Do you know what day it is?

On the United Nations' calendar, it's the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the beginning of the UN Secretary General's campaign for over two weeks of activism on related themes.

Image source: United Nations
End Violence Day

On the main page about the day, you'll find rationales for international activities and observations, alongs with facts and figures about violence against women and its consequences. There's more info. about the Secretary General's campaign here, including a poster on "school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) in [the] Asia-Pacific" region:

Image source: United Nations
School-Related Gender-Based Violence
(SRGBV)

On the Orange Day page is a call for business, governmental, institutional and social action. Want to find out what you can do? Grab the toolkit (PDF) and get started!

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Grammar Resources - University of Chicago Writing Program

The Grammar Resources page on the University of Chicago Writing Program website introduces students to "grammar and writing resources from around the web" (¶1). In addition to main sections covering various grammar, usage and style guides, there are sections explaining and pointing out resources for scientific and technical writing as well as for non-native speakers of English (see the sidebar on the site for details).

I'm so impressed with that webpage that I've bookmarked it already for the WinK Core: Weblogging in Kumamoto group on Diigo, and will add it to the Course Links list in the Writing Studio Blog sidebar right away.

Reference

The University of Chicago Writing Program. (n.d.). Grammar resources [webpage]. Retrieved from http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/resources/grammar.htm

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Writing Better Blog Posts: What You NEED to Know - The Edublogger

Though a bit dated, Writing Better Blog Posts: What You NEED to Know by Sue Waters (April 18, 2011) is ... loaded with good advice. I found out about that post in a weekly email bulletin from Edublogs entitled The Edublogger Archives: The Best of the Best (September 19, 2014), so I'm not the only person who thinks that's [still] a great post.

As you begin blogging again for fall semester, or continue–if you kept blogging during the summer recess, I urge you to review Sue's advice with an eye out for ways to improve your own posts. Then please drop back by here and post comments about what works for you!

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Don't Study Hard; Study Smart!

Tough Guy
Photo by pabeaufait
February 24, 2008, © All rights reserved
Used with permission

"Students need to understand that learning happens not only during reading and studying, but in all sorts of ways, so that they can examine their own habits to know which ones may be helping or not, and [then] make adjustments" (Chen, 2014, Experimenting with Learning Tactics, ¶4).

In a KQED Mind/Shift post, Ingfei Chen introduced a book written by a former colleague and science reporter, Benedict Carey (2014), entitled How We Learn: The Surprising Truth .... Then Chen went on to highlight and give examples of three key take-aways from the book that she['d] gleaned from an interview with the author.

The post included some wonderful tips for self-aware and self-directed learners. Moreover, the voice recording that accompanied the article was of the highest quality imaginable ("Press Play to Listen ..."). Kudos to the unnamed voice artist who made the recording!

References

Carey, Benedict. (2014). How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why It Happens. New York, NY: Random House.

Chen, Ingfei. (2014, August 25). How does the brain learn best? Smart studying strategies [web log post]. Retrieved from http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/how-does-the-brain-learn-best-smart-studying-strategies/

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The Unsplash collection of photos for free

Unsplash features pre-screened, public domain (CC0 1.0 Universal licensure), high-resolution photos in a collection that apparently began in May 2013 (Unsplash archive).

The problem is that there currently aren't built-in provisions for searching the collection. That is, other than the [chronological] archives. On-site options include:

• Manually scrolling and visually scanning the main page, 
• Searching the main page for names of photographers you may know, or 
• Scrolling and scanning the thumbnails in the annual or monthly archives. 

Fortunately, perhaps, a web developer, Arthur Weill, Director of Web and Cow, has been working on the problem. His Unsplash Search (beta, n.d.) is out in both English and French.

Searches may combine selections from a few dozen tags. For instance, a search for an image including a "tree" and resembling a "town" turned up the two photos here:

Boat on the river. Well, river only. — with Kabir Van Delić.
By Ermin Čeliković

Luxor Egypt, in Days by the Nile
By Linh Nguyen

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Free Online Game for Food Donations and Language Learning

 

Correct answers for Free Rice quiz items generate food donations paid for by sponsors, whose banners appear on the web page. The level of difficulty automatically adjusts up for correct and down for incorrect answers.

Though on one occasion an inappropriate banner appeared, the non-profit site owners had written, "We are quick and careful to remove inappropriate content, if it is reported to us via email at wfp.freerice@wfp.org with 'Report inappropriate content' ... in the subject line" (http://freerice.com/about/faq). So I reported that inappropriate banner.

