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PhraseBook for Writing Papers and Research in English
"The PhraseBook helps you build advanced language competence and writing ability in English. Rather than concentrating on rules and exceptions as many books, the PhraseBook focuses on writing, providing the tools for you to write in your subject" (A tool for building advanced language competence and writing ability, ¶1, 2014.09.12).
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How Does the Brain Learn Best? Smart Studying Strategies | MindShift
In this article, Chen summed up an interview about Benedict Carey's book, How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why It Happens, highlighting and exemplifying take-away messages for self-directed learners as well as teachers.
- pupils today can change the way they study to exploit the brain’s quirky learning processes, using the strategies revealed by memory and learning research
- 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 make adjustments
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Tomorrow's Professor eNewsletter: 1347. Establishing a Research Agenda
This article is an extract from: Fechter, Sharon Ahern. (1999). Chapter 4, Academic research. In Virginia Bianco-Mathis & Neal Chalofsky (Eds.), The full-time faculty handbook ([n.p.]). London, UK: Sage Publications, Inc.
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Boom-Bang Homework Assignments | Edutopia
"Multiple sources recommend about ten minutes per night in the first grade, then add ten minutes for every subsequent grade, for a maximum of two hours in all subjects by the 12th grade" (2. How much homework is recommended, ¶1 [of 1]).
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MultiBrief: Grading practices that better support 21st‑century learning
In this post, Stack (2014.08.25) suggested four ways of developing or improving grading practices: 1. Separate and acknowledge the role of both formative and summative assessment. 2. Stop averaging averages to get more averages. 3. Separate academics from academic behaviors. 4. Use rubrics and a rubric scale, not percentage scores.
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Caplan (2012), Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers
"Grammar Choices is a different kind of grammar book: It is written for graduate students, including MBA, master’s, and doctoral candidates, as well as postdoctoral researchers and faculty" (Descriptions, ¶2, 2014.09.08).
Sunday, September 14, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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About the Ethnologue | Ethnologue
Catalog of languages of the world
- Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a comprehensive reference work cataloging all of the world’s known living languages
- About the ..., ¶1
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are organized by world area, UN region, and country
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indicate region of use within countries
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list alternate language and dialect names
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specify the three-letter code from ISO 639-3
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estimate speaker populations
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give genetic classification of the language
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describe language use and viability
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identify writing scripts used
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cite availability of literature and other products of language development
Language descriptions in the Ethnologue
- About the ..., ¶3
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INTERVIEW: Peter Senge on Education, Systems Thinking and Our Careers
Author interview by Sharlyn Lauby (2014.08/10) sharing "rationale ... [for] incorporating focus-related skill sets into education" (¶2).
- We live in a world of increasingly complex and intractable problems. These are especially evident in the environmental and social domains. They range from climate change and destruction of ecosystems, to scarcity of water and other critical natural resources, and to the disproportionate effects these growing scarcities are having on the poor of the world
- In this book..., ¶1
- We have deep intractable social issues, such as youth unemployment around the world and the growing gap between rich and poor. All these ultimately are economic in the same sense that all social and environmental issues ultimately show up in our economic system. No one is very happy with the ability of their economies to establish pathways of sustainable progress
- In this book..., ¶2
- In terms of people’s careers and opportunities both as employees and entrepreneurs, I believe the combined foundation of social, emotional, and systemic intelligence will be pivotal
- In the book, ¶3career opportunitiesmultiple intelligences
- businesses know very well that the skill sets they need today and in the future are very different than those in the past
- they will need students who can think for themselves, work in teams, work with cross-cultural boundaries, and especially work together to solve complex ill-defined problems
- our opportunity to be lifelong learners of systems thinking is unlimited
- For professionals..., ¶1life-long learning
- But for most of us, the way to take advantage of these opportunities is to start locally
- For professionals..., ¶2act locally
- How can we foster reflection, so that people can begin to think about their thinking, starting with ourselves?
- For professionals..., ¶2
- Without reflection, people tend to just assume their point of view is the right point of view and defend and argue from that point of view. Reflection is a key gateway that opens people to beginning to think together and move from just arguing for about who is right to collaboratively solving the problems we all face
- For professionals..., ¶3learning systems thinking: reflection
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The genre of research articles: The sections after methods | Pros Write
In this post, Campbell (2014.08.02) follows-up on The genre of research articles (2012.04.01) with explanations and illustrations of essential elements of such articles.
