100 legal sites to download literature - i heart intelligence

Want to start or keep reading electronic books?

Check out the list of sources in this Aug. 31, 2014, post by Stan:

i heart intelligence FREE BOOKS

'via Blog this'

Bruno's Little Dancers

Check 'em out!

TED Talks are among my favorites sources of inspiration. Not that this particular video has much of a transcript, but if you watch other videos on the TED website, you can read along, jump ahead, and review, all with the help of complete and interactive transcripts in various languages there.

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Book Reviews: Factors to Consider

This post is to remind you how factors work in your Proto-Portfolio spreadsheets. The screenshots below show example factor scores for book reviews (BRs) completed at various times during first semester.  

Screenshot 1 shows what the factor score would be for 12 BRs, if you did two each month. Screenshot 2 show[s] the factor score for 10 BRs completed early in the semester. Screenshot 3 shows the factor score for the same number of book reviews (10) completed late in the semester.

The same factors apply on 2nd semester spreadsheets:

• Each BR completed during the 1st two months counts as 1.50 BRs.
• Each BR completed during the 2nd two months counts as 1.25 BRs.
• Each BR completed during the 3rd two months counts as only 1 BR.

So, if you have time to spare this summer, it would be a great idea to get started reading books and writing reviews for 2nd semester.

Screenshot 1: 12 BRs – same number every month

Factor score = 15

Screenshot 2: 10 BRs – early in semester

Factor score = 14.25

Screenshot 3: 10 BRs – late in semester

Factor score = 10.75

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New Year's Customs and Traditions

Dr. Nellie Deutsch has prepared an interesting trivia quiz representing New Year's customs and traditions around the world that I'd like to share with you. You'll find answers and explanations on slides immediately following each quiz item.

After taking the quiz and reading the explanations, please feel free to ask follow-up questions, post notes on local customs and traditions, or share related resources in comments on this post.

Learning English Online: New Year Around the World

Uploaded by Dr. Nellie on WiZiQ Tutorials

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Writing Studio Bulletin: WSB 2-01 (Fall 2010) - BRs

This bulletin contains reminders about book reviews for 2nd semester. If you have concerns or questions about the content of this bulletin, please spell them out in comments on this post.

Click on the graphic representing classnotes (above) to get a closer look.

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"Listen to English - learn English: the podcast website ...

... for people learning English" (title and tagline). This website presents prepared texts accompanied by audio recordings (MP3s) about three times a month on various topics of interest. Colloquial expressions, cultural notes, customs and traditions, ...; you name it, and you may be able to find it!

Can you imagine 40 to 50 thousand people all listening to Peter Carter, of Birmingham, England (Author and Copyright, 2005.12.25), at the same time? Recent recordings show download histories numbering in the tens of thousands. Apparently plenty of English learners and teachers around the world are making this one of their favorite sites. The visitor map in the sidebar indicates that there have nearly 17,000 visitors already this month, and over a million site visitors since 2006 (Visitors [ClusterMaps], Listen to English sidebar, 2009.05.12).

The quality of the recordings that I've sampled is impeccable, and the delivery, deliberate. However, the sophisticated language Carter uses might challenge intermediate level learners, especially those who give the MP3s a go without pre-reading his scripts or reading along while listening.

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Free Ebook Downloads from WOWIO?

On the final, several of you expressed plans or resolutions to keep reading extensively. So thanks to Mr. T. for pointing out this e-book site just in time to share it with you all before spring recess. He suggests, "the children's section has a number of books that would be suitable for extensive reading" (personal correspondence, 2009.01.22), which I hope you'll keep doing on your own during the recess.