There are English, French, Italian, and Spanish versions of the game on the same site, with more quiz categories for English than for the other languages. There also is a Korean version on a separate site:

• http://freerice.plaync.com/ 

Registration is separate for the two sites, but not necessary to play; it will enable you to track your contributions on one site or the other.

Reference

World Food Programme. (2014). Free Rice 2.0 [online game]. Retrieved
          June 5, 2014, from http://freerice.com

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Dance Mat Typing (BBC, 2005)

Though the BBC developed the Dance Mat Typing site for school-aged children, seven to 11 years old, it also can help older students unfamiliar with touch typing get started (or restarted) typing quickly using all ten digits–fingers and thumbs on both hands. Amusing animated animal characters introduce keyboarding techniques and practice activities in a step-by-step fashion through four levels and 12 stages. Practice activities begin with ten keys in the home row (A-G and H-;), and work up to punctuation and capitalisation (BBC, 2005, About this site). The key to learning to type quickly and well from practice on site is to listen carefully to the instructions, paying special attention to what you see on screen rather than looking at your fingers or the keyboard. 

The animated characters speak (or mimic) different varieties of English, which may challenge learners of English as an additional language. Yet colourful screens show progress through each stage, and there are audio and visual cues to give feedback on mistyping during practice activities. Moreover, there is plenty of review practice–Warm Ups for every new stage, and the site offers printable certificates at the end of each level.

Working your way through each of the stages and levels, perhaps more than once, should make it much easier to complete both typing homework and writing assignments. As the BBC explained, "touch typing is the fastest way to write" (BBC, 2005, About this site, Why learn to touch type? ¶1).

Reference

BBC. (2005). Dance mat typing [website]. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

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BR 1-03: Hairy Maclary (Dodd, 1983)

Another favorite story with animals!

"'EEEEEOWWWFFTZ!' said Scarface Claw" (n.p.).

Hairy Maclary is an animal adventure story from New Zealand (NZ). It was a gift from a friend from . . . , you guessed it–NZ! It's a great story for pronunciation practice because of all of the rhymes. My favorite line from the book, the quotation above (no page numbers), is a bit of a challenge to pronounce. Can you say that big word, and make it sound like a . . .  (a four-footed animal)?

Reference

Dodd, Lynley. (1983). Harry Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy. Wellington, NZ: Mallinson Rendel Publishers Ltd.

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BR 1-02: The Cross-with-Us Rhinoceros (Bush & Geraghty, 1988)

Photo of book cover, 2014.04.17

"Poor Tilly was so scared she couldn't speak" (Bush & Geraghty, 1988, n.p.*).

This is a children's book that I've read again and again. It is a great story about four children who went out together and had an adventure. Like the last book I reviewed, BR 1-01: Dear Zoo (2014.04.16), this one features animals. The ending was surprising, but I'm not going to tell you what happened. You'll have to read it for yourself.

Reference

Bush, John, & Geraghty, Paul. (1988). The Cross-with-Us Rhinoceros. London, England: Hutchinson Children's Books.

____________________
* This story doesn't have page numbers. If it did, I'd use "p. #" instead of "n.p." (no page number).

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BR 1-01: Dear Zoo (Campbell, 1982)

I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet.... So they sent me a .... He was too grumpy! I sent him back. (Campbell, 1982, n.p.*)

Dear Zoo is a children's book. It is short and easy to read. It tells a story about animals coming from the zoo. There are little windows to open to see surprising things. If you like zoo animals, or easy books to read, I recommend this story.

Reference

Campbell, Rod. (1982). Dear Zoo. London, England: Campbell Books.

____________________
* This story doesn't have page numbers. If it did, I'd use "p. #" instead of "n.p." (no page number).

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VocabKitchen: Awesome Vocab. Profilers!

http://vocabkitchen.com/Default.aspx

VocabKitchen's Academic Word List (AWL) Vocabulary Profiler (beta version) is already awesome! It quickly highlighted, listed, and sorted on- and off-list vocabulary in sample texts. It also was "dictionary enabled," which means you can get Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online definitions of almost any words by double-clicking on them (not a name like Tanaka). Though the percentages of on- and off-list words for the first sample I tried didn't add up (7% + 101%, respectively), text and highlight colours were easy to read on the white background.

