorial process. Welcome criticism-ask for it.

~*~ Secret Diaries ~*~ of Aragorn

~*~ Secret Diaries ~*~: "Day Eleven:
Orcs killed: 7. V. good. Stubble update: Looking mangy.

Legolas may be hotter than me.
I wonder if he would like me if I was King?"

Writely - The Web Word Processor

Writely - The Web Word Processor

What search engines that is the best for your needs?

Google is still of the supreme search engine, but the comprehensive list of other tools deserve a look.

chose.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Disinterested v. Uninterested

Dr. Grammar - Frequently Asked Questions: "'They're not the same. Disinterested means impartial or neutral; uninterested means bored or lacking interest. A good umpire should be disinterested, said Casey, but certainly not uninterested (O'Conner, Patricia. Woe is I 97). "

A New View of Statistics

A New View of Statistics

Fuzzmail

Realtime email program. Do we want to reveal this much? "I love you...no...wait, I like you a lot."

Fuzzmail

The Classic Assignment Made Easy

F u t u r e M e . o r g

Too Much Choice?

Kathie Nunley's Educator's Newsletter: "While choice is one of the key components to successful
classroom instruction, be careful not to pass your students' threshold and
enter into the realm of paralysis. And of course different students have
different thresholds for choice tolerance."

The Dysfunctional Family Letter Generator

Crude & hysterical.

The Dysfunctional Family Letter Generator

NCTAF on Teacher Retention

On September 22, 2005, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future and the National Partnership for Teaching in At-Risk Schools co-hosted a successful Webcast event in which expert panelists offered strategies for addressing the issue of teacher turnover in at-risk schools.

Whether you were unable to participate or would like to hear the discussion again, we invite you to visit www.nctaf.org/article/index.php?c=8&sc=27&ssc=0&a=395 to see a recording of the live, interactive Webcast. The panelists’ PowerPoint slides are also available.