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Inspire Thoughtful Creative Writing Through Art | Global Digital Citizen Foundation
Great tips about using art for critical thinking and writing prompts
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Vision | Global Digital Citizen Foundation
"The Global Digital Citizen Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating responsible, ethical, global citizens for a digital world" (Vision, deck, 2014.08.27).
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"practical advice on planning, preparing and submitting articles for publication" (About this guide, p. 136)
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Delcore, Tenient-Matson, and Mullooly (2014) used findings from this study to delineate an on-campus space-use continuum that can be used for planning and renovating IT-related facilities, infrastructures, and services.
- 61 percent (463) of the total sessions were dominated by laptop or desktop use, while 39 percent (297) were dominated by mobile devices (phone, tablet, or iPod Touch)
- the continued ergonomic utility of large keyboards and screens for producing text and other digital output
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Beyond Knowing Facts, How Do We Get to a Deeper Level of Learning? | MindShift
Schwartz (2014.02.28) acknowledged that approaches fostering deeper learning are not new, and pointed out related competencies derived from a MOOC. She also highlighted challenges of assessing such competencies.
- The elements that make up this approach are not necessarily new — great teachers have been employing these tactics for years. But now there’s a movement to codify the different pieces that define the deeper learning approach, and to spread the knowledge from teacher to teacher, school to school in the form of a Deeper Learning MOOC (massive open online course), organized by a group of schools, non-profits, and sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation.
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So what defines deeper learning? This group has identified six competencies: mastering content, critical thinking, effective written and oral communication, collaboration, learning how to learn, and developing academic mindsets.
- “Before we assess, we need to know what we are assessing for,” said Marc Chun, program officer at the Hewlett Foundation. What does effective collaboration look like? What does it really look like to be a critical thinker? These skill are more oriented towards process than content, making them difficult to assess in a standardized way.
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"Vision of Humanity is a strong proponent of the need to further study, advocate and act on peace. It groups together a number of interrelated initiatives focused on global peace which enjoy the support of a wide range of philanthropists, business people, politicians, religious leaders and intellectuals. It brings a strategic approach to raising the world’s attention and awareness around the importance of peace to humanity’s survival in the 21st century" (A word from our founder, Steve Killelea, ¶3, 2014.08.26).
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Common ESL Mistakes - Business Insider
"Based entirely on ESL essays, the researchers [at MIT and Technion] were able to create a language similarity tree, showing the close links between, for instance, Japanese and Korean. Their language similarity tree looks remarkably similar to one based on data from The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)."
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Step 7: Images, copyright, and Creative Commons | Edublogs Teacher Challenges
"Information on this page 1 Intro to copyright, fair use and images in posts 2 Intro to creative commons 3 Flickr Creative Commons Images 4 Finding Creative commons images 5 Adding images from Compfight to posts 6 Adding images using the Compfight plugin 7 Free and public domain images 8 Attributing free and public domain images 9 Sources of free and public domain images 10 Using own images 11 Using student photos online 12 Your Task "
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The Ultimate Directory of Free Image Sources - The Edublogger
"Leeman's July 9, 2014, Edublogger post pointed to a number of valuable sources of free images. Yet I'm wondering whether this resource wouldn't survive and possibly even grow if it were to provide seed content for a broad collective endeavour. Some parallels that spring to mind are Levine's 50+ web ways to tell a story wiki (http://50ways.wikispaces.com/50Contribute), and Tom Barrett's interesting ways crowd-sourcing endeavours (http://edte.ch/blog/?page_id=424)."
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Our 3 Favorite Free Online Image Editors For Education - The Edublogger
Teitelman's three top picks for free, easy-to use, online tools for editing images were: 1. Picadillo, 2. Pixlr, and 3. Fotor. Comments also mentioned a fourth, PicMonkey< three or four time in a fortnight.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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How could SLA research inform EdTech? | ELTjam
In this 2014.06.16 guest post and extensive follow-up comments about an evolving educational technology rubric, Thornbury draws upon second language acquisition literature to generate "a list of 'observations'" (¶3), upon which in turn to base general questions about the "fitness for purpose" (¶1) of various products and services available to facilitate and support language learning.
- An affordance is neither a property of a specific context nor of the learner — it is a relationship between two.’