I note that the WOWIO page for children offers useful catalog views by subject, target age group, and publisher, and lists the top 10 books in the sidebar (left). The main part of the page highlights recent releases, staff favorites, and a featured book for the (day/week/month[?]). If you're looking for easy and interesting books to read before classes begin again next April, this seems like a place to start:

• WOWIO: Children | Free Ebook Downloads

Be forewarned, however, that the page title (above) may be misleading. Access to the books appears to be free only if you read them online. Titles that I've perused with links for downloads all bear a price, for example $4.99 (USD, I gather) for:

Fandel, Jennifer. (2005). Pablo Picasso. Mankato, Minnesota:
The Creative Company. [51 pp., ISBN: 1-58341-331-6]

(APA formatted reference
and publisher location
courtesy of pab)

To buy downloads, or to access a library of your own on WOWIO, you need to register as a user. The hook for new users suggests that some downloads may be sponsered (free of charge), and that users get bookmarking privileges for online readings (Create a WOWIO Account).

Online book pages are capped and shod with Ads by Google. Thus, at a readable font display size on a 23-inch widescreen monitor (resolution: 1344 x 840), viewing entire pages requires scrolling down each time you change pages - not a particularly user-friendly layout. Whether "other members-only features" promised on the account creation page (or downloads that you purchase) allow ad-free, minimal-scrolling viewing is anyone's guess. If you do sign up and find out, please let us know in a comment on this post.

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Writing IV Exam: Instructions for §§ 1a and 1c

In a short essay, from three to five paragraphs in length, please reflect upon, analyze, and synthesize:

1. What you expected to learn, and
2. What you learned in Writing IV, §1a or 1c;

OR

1. What you learned in Writing IV, §1a or 1c, and
2. What you still need to learn in order to improve your own writing.

For full marks, write at least one paragraph five sentences or more in length on each main point:

1. What you expected to learn, and why;
2. What you learned in Writing IV, and how; and
3. What you still need to learn to improve your own writing, and when.

Use the mind map in the graphic above as a guide (WritingIVexam2009a.png). If you double-click on the graphic, a larger image will display.

Post your essay in a single comment on the Writing Studio Blog post earmarked for your class section, during the exam period:

• Writing IV, §1a: Reflecting Pool (09:30-10:30), OR
• Writing IV, §1c: Reflecting Pool (11:00-12:00).

I suggest that you compose your essay in Microsoft® Word, where you can check grammar, punctuation, and spelling before posting it as a comment on the Writing Studio Blog. You will be unable to edit your essay after you post it as a comment.

Please leave yourself plenty of time to post your essay as a comment on the appropriate reflecting pool post for your class section, and check to confirm posting, before the end of the exam period.

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New Sidebar Gadget: Followers

A new Blogger gadget that I've just added to the sidebar opens another avenue of access to Writing Studio Blog updates. It's down to the right, between Local Favorites and Subscribe via gmail (now Get mailed!) gadgets. It's the green starred item in the sidebar Layout screenshot (right).

The first avenue for notification of updates was subscription via mail functionality provided by Feedburner, which I blogged up last January (Subscribe via Gmail Today!, 2008.01.10). You may have missed that, if you failed to read up on previous posts as I suggested at the beginning of Writing III. Some folks prefer mail notifications; others depend upon handy lists of links to favorite sites in their own sidebars, or feed readers there or elsewhere (for example: Google Reader).

Now signing up to follow a blog generates an RSS feed in your own Dashboard, and there are at least two ways to get started. One works for any Blogger blog (though it doesn't seem to work on Edublogs, at least not right away); you just grab the URL of a blog you want to follow, and "ADD" it to your Dashboard Reading List. Here's a snapshot of the list I've started:

The "ADD" button is at the foot of your list.

The other way to follow a Blogger blog is to find one you want to follow that displays a Followers gadget. You can subscribe through the gadget, and updates from that blog will automatically appear in your Dashboard Reading List. For more info. about following, including private or public following options, I recommend these Blogger Help Center posts:

• What is following?
• How do I use the Blogger Reading List?
• How do I add the Following gadget to my blog?

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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).

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Revised 2008.11.06
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Mr. T's Book Review Recipe

This post presents a screenshot of an outline composed of questions to guide you in writing your weekly book reviews (an on-going assignment from Writing III-IV). The outline derives from one Mr. T shared via personal correspondence today (book review template text, 2008.06.11). I've added comments and explanations to the list of questions reiterated below.