VocabKitchen's General Service List (GSL) Vocabulary Profiler (beta version) performed similarly well on the same sample. Highlighting, listing and sorting was speedy, but again the percentages didn't add up (see below). It's still a quick, cool, easy-to-use tool. However, VocabKitchen's choice of tint for highlighting words in in the GSL 2nd 1K (RGB: 48, 152, 204) offered slightly less background-to-text contrast than had the AWL Vocabulary Profiler's on-list colour (especially when used on a grey heading bar), and the location of the sort button in the GSL-beta profiler differed for off-list words.

VocabKitchen's Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) Vocabulary Profiler was available in both a beta and a regular version. The main differences seemed to be that 1) the CEFR-beta version was "dictionary enabled" like the AWL-beta profiler, and 2) the CEFR-beta version also provided an Export to Word function. Nevertheless, background-to-text contrast, at least for B1 level words and corresponding headings (RGB: 249, 154, 0), seemed a bit problematic.

On the CEFR-beta display, VocabKitchen avoided the low-contrast problem on grey header bars by using a shade close to black (RGB: 34, 34, 34). Something closer to black (0, 0, 0) might be even better!

VocabKitchen (also in beta), please keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to trying out the Social Reader Tool. In the mean time, I'll strive to cut down on off-list words–at least on this blog!

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PaperRater Grammar and Spelling Check

"PaperRater.com is a free resource, developed and maintained by linguistics professionals and graduate students. PaperRater.com is used by schools and universities in over 46 countries to help students improve their writing" (About PaperRater, ¶1, 2014.03.04).

Screen snapshot of graphic on the PaperRater site

This post frames a comment that I posted today on the Digital Mobile Language Learning blog (Writing Tools for the Self-directed Learner Part 2, 2014.01.19), after trying out PaperRater, which provides, among other free services:

• Spelling and grammar checks,
• Style and word choice analyses, and
• Readability statistics (PaperRater: Features).

After trying a Google+ post that was too short to ... [get] feedback on many of the categories, I gave Paper Rater (PR) another spin on a working paper I ... [had written] a while back. The whole paper turned out to be too long for free assessment, so I cut the sample back to the end of the first section: 719 words per PR's count, 777 per Microsoft® Word 2008 for Mac. 

PR results, as Dan [Ferreira] suggested they would be, were quite interesting: 

+/- The spell check flagged one word apparently broken in the PDF from which I'd copied the sample, but also returned a false positive on the word conflate.  

+ Grammatical analysis revealed no errors. 

+ The numerical score for inappropriate word choices was, I guess, low (0.998). 

+/- The feedback on style in the web display focused mostly on sentence length (the longest: 53 words), but mistakenly indicated that more than half of the sentences were passive. I checked by hand, but found only one passive clause–in a quotation. 

-/+ Though the feedback on style in the PDF output was different, focusing on transition words, the PDF included general tips for using such words. 

+/- The vocabulary score seemed high (96), yet the feedback included only a subset (9 of 20) sophisticated words counted. Paper Rater did not mark such words in the sample. 

The numeric grade from the auto-grader bore a note to the effect that it was "based on [a] college grading scale," which was followed by a stronger one indicating that PR "does NOT examine the meaning of your words, how your ideas are structured, or how well your arguments are supported" [(Auto Grader, NOTE, ¶1)].

All in all, PR looks like it's worth asking students to try, as long as they can grasp its limitations.

I'm looking forward to trying it out with students soon.

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"Five secrets to revising that can boost your grades" (Stafford, 2014)

In a Guardian Students series article, Five secrets to revising that can boost your grades (Education, Advice for students, 8 January 2014), Tom Stafford provided "evidence-based tips" for students who want to learn effectively (¶7). Among other points, he asserted, "Merely memorising the material is not enough" (3. Practice the thing you'll be tested on, ¶1).

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Design 101 for Educators: 5 Simple Typography Tips (CranfordTeague, 2013)

It's high time to return to blogging after an extended summer recess. To get rolling on this blog again, I'd like to point out an Edutopia post in which Jason CranfordTeague (2013.08.13) provided page design tips that may serve students as well as educators:

• Design 101 for Educators: 5 Simple Typography Tips

CranfordTeague focused on font styles as a typographical equivalent to voice, as well as on simplicity, contrast, column width, and my overall favorite–space. As I often tell students, and as a reminder to all who read this blog, "White space is golden!"

