WinK Core: Weblogging in Kumamoto

"If you'd like to revert to your previous template with all the layout customizations intact, just click "Revert to previous template." Choosing a new template when going back to the traditional look will not preserve the customizations you've made to your layout, so we suggest making a backup of your traditional template by going to Template, and clicking on "Backup/Restore." If you're using the old user interface, you can find this option under Design | Edit HTML."

Reprinted from the Academic Author newsletter of the Text and Academic Author Association

Janet Lee proposes five options to consider in case five paragraph essays are what you're calling on students to produce. 

"Grammar-Quizzes.com is an open educational resource for understanding, learning and practicing English grammar through the use of current event stories, pictures, contrastive grammar points, sentence diagrams, and self-quizzes. Originally written for intermediate non-native speakers, Grammar-Quizzes now includes practices for native speakers" (Mission, ¶1, 2012.03.26). "Grammar-Quizzes.com is an open educational resource for understanding, learning and practicing English grammar usage. These materials present simple grammar concepts and are most appropriate for non-native speakers, but also include practices that could be used for K-12 native speakers" (Mission, ¶1, 2012.01.05).

Pozin, Illya. (2013). Common grammar mistakes that make you look dumb. Retrieved March 8, 2013, from from https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130304153126-5799319-common-grammar-mistakes-that-make-you-look-dumb

Clear and concise introduction to using Present.me for creating and distributing video commentary on uploaded documents (.pdf, .ppt, .pptx, & Google Docs).

At present, there are six "How To's" on this page, namely how to: 1. record your 1st presentme, 2. change our camera & microphones settings,  3. record if your network is slow,  4. make an edit, 5. share a presentation, and 6. make a presentme private.

"One-click screen capture recording on Windows or Mac computers with no install for FREE!" (Make it Easy, ¶1, 2013.01.25).

"A book review summarizes the book's content, examines the author's intent in writing it, and expresses the reviewer's opinion about to what extent the author succeeded in conveying the intent or communicating a message. Just like any other piece of writing, a book review requires a lead paragraph that will attract the reader's attention..." (para. 4-5).

"UMW Blogs is a publishing platform available to any member of the University of Mary Washington community. Based on the open-source system, WordPress, it allows any faculty member, student, or staff employee to create a blog, a course or project site, or professional Web presence. We invite you to create an account and start exploring!" (About, ¶1)

Davis (2012.10.22) supports her assertion, "For my money (which usually means free), blogging provides the best venue for teaching student writing" ( ¶1).

Complete, step-by-step demonstration and instructions for getting started with WordPress: sign-up, site navigation, blog creation, creating and deleting posts, adding categories and tags (labels), using views, tabs, and filters, using pages, creating links, adding images, and embedding videos (23 short episodes).

"Pics4Learning is a safe, free image library for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos and images for classrooms, multimedia projects, web sites, videos, portfolios, or any other project in an educational setting" (Free, copyright-friendly images for education, ¶1, 2012.11/01).

This post focuses on： The Weapons of War [Hate the metaphor!], The Problems with the Solutions, Setting Up for Failure, and Is There a Better Way? [title case applied]. "There's also an ