A Rack of Start-up Labels

Between the hash marks below is a set of labels to add to new posts on individual blogs:

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books, brainstorms, drafts, essay prep., essays, fiction, free-writing, graphics, links, media, movies, non-fiction, outlines, quickposts, reviews, revisions, typing, websites

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(Source: The Writing Studio Blog, Start-up Labels, 2012.04.22; ...
[used with author's permission])

Some of the labels are required. For example, on book reviews, you will need to use at least three labels during 1st semester, including: "books, ...," PLUS, "fiction, …," OR "non-fiction, …" AND "reviews, …"  (all comma-separated values without quotation marks or ellipsis). You are welcome to use other suitable labels for book reviews as well, such as genre labels like "adventure, ..., " "history, ...," or "romance, ...," as long as they suit the content of your [book review] posts . 

For instructions on using the other labels, please see the Labels and Link Lists page.

Now, to jump-start your own label collections, please:

1. Add a labels gadget to the sidebar of your blog, then
2. Copy and paste the labels between hashmarks in the list above into a new draft post on your own blog;
3. Entitle the new draft post, "My Start-up Labels" (in title case without quotation marks);
4. Copy and paste the same labels into the Labels field on your draft start-up labels post; and
5. Publish your start-up labels post on your blog....

Once you've published your start-up labels post, with those labels in the label field as well as [in] the body of the post, the labels will show up in your Labels gadget. Later, when you label new posts or re-label previous posts, you will be able to quickly choose appropriate labels for required and other posts, rather than typing them all in [by hand].

[315 295 words]

The Blogging Handbook

"This is a handbook for beginners and experts!"

 (WikiEducator, Blogging, ¶1, emphasis in original)

The Blogging Handbook
Looking at blogs Set up a blog Manage a blog Using a blog Getting the most out of your blog Writing effectively for a blog What's in a post? Getting to the point Telling the story Critical analysis Where to now?

Source: Create and maintain a basic weblog/Writing effectively for a blog, "available under [a] Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License" (WikiEducator, retrieved 2010.06.10).

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Additional Course Link: Sentence Structure Cmap

Wordle image created 2009.01.30

While listening to a Green Room interview about graphic organizers (Episode 54, 2008.12.01), and following up on a related Learning Times discussion thread, I discovered an online resource that may interest those of you who have expressed concerns about your own grammatical accuracy. It's a concept map created with a powerful yet free computer application called IHMC CmapTools.

Tammy Moore, a registered Learning Times community member, listed the Sentence Structure Cmap, an example of students' work which I've already added to the Course Links in the sidbar, as "middle school level - English/Grammar/Sentence Structure" (Using Graphic Organizers?, 2008.12.04 [registration required]). If you're interested either in the grammar it represents, or in visual, hypertextual representation possible with CmapTools, please check it out.

[122 words]

Images created by the Wordle.net web application are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
http://wordle.net/faq

Happy Halloween!

The following is a representation of a post from the Language Learner Development Project Blog (LLD Project Blog, Happy Halloween, 2008.10.31), a work licensed "under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" (LLD Project Blog, License). I am reusing the copyright image in the original post with permission of the copyright owner. You can see the copyright notice if your hover your cursor over the photo below [in the actual Blogger post, not the Feedburner mail announcement], before clicking.

This is a quick, seasonal, website recommendation... for anyone ... interested in customs, history, and traditions: a History of Halloween minisite at history.com. I recommend the articles entitled Ancient History and Around the World, but there's much, much more on the site [including advertisements, games, and videos]. Just click on the link (above), or the picture (below), and go see for yourselves.

If you'd like to compare the Jack-0-Lantern in the photo above with his predecessors from last year, please check out either of last year's Halloween videos (Writing Studio Blog, Welcome Home Hallows, 2007.10.31).

[106 words excluding the block quotation]

Revised 2008.11.06
[+10 words]

Comment Chops for All [+ A Scavenger Hunt]

This post consolidates comments that I've attached recently to individual blogs, comments which apply, in general, to many more of your posts. I hope you will consider all of the suggestions in these three comments, reflect on them carefully in light of your own writing habits, and take them to heart in all of your blogging endeavors.

You may note that I am quoting liberally from my own writing (with permission;-), and making it clear in context (this explanation) and through layout (ellipses, block indentations, italics, and references; below) that I am using long quotations in this post, yet avoiding self-plagiarism. If you would like to see the passages that I'm quoting in their original contexts, you are welcome to take part in a blogging scavenger hunt (A Scavenger Hunt, below)

Book review content and organization, and word counts

Would you please review Mr. T's Book Review Recipe for advice regarding the content and organization of book reviews? Rather than retelling the stories you read, your writing should reflect your choices of books, your thinking about the books you choose (before and after reading them), whether you recommend them to your classmates and peers, and why. You also need word counts on every post.

(pab, 2008.10.28)

Titles, introductions, keywords, and vocabulary references

When you write several hundred words about any topic, it's really important to be clear about what it is going to be in the title, and in the introduction, too. There [in yours] you suggest, ....

It also is important to incorporate white space in your texts, between the paragraphs, to help readers find your main points quickly and easily. Even with a computerized search, I didn't find ... [a keyword from your title] in your post. Perhaps you can find ... [that keyword] in the Visual Thesaurus... [, which] I've listed on the Writing Studio Wiki (Vocabulary References), and displayed at the foot of the Writing Studio Blog.

(pab, 2008.10.28)

Grammar, spelling, and links

I wonder whether you have grammar and spell-checked this rewrite in a word processing program (OpenOffice, NeoOffice, or Word), and whether you know how to make URLs into active links in blog posts and comments. If something you've written gets flagged during a thorough grammar/spelling check, and you're not sure how to revise it, please ask in class.

(pab, 2008.10.28)

A Scavenger Hunt

If you would like to review the comments that I've quoted (above) in their original contexts on classmates' and peers' blogs, you are welcome to take part in a blogging scavenger hunt to find them. There will be a small prize for the first student in each class who informs me in class precisely whose blogs and which posts (blog handles, titles, dates, and times) display those comments on them.

[459 words, excluding title]

Third Essay: University Life - A Reminder

Dear Writing Studio participants (Writing III, §§ 1a and 1c):

There were quite a few students absent today, so I have decided to post this reminder. Your third essays are due by Sunday, May 18, 2008 (Course Calendar).

You should:

• Focus on a singular aspect of university life (Writing Studio Wiki, Major assignments, click through § 1.5) with which you are already quite familiar.

• Organize your own ideas into five or more ¶¶ (paragraphs), each five or more sentences in length, including:

• an introduction,
• body paragraphs (3+), and
• a conclusion; and

• Extend it to 350+ words in length overall.

Brainstorming and collecting your ideas in a mind map or an outline is a good way to start, or to refresh or reinforce your thinking if you've already tried free-writing. For organizational ideas, please review the Five Paragraph Essay presentations that you viewed among other writing resources (Writing Studio Wiki, click through § 6.4) a couple of weeks ago.

Please remember that you must label this essay on university life, like all of your essays for Writing III and IV, with the label "essays" (plural, without quotations marks). Then, if you wish, you also may label it with other labels that you are likely to use again. Campus, lifestyles, students, and university are some other possible labels that spring to mind.

Finally, photos would be nice, too. However, you should post nothing too personal or private for anyone in the world to see (administrators, parents, teachers...), and should ask permission from anyone recognizable in the photos before posting them on your blog.

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