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MultiBrief: Tips for focusing ELL student presentations
In this July 30, 2014, article, Sullivan shares tips for teachers coaching learners on effective presentation development, practice, and delivery, along with numerous set phrases that presenters in general can use.
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Practitioner research in TESOL: 7 ways to get started
In this August 2014 TESOL Connections article, Garton advocates systematic, principle-based practitioner research and, drawing upon the TESOL Research Agenda, suggests a variety of ways to begin.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Checklist for Evaluating Language Learning Technology Materials
Download from EnglishCentral blog post: Webinar: Evaluating language learning technology (2014.07.29)
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Screenr | Instant screencasts: Just click record
Tool for making ree screencasts up to five minutes long–requires Java which runs only on 64 bit browsers (not Chrome).
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‘Better English equals better pay’ | GulfNews.com
This Gulf News business section article by Cleofe Maceda (2014.07.28) seemed to promote Pearson's Global Scale of English (GSE) for use by recruiters, yet made no mention of "pay" in the article itself.
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Recruitment experts said that companies are filtering out applicants with below-average English skills. This is especially true in the UAE, which is increasingly becoming one of the most popular destinations for multinational firms and business startups.
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Colin Burcher, head of programmatic marketing, EMEA, at Google, said that one of the preferred requirements they look for when hiring employees is the ability to speak and write in English.
“Being part of a global team, it is crucial that we share knowledge and collaborate across regions. It is therefore important that all team members are able to communicate in a single language,” Burcher said in an emailed statement to Gulf News.
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Sunday, August 03, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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"Project-Based Learning is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges. With this type of active and engaged learning, students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying" (Project-Based Learning [PBL], ¶1). "Wikispaces Classroom provides a simple structure that allows you to create projects, define teams, assign students and manage them all through successful completion of their projects. Starting from pre-built templates, or a blank slate, students can work in private groups until their work is due. At the end of the project you can share the results with the rest of the class or even parents and other participants" (PBL, ¶2). "Our formative assessment reporting let you track student progress on their projects in real-time. You'll know which students are succeeding, which are falling behind, and how much they are contributing to their projects so that you can help remediate, motivate, and challenge when you most need to" (PBL, ¶3).
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Try, try again? Study says no | McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
"The findings support a theory of language acquisition that suggests that some parts of language are learned through procedural memory, while others are learned through declarative memory" (Turning off effort, ¶1, 2014.07.25).
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Welcome | Global Issues in Language Education
The Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) GILE SIG "works to promote global awareness, international understanding, social responsibility and action to solve world problems through content-based language teaching drawing on fields such as global education, peace education, environmental education and human rights education" (Main page, Welcome, ¶1, 2014.07.10).
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Provides links to latest comprehensive progress report, archive of previous reports, and related websites
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Government homepage
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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How to Write for ELT Magazines: English Advantage
In this post, Burns introduced "a wonderful [28 min.] video that presents a very clear outline of how to write an article that can get published in a magazine like Voices or TESOL Connections" (¶1, 2014.07.14).
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Tomorrow's Professor eNewsletter: 1345. Let's Get Ready for Summer Writing
"The posting below looks at creating a summer plan to be more productive in your academic writing. It is by Kerry Ann Rockquemore*, PhD, President and CEO of the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity" (Folks, ¶1, 2014.07.14).
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CloudFlare pricing plans | CloudFlare | The web performance & security company
Four plans from free to enterprise
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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How To Learn A Language Fast: The 4 Steps To Fluency
In this post, Oli introduces a four-step guide to becoming fluent in additional languages. The first step focuses on sound and writing systems; the second, on basic lexis and syntax; the third, on what is personally relevant; and the fourth, "coming soon," on communication.
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Language Center Design and Management in the Post-Language Laboratory Era | IALLT
Kronenberg, Felix. "This author argues that language centers should not so much be driven by technology, which is difficult to predict and support, but rather focus on pedagogical innovation and development, of which technology may be an integral part. By doing so, language centers may be able to gain more agency and influence and be less prone to technological disruptions, helping to set the stage for a transformed language center" (Conclusion, ¶3, 2014.07.08).
Sunday, July 06, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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This page at the College Writing Center at Potsdam, the State University of New York, has links to numerous writing handouts. For example, there's a handout illustrating the use and misuse of apostrophes and commas, and another explaining and illustrating the use of transitions.
