Wow, What Did I Miss? (2nd sem., day one)

In case you're not back from your summer holidays (or forgot classes started today, like I did about this time last year :-), here is a snapshot of class notes reflecting what we did. The main activities and assignments today covered accuracy (labeling issues), fluency (free-writing and extensive writing), portfolio (PF) foundation building, and homework.

To get a closer look, please click on the graphic (above). To find out details, please ask a classmate or peer who attended. If you have questions about classwork and other assignments shown here, questions your classmates and peers cannot answer, please post them in comments on this post. 

Last but not least, please plan to attend every class meeting for the rest of the semester, or to gather this sort of information on your own from now on. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. 

See you next week!

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Nancy and Suzy Explore Twitter

"...[A]n online interaction designer, facilitator and coach... working with a puppet" to help people get a handle on social media (Community Matters, Vimeo, Wed, Feb 16, 2011):

 

Nancy White & Suzy - An Intro to Twitter 

from CommunityMatters on Vimeo.

Twitterers out there: Are they telling it like it is?

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Business Writing Tips - Grammar Basics: Periods, Commas and Semicolons

Following a three-part series on email on the ULiveandLearn blog, Email Etiquette and Guidelines, offering a total of 15 tips (for example, Part Three), Always Learning has started a series of Grammar Basics punctuation guides. Recently these guides have focused on commas in particular. The brief explanations and examples are well worth a look:

• Business Writing Tips - Grammar Basics: Periods, Commas and Semicolons
• Eight rules for periods include ellipses (2011.07.21)

• Business Writing Tips - Grammar Basics: Commas
• Four rules for commas (2011.07.28)

• Business Writing Tips - Grammar Basics: Commas Used in Series
• Rules 6-7 for commas (2011.08.04)

• Business Writing Tips - Grammar Basics: Interrupting Commas
• Rule 5 for commas (2011.08.11)

• ...

If you go to the ULiveandLearn website, and sign up for free membership, you can get weekly email notification of new writing tips. Tips for using semi-colons should be coming soon! 

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Good PowerPoint Design (Osterwalder)

Modeling design principles for business presenters, Ostewalder showed and told it all in 135 slides, including step-by-step builds and appendices (Slideshare, "two years ago" [relative date]). He cut to the chase to introduce four basic rules on slides 15-18, then elaborated on each.

1. Audience's perspective (slide 24, ff.)
2. Content and structure – Tell a story. (slide 51, ff.)
3. Visual design – Keep it simple. (slide 83, ff.)
4. Delivery – a performance for guests (slide 104, ff.)

The highlight for me was the audience profiling tool, a graphic organizer, that Ostewalder introduced on slides 42-46. Try it out!

Good PowerPoint Design - for business presenters

View more presentations from Alexander Osterwalder

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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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