BR 1-##: [+ title]

To shorten the title of your post, please use the abbreviation BR for book review, followed by a single space, a semester code (1- or 2-), a two-digit book review number (01-99;-), a colon (":"), another space, and the short(-ened) title of the book you're reviewing. No brackets or quotation marks are necessary.

Introduction

It is a good idea to write out your answers to these first two questions before you write a brief summary of the story.

1. Why did you choose this book?
2. What was interesting about it (something on the cover, in the title, or in the first few pages)?

Brief summary of the story

It is a good idea to write your summary from memory. Write about what was meaningful and therefore memorable for you. That way you will avoid copying or plagiarizing passages from the books you read.

1. What do you remember without looking back over the story?
2. What was the most impressive passage that you can recall?

If you cannot remember much without reviewing the text, page through it again quickly to jog your memory, close it, and put it down (front cover face up). Then write about what you do (or don't) remember.

Conclusion

Answers to these last two questions will round out your book reviews, which needn't be much longer than your current typing speed trials. Again, it is a good idea to concentrate on what you can and do remember, and how you feel about your choices of the books you are reviewing.

1. Do you recommend this book? Why (not)?
2. Would you read it again? If so, when and why?
   

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Best Reviews 1.0 (2008)

Today you will have an opportunity to nominate five reviews written to fulfill fourth essay requirements this semester. You may nominate one review for each of five categories ( below), and you may nominate your own review for no more than one of them. The categories open for nominations are:

1. Best Title [of post, rather than blog],
2. Easiest to Read [and understand],
3. Most Informative or Opinionated,
4. Most Interesting or Unusual, and
   
5. Most Visually Appealing [best layout].

To find blogs to nominate:

a) browse each of the blogs in the list for your class,
b) locate the fourth essay on each blog, and
c) make sure it is a review that meets all of the following ... [requirements]:

• The review has a short, catchy title;
• It is at least 400 words in length;
• It includes no copied or machine translated content;
• It consists of at least five paragraphs five sentences in length; AND
• It has at least two labels, one of which is "essays" (the plural form, spelled accurately [emphases added]).

To nominate blogs for each category, post comments on the corresponding Writing Studio Blog posts [1.1 - 1.5: see links, below]. In your comments, include:

1. The author's blog handle (typed accurately, or copied and pasted),
2. The title of the essay (copied and pasted from the blog itself, for accuracy), and
   
3. Your own reasons (two or more) for nominating it, for:

If you have questions about the nominating process, please post your questions in comments on this post. Nominations themselves must be on the corresponding post for each category.

• Best Reviews 1.1 (2008): Best Title [of post, rather than blog]
  
• Best Reviews 1.2 (2008): Easiest to Read [& Understand]
  
• Best Reviews 1.3 (2008): Most Informative [or Opinionated]
• Best Reviews 1.4 (2008): Most Interesting [or Unusual]
• Best Reviews 1.5 (2008): Most Visually Appealing [best layout]
  

Comments on the essay posts are optional, but nice. [Please feel free to comment directly on classmates posts after class.]

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Extensive Reading Rules!

Browsing book reviews that bubbled up in the RSS Reader today (sidebar), I found one about a book that a student suggested wasn't so interesting. That find reminded me of one of the more memorable rules governing extensive reading progams. The rule is, if a book isn't interesting, find another fast.

Here is what I suggested:

Please remember that one of the first rules about books for extensive reading is that you should find them interesting. If a book you choose isn't, you should:

1. Stop reading it.
2. List it in your orange reading log, count only the words on the pages that you've read, and add a comment like, "Pp. 1-3: boring!"
3. Find a different book to read.

(pab, first blog, Book review 1 [BR 1-01], 2008.05.30)

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Recommended Movie Sites

Rick, aka Pukman @ WinK, writes on a blog that I've listed among Course Links in the sidebar of this blog called "the community that time didn't forget." In a recent post on that blog he recommends sites to visit if you are interested in finding out about movies, new and older, watching and listening to movie trailers, or reading movie reviews (Pukman..., Movie sites, 2005.05.16).