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College Writing Center: Websites on Writing
This page at the College Writing Center at Potsdam, the State University of New York, has links to numerous writing websites. For example, there's link to the Purdue OWL resource page for students and teachers of English as a second language.
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This presentation covered: Changes in the 6th Edition General Manuscript Instructions Common grammar/punctuation mistakes References IN text Quotations in text Reference List Bias in language Helpful tools for writing
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Pediatrics Group to Recommend Reading Aloud to Children From Birth - NYTimes.com
"[M]any parents do not read to their children as often as researchers and educators think is crucial to the development of pre-literacy skills that help children succeed once they get to school" (¶5, 2014.06.30).
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Winter 2013 AJET Opinion Exchange Meeting | AJET
"From 2020, there will be 2 major changes to the current education model: 1. English education at elementary school will begin in the 3rd and 4th grade, with ‘Foreign language activities’. 2. For elementary school 5th and 6th grades, English will be taught as a subject in 3 lessons per week. MEXT is developing curriculum content and textbooks for the English subject to be taught in the 5th and 6th grades. One of the goals of this new system will be for students to progress through the Eiken test levels to the second and pre-first level by the time they graduate from senior high school. In addition, to support this goal, English language classes at junior high school will be conducted primarily in English, as they are done now at the senior high school level" (Changes in English Education, ¶¶ 2-4).
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HowStuffWorks "10 Wrong Grammar Rules Everyone Knows"
In this post, Kershner explained two hands-full of grammar points on which prescriptions and usage often are at odds.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Prezi - Blog - The #PreziTop100 Online Resources Every Presenter Should See
Folks at Prezi have compiled a list of popular and high quality resources for presenters and presenters-to-be, and used bold typeface to flag those they deemed to be the best in each of four categories: Articles and BlogsBooksPresentationsPodcasts and Videos
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Learn to Type | Keyboarding | Free Typing Tutor and Typing Lessons
"TypingWeb is a free online typing tutor & keyboarding tutorial for typists of all skill levels. TypingWeb includes entertaining typing games, typing tests, and free official typing certification" (deck, 2014.06.13).
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Referencing sof[t]ware (University of Birmingham)
This publicly accessible intranet library resource introduces Endnote, Reference Manager, RefWorks, and other software
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Literature searching - University of Birmingham
Includes a "Step by step guide to an effective search strategy"
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MedlinePlus - Health Information from the National Library of Medicine
"A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health"
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Blogging as Pedagogy: Facilitate Learning | Langwitches Blog
In this post, Tolisano stipulated, "Blogging should not be an add-on, not an isolated project, but should be seen as PEDAGOGY" (¶1, emphasis in original). She lauded blogging for its affordances facilitating learning through reading, writing, reflecting, and sharing.
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This page introduces four guides for student writers: a Research Guide, a Writing Guide, a Citation Guide, and a Topics Guide.
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Reflective Writing | UNSW Current Students
This UNSW Academic Support page is one in a series of short pages defining and exemplifying reflective writing. Topics include:What is reflective writing?How do I write reflectively?Examples of reflective writingThe page entitled "How do I write reflectively?" lists resources for learning about mind-mapping.
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Motivating kids to learn English is vital for the country's future growth - The Nation
This is an opinion piece that highlighted findings from a case study of 9th graders in Bangkok, Thailand. The study focused on students levels of motivation to develop their abilities to communicate in English.
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10 Tips to Transform Your Presentations - Presentation Software that Inspires | Haiku Deck
Nested under tip number nine are ten more tips to keep in mind for every presentation (9. 10 Tips).
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Changes to visa language testing | Neos Kosmos
This June 6, 2014, article pointed out two English language test options for Australian visa applicants, namely the TOEFL Internet-Based Test (iBT) and the Pearson Test of English (PTE) Academic version. Those are in addition to the Advanced Cambridge English Exam (CAE).
Sunday, June 08, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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The guidelines, model citations, and formatting tips in this section of EasyBib resources cover a range of reference types from books to websites: Fundamentals How to format an APA works cited list Quick Guide Parenthetical Citations Web Rules Bible Blog Book Chapter Database Dictionary Encyclopedia Film / Online Interview Journal Lecture Magazine Musical Recording Newspaper Photo / Digital Image Report Thesis/Dissertation TV/Radio Broadcast Website (2014.06.02)
Sunday, June 01, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Leanpub uses imports and markdown to create PDF, ePub, and Mobi versions of your work, which you may publish at any stage of development.
