CBC RSS feeds. Browse the many RSS feed categories. Select at least one to be added to your blog’s sidebar.
To construct your Personal Universe Lexicon, start with a new post. You may wish to construct the list with pen and paper first and transfer it to your blog later. Begin by following these instructions:
Write down as many words as you can then sort the words into the categories outlined below. Complete each category. Write as quickly as you can.
Categories:
All the words on the list must
Use no adverbs. Use no plurals.
Keep track of the words with your blog. Move them around each other in the list every day for a week. Choose one word at random from the list; write what the word(s) sparks, what the juxtaposition of words builds for you.
Trackback/pinkback your list to this post.
Or rather, Audio in Posts.
They’re not iTunesey podcasts, yet, but they’re simple enough.
Your mp3 file must be less than 2MB and uploaded to your blog in the normal way.
Go find the menu in Dashboard–>Options–>Audio Player.
Read the check boxes, the third check box will automagically change your mp3 links in your posts to embedded flash players. Easy-peezy.
Find a “copyright-free” etext online at, say, Project Gutenberg or here or here
Start a new blog.
Parse your etext into manageable chunks and insert into your blog.
Add graphics and organizers. Edit theme. Voila.
Look at Castle of Otranto and The Jesuit Relations and the History of New France as examples.
Search for works by the following at Gutenberg:
Austen, Jane
Barrie, J.M.
Brontë, Charlotte
Brontë, Emily
Dickens, Charles
Burroughs, Edgar Rice
Carroll, Lewis
Chesterton, G. K
Christie, Agatha
Twain, Mark
Collins, Wilkie
Connor, Ralph
Conrad, Joseph
Corelli, Marie
Defoe, Daniel
De la Mare, Walter
Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir
Eliot, George
Galsworthy, John
Haggard, H. Rider
Hardy, Thomas
Henty, G. A.
James, Henry
Jerome, Jerome K.
Joyce, James
Kingsley, Charles
Kipling, Rudyard
Leacock, Stephen
Mansfield, Katherine
Maugham, W. Somerset
Maupassant, Guy de
McClung, Nellie L.
Melville, Herman
Montgomery, L. M.
Moodie, Susanna
Moore, Clement Clarke
Nesbit, E.
Oppenheim, E. Phillips
Potter, Beatrix
Sabatini, Rafael
Scott, Walter, Sir
Shaw, George Bernard
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Sinclair, Upton
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Stoker, Bram
Swift, Jonathan
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Trollope, Anthony
Wallace, Edgar
Walpole, Horace
Wells, H. G.
Wilde, Oscar
Wodehouse, P. G.
Woolf, Virginia
Yonge, Charlotte Mary
What a funny word, “bloggiest”. Should I say it is a “most bloggy” start to the year? Does correct English matter in a blog?
All students I teach have begun a blog, of sorts. For the most part, I’ve insisted the content of the blog must be school or course related, the myriad responses to Macbeth fit this category. Other responses are more like “snowflakes”, snowflakes is my term to describe the phenomena of no two responses to the same prompt being identical.
I aggregate(not related to the term aggravate) RSS feeds from each class to aid in tracking down assigned work. Each student has a spreadsheet I term the Data Collector that averages rubric scores and totals moderated comment feeds, too. I then collect the Data Collectors periodically to determine scores to enter into GradeLogic. The data collectors serve a dual purpose, a foundation to build a grade obviously, but a powerful device to bring a landslide of peer pressure and collaborative assistance on the lazy, slower, or reluctant bloggers. Those that finish first have always shown a willingness to “share their secrets” with others.
Students are also instructed to collect and deposit appropriate comments on each other’s blogs, too. It is proving to be a fine art to learn to comment. Last year I found the aspect of commenting to be more valuable than the creation of the posts. Comments must contain evidence of critical thinking, I said, not simply “gladhanding”. If you troll the blogs you’ll notice the biggest difference right now between a veteran blogger and a newbie is the quality/quantity of appropriate comments. Students complete work earlier to benefit from positive/any attention from peer “commentors”. Any student who doesn’t get their blog post done on time, gets punished by receiving low or no rubric scores from their peers. However, unlike class discussions, the very nature of blogging allows anyone to catch up at any time. The students themselves seem to have an unofficial pecking order for who writes the best comments. They have internalized their own standards for what they will accept as a comment on their blog and are very persuasive at convincing each other to measure up. A few students are positively verbose and comment on all they can. Others choose fewer responses yet measure their words very carefully. Those that finish writing a post early, are left to hustle remaining students.
The grade 10s are shifting their attention to Keyboarding modules for a while, although I keep prodding them about “Turing Tests”. iGod is our most recent fascination.
The grade 9s get their prompts from Mrs. Fraser’s class then I help them become a bit more tech savvy.
The Grade 11s are in the midst of Macbeth and may see no reprieve for at least 2 more weeks, I figure. The more traditional assignments I’ve used for the last 14 years are as appropriate in a blog as they have ever been in my class. Doing it with blogs is just so cool!