His recommendations include one site that I listed (IMDb), and another that I had perused (Rotten Tomatoes), when I quick-posted a few days ago a list of movies that I had watched recently: A Few Favorite Movies of Late (The Writing Studio Blog, 2008.05.12). As Pukman, or Rick points out at the end of his recommendations, you can find those and many more internet sites related to movies in the WinK in Magnolia community bookmark collection, marked with the tag (or label) movies (WinK in Magnolia Tags: View All).

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On the Reading Road Again

In the song, On the Road Again, for a movie soundtrack (1980), Willie Nelson covered a 1965 Bob Dylan song about "going places" that he has "never been" (Wikipedia, On the Road Again). Reading books is like that.

I've just picked up the next two books in the series that I've been reading for... um... several years (An Extensive Reading (ER) Project, 2008.03.01). Nevertheless, I ticked off volume five during spring recess, and went to the book store last night to stock up on ... perhaps another year's worth of leisure reading.

Now it's time to add the volumes that I'm reading to the Library Thing.

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WinK Wiki Resource: Model Book Reviews

This post announces a new WinK Wiki resource listing, describing, and linking to student book reviews that you can use a guides and models for your own blog posts:

• Model Book Reviews (2008.04.16)
  

This is also a reminder that the on-going (semester-long) book review writing assignment calls for you to write one or more book reviews each week (12 or more during spring semester). There is a growing range of easy-to-read genres and titles in the English Reading Garden at the KGU library.

As I noted in Orange Books and Book Reviews (2008.04.15), book reviews must neither be copied nor machine-translated, and, as I suggested in class today, book reviews generally should be as long as or longer than your longest five-minute typing speed trials. Moreover, your book reviews should be more accurate than typing speed trials, thanks to Blogger and Word spelling and grammer checks, and well-organized, too!

Please don't forget to label your book reviews with at least two labels: books and reviews. You can add genre labels (such as romance or SciFi), if you wish.

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Sample Reading Log Page

The scanned image below represents a reading log page from a student's orange book. The student who produced that log reviewed 20 books on her blog last fall semester. Her first page shows that she started by trying books from a variety of graded reader collections: non-fiction, "NF;" science, "SC;"... ; see: series abbreviations, below), and at a variety of levels (Young Learners' equivalents: YL 0.1-2.8). During fall semester she read 20 books and over 48,000 words.

Another student, whose photocopied pages were not so sharp and clear, logged 31 books for the year, and read over 170,000 words!

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Orange books and book reviews

What we call the orange book is a required text for Writing III and IV (all sections). It is a log book for extensive reading practice. Please start using it to log your readings for these courses right away.

You can find lots of easy books to read in the English Reading Garden (ERG), in the KGU Library. Please check out Mr. T's comic introduction to the ERG by command clicking on the link above, and then clicking on the image in the center of the comic site. After class, head over to the library to grab yourself a handful of books to read.

In order to promote fluency in your writing, I recommend that you read at least three graded readers a week. Starting this week, you must post a brief written review, in your own words (not copied or machine-translated) of at least one book per week. You should post 12 or more book reviews on your blog this semester.

For more info. about the orange book, please review the post entitled Extensive Reading Logs (2007.05.12). The PUK Library Collection is another place you can look for books to read, and for word counts for books that may not be listed in the orange book.

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Blogged with the Flock Browser

Library Thing Widget

This quick post announces the addition of a LibraryThing widget to the sidebar. The widget feeds on recent additions to my LibraryThing catalog (above), a long-awaited follow-on to the very first post on this blog last year (An Extensive Reading (ER) Project, March 1, 2007). This post is also the second half-century post (150 of 150, today) on the Writing Studio Blog.

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WSB 2-01: Mr. T's Computer Hour

Mr. T. cordially invites you to his Computer Office Hour. He wants to help you satisfy blogging and other course requirements for English IV. The weekly time and place for help in a Windows lab. are listed in the graphic below, along with brief reminders and warnings regarding coursework and attendance that he will be happy to amplify:

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