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53+ Free Image Sources for Your Blog and Social Media Posts | Courtney Seiter
Courtney Seiter listed dozens of repositories and tools for finding and creating images and media.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Taking a stand against spam (Wikispaces Blog, 2012.07.09)
"f your account is not verified and you would like to have publicly viewable wikis, you’ll see a prompt when you try to make a wiki Public asking you to verify your account. This will require you to pay $1. The $1 is one-time only and covers your user account and all the wikis you create. It’s the easiest and most effective way for us to identify you as not being a spammer."
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Popularity of English as foreign language grows
News from Finland, the Helsinki Times
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Tomorrow's Professor eNewsletter: 1324. Mindsets Toward Learning
- In addition to adopting the strategies and techniques that will help you grasp and remember information, you need to understand something about yourself as a learner that we believe will result in a fundamental change in the way you learn
- The next time you take a class on a subject you fear because you think you are not "smart" in that area, keep in mind that practice can make a huge difference in your learning success. The class may not be easy for you, but if you have some background knowledge in the subject or take the time to learn some background information (e.g., through learning development courses or tutoring) and you work hard (keep a growth mindset), there is no telling what you will achieve
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Monday, April 21, 2014
If you're talking 'bout a learning revolution, count Steve in!
Celebrating failure itself, of course, makes no sense; nor does never allowing for it. Education is a choice we make in how we think about learners. If we want learners who will take risk, build their skills and talents, and then learn to live their lives fully as contributors and creators, we'll recognize that they need to learn to prepare [for] and take risks, and that failures are an inevitable part of that process.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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SHERPA/RoMEO - Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving
"a wonderful search engine that has been around for over a decade now, providing information to authors who want to learn more about the copyright and open access policies of journals" (Lawson, Ask RoMEO…, ProfHacker blog, 2012.10.16)
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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Humanising Language Teaching Magazine: A Case Study of Team Teaching Perspectives
Okamoto, Michael. (2014). A case study of team teaching perspectives. Humanising Language Teaching Magazine, 16(2). Retrieved April 10, 2014, from http://www.hltmag.co.uk/apr14/mart01.htm
- the results from the survey are based on t-test, ANOVA, and frequency of replies and not on Spearman’s Rank-order correlation method due to the fact that there were not an adequate number of participants to ensure accurate results
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Sunday, April 06, 2014
Diigo bookmarks (weekly)
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The Mindset list is "a globally reported and utilized guide to the intelligent if unprepared adolescent consciousness" (home page, Welcome to the Beloit College Mindset List for the entering class of 2017, ¶2, 2014.04.01). Previous Lists are available through a link in the sidebar on the home page.
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Tomorrow's Professor eNewsletter: 1317. Writers Groups: Composing a Balanced Faculty
Though focused primarily on "faculty learning communities ... on two-year college campuses," this article may help a wide range of group types envision benefits and get started.
- Writers groups can bring faculty members together for dedicated individual writing time, team brainstorming sessions, reading and discussions of books designed to improve writing productivity, and peer review of works in progress. By creating a supportive interdisciplinary group for idea exchange, writers groups rely on internal expertise, inspire interdisciplinary discussions, and create community (Benson-Brown, 2006). In addition, scheduled writing time that leads to peer review of works in progress creates accountability that helps some faculty finish writing projects that otherwise might have languished.
- Writers groups raise awareness in participants by helping them to see challenges faced by student writers and by offering them an opportunity to reflect on teaching through their writing activities.
- One basic success has been use of a facilitator to set meeting schedules, obtain meeting space, and keep group members on task via their commitment to participate at regular times.
- At colleges where a writers group is faculty driven, the leader is unlikely to be compensated by anything more than a line on his or her curriculum vitae, though perhaps this is not insignificant, given that leadership roles are frequently considered in tenure and promotion.
- While some faculty in writers groups participate because doing so helps them to schedule time to work on projects, others need something different from the community: a group of peers who can review drafts and offer feedback for editing and revision. Even in interdisciplinary FLCs, the peer-review function can be very useful to members, providing them with commentary from a variety of perspectives.
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