Hint: use the same username and password you use for everything else (except your bank account).

First, create a bookmark folder labeled HS Accounts in your bookmarks toolbar on Firefox:

Firefox >

Bookmarks >

Bookmark this page >

Click Expand Triangle (Right of "Create In")

Bookmarks Toolbar >

New Folder >

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Add

Here we go. A Baker's Dozen Bookmarks:

• Join the KIS 1:1 laptop Diigo group so we can play with the million life-sa ving ways you can use this for yourself or your classes.


•  Install the Firefox Diigo toolbar.


• Restart Firefox.


• Click "install"


• On Diigo Toolbar, click dropdown triangle > SHOW ANNOTATIONS > GROUPS > 1:1 Laptop


• See anything different?  Hover over it

• Click "install"


• On Diigo Toolbar, click dropdown triangle > SHOW ANNOTATIONS > GROUPS > 1:1 Laptop


• See anything different?  Hover over it

At their best, adverbs spice up a verb or adjective. At their worst, they express a meaning already contained in it:

• "The blast completely destroyed the church office."


• "The cheerleader gyrated wildly before the screaming fans."


• "The accident totally severed the boy's arm."


• "The spy peered furtively through the bushes."

Consider the effect of deleting the adverbs:

• The blast destroyed the church office.


• The cheerleader gyrated before the screaming fans.


• The accident severed the boy's arm.


• The spy peered through the bushes.

In each case, the deletion shortens the sentence, sharpens the point, and creates elbow room for the verb.

A half-century after his death, Meyer Berger remains one of great stylists in the history of The New York Times. One of his last columns describes the care received in a Catholic hospital by an old blind violinist:

The staff talked with Sister Mary Fintan, who (in) charge of the hospital. With her consent, they brought the old violin to Room 203. It had not been played for years, but Laurence Stroetz groped for it. His long white fingers stroked it. He tuned it, with some effort, and tightened the old bow. He lifted it to his chin and the lion's mane came down.

The vigor of verbs and the absence of adverbs mark Berger's prose. As the old man plays "Ave Maria�"

Black-clad and white-clad nuns moved lips in silent prayer. They choked up. The long years on the Bowery had not stolen Laurence Stroetz's touch. Blindness made his fingers stumble down to the violin bridge, but they recovered. The music died and the audience pattered applause. The old violinist bowed and his sunken cheeks creased in a smile.

How much better that "the audience pattered applause" than that they "applauded politely."

Excess adverbiage reflects the style of an immature writer, but the masters can stumble as well. John Updike wrote a one-paragraph essay about the beauty of the beer can before the invention of the pop-top. He dreamed of how suds once "foamed eagerly in the exultation of release." As I've read that sentence over the years, I've grown more impatient with "eagerly." It clots the space between a great verb ("foamed") and a great noun ("exultation"), which personify the beer and tell us all we need to know about eagerness.

Adverbs have their place in effective prose. But use them sparingly.

Workshop

1. Look through the newspaper for any word that ends in �ly. If it is an adverb, delete it with your pencil and read the new sentence aloud.


2. Do the same for your last three essays, stories, or papers. Circle the adverbs, delete them, and decide if the new sentence is better or worse.

Like all parts of speech, verbs are strongest when
they are precise and concrete. For verbs, "concrete" is the quality
of expressing real movement in the real world--or in fiction, the
world we accept as real. In other words, strong verbs tell us
exactly what is done and that is a real action.

Verbs have a natural hierarchy, from strongest to weakest:

• Doing (strongest)
• Saying
• Thinking or feeling
• Being done to
• Being (weakest)

This example should illustrate the hierarchy of verbs
in reverse order (from weakest to strongest):

• Jim was sick.
• Jim was being made sick by the clam dip.
• Jim felt sick.
• "I feel sick," Jim said.
• Jim vomited on the Persian rug.

The strongest verbs express actions in the real
world. The weaker verbs express less real-world action. At the
bottom are the being verbs which express either no action or very
little.

As an exercise, revise a couple of pages (about
500 words) of your writing so that verbs which are not already
doing or saying verbs are raised at least one level in the
hierarchy wherever this is possible.

Based on the results of the study conducted by Ede and Lunsford
[39], seven organizational patterns for collaborative authoring were
identified. These patterns are:

1. the team plans
   and outlines the task, then each writer prepares his/her part and the group
   compiles the individual parts, and revises the whole document as needed;
   
2. the team plans and outlines the writing task, then one member prepares
   a draft, the team edits and revises the draft;
3. one member of the team
   plans and writes a draft, the group revises the draft;
4. one person
   plans and writes the draft, then one or more members revises the draft
   without consulting the original authors;
5. the group plans and writes
   the draft, one or more members revise the draft without consulting the
   original authors;
6. one person assigns the tasks, each member completes
   the individual task, one person compiles and revises the document;
7. 
   one dictates, another transcribes and edits. Results from the study
   indicated that the percentage of writing groups that use these methods often
   or very often range from 3% (method 5) to 31% (method 3).

Survey one, which was administered to a large group of writers
(approximately 800), provides information on the amount of time spent on the
various phases of the writing process. The results show that generating
ideas (14%), note-taking (13%), organizational planning (13%), drafting
(32%), revising (15%), editing (13%) contribute to the total writing
process. Ede and Lunsford [39] also examined co

llaborative authoring and the results
indicates that the level of satisfaction in the group writing process is influenced by eight items:

• the degree to which goals are articulated and shared;
  
• the degree of openness and mutual respect;
  
• the degree of control the writers have over the text;
  
• the degree to which writers can respond to others who modify the text;
  
• the way in which credit (directly or indirectly) is acknowledged;
  
• the presence of an agreed upon procedure for managing conflicts and
  resolving disputes;
  
• the number and types of (bureaucratic) constraints imposed on the authors--
  deadlines, technical/legal requirements, etc., and;
  
• the status of the project within the organization.

The Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), which
began five years
ago and provides
each seventh-grade
student in the state
with a laptop, has
also been undergoing
evaluation, with two groups working in tandem to measure
its success, says Bette Manchester, director of special projects
for the Maine Department of Education. The first group, the
Center for Education Policy, Applied Research, and Evaluation
at the University of Southern Maine, looks at how the
technology is being used, viewed, and accepted at the state's
middle schools. Among the findings, which can be found
here, the CEPARE report states:

"There is a growing body of evidence that Maine's Learning
Technology Initiative is impacting teachers, students, and
learning in many positive ways:

• Teachers are more effectively helping children achieve
  Maine's state learning standards.


• Students are more motivated to learn, are learning more,
  and learning it more deeply.


• Students are acquiring 21st-century skills.


• The 1-to-1 laptop program is bringing about positive
  change in the acquisition of knowledge."

Machester says the state continues to work with CEPARE
to measure results at particular schools, noting that the center
evaluates schools individually rather than the program as
a whole. "We chose not to just look at statewide student
achievement," she says, "because that doesn't tell the whole
story. Plus, doing those types of assessments is very, very
expensive."