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Five Writing Tips from Kasanoff (2013)

In the short slideshow below, Kasanoff focuses on five tips for improving writing (2013, June 4 [Slideshare]). He introduces and explains the tips in a separate post (2013, June 4 [LinkedIn]) in which he embedded the slideshow.

Five writing tips that can double your salary 

from Bruce Kasanoff

What other tips can you think of? Please feel free to share them in comments on this post.

References

Kasanoff, Bruce. (2013, June 4). Five writing tips that can double your salary [LinkedIn post]. Retrieved from http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130604130447-36792-five-writing-tips-that-can-double-your-salary

Kasanoff, Bruce. (2013, June 4). Five writing tips that can double your salary [Slideshare presentation]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/NowPosible/five-writing-tips-that-can-double-your-salary

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Tip Top Tip from Mike Lambert

Mike Lambert, the author of A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Your Education Research Project (Lambert, 2012), has published ten tips in a paper on the Academia.edu site (Lambert, 2013). One of my favorites is number nine.

Tip 9: Use paragraphs A paragraph is a section of text, usually dealing with a single theme and [usually] indicated by a line space above and below . . . . The use of paragraphs is an important way of structuring writing and making ideas understandable for your reader[s]. Here are some basic rules for using paragraphs in academic writing: A paragraph always has more than one sentence[;] A paragraph is never more than one page long[; and] The first or last sentence of a paragraph is often a summary of the paragraph as a whole. . . .

Lambert concludes that section of his paper with a brilliant suggestion for beginning writers: "Look at academic books and research articles to see how others use paragraphs to make the structure of their writing clear."

References

Lambert, Mike. (2012). A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Your Education Research Project. London, England: Sage Publications.

Lambert, Mike. (2013, April [n.d.]). Top Tips for Writing Up Your Education Research Project. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/3357616/Top_Tips_for_Writing_Up_Your_Education_Research_Project

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A Couple More Model Book Reviews

Check these out to get a good idea of how to compose book reviews.

• Rick's KGU Writing Blog: BR 1-01: Pinocchio (2013.04.15)
• Rick's KGU Writing Blog: BR 1-02: The Little Red Hen (2013.04.15)

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My Start-Up Labels (2013)

This post is a derivation from a previous post on the Writing Studio Blog, Start-up labels (2012), April 22, 2012.

Here are labels that you will need to use for required posts on your blogs:

• books, brainstorms, drafts, essay prep., essays, fiction, free-writing, graphics, links, media, mind-maps, movies, non-fiction, outlines, quickposts, references, reviews, revisions, typing, websites (20)

For example, on book reviews, you will need to use at least four (4) labels, including:

• books, references, reviews, ... (all comma-spaced values [CSVs]); plus:
• fiction, OR
• non-fiction.

The label "references," and the minimum number "four (4)" for book reviews (above), are new for 1st semester this year. All book review posts will need APA-style references, for which your instructor will provide models and templates, from 1st semester onward.

Please feel free to use other suitable labels, as well. For example, genre labels like "adventure," "biography," or "history" (one or another, without quotation marks) are welcome. That is, as long as they reflect the content of individual book review posts.
For details on how to use other required labels, please see Sheet 1 in the Labels and Links page on the Writing Studio Blog.

Now, to jump-start your labels collections, please:

1. Copy and paste the 20 labels in the first list above into a new draft post on your own blog;
2. Entitle the new draft post, "My Start-Up Labels" (in title case, without quotation marks);
3. Copy and paste the labels in the list above into the Labels field on the draft start-up labels post;
4. Publish the start-up labels post on your blog; and then
5. Add a labels gadget to the sidebar of your blog.

____________________

Note: At present, the maximum number of labels that you can put on a post is twenty (20).

Once you've published your start-up labels posts, with 20 labels in the label field as well as in the body of the posts, the labels will show up in your Labels gadget. Then, when you compose new posts, you will be able to choose appropriate labels for required posts, rather than having to type them in by hand.

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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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Grammarist: resource site for writers

Though plain in appearance, the Grammarist site looks like a rich source of information for writers – on everything from punctuation and spelling to style. The site sports six categories: usage, words and phrases, spelling, grammar, style, and writing (sidebar, left).

There are numerous avenues into the site, in addition to previews of recent posts displayed 10 at a time in the main column. It has an alphabetical index (top left), as well as a glossary (lower left). "The date on each post reflects either the date that post was first published or the date of its last major revision" (About Grammarist: Colophon, ¶3, retrieved 2013.01.25). Colored tags next to previews of posts indicate to which category each post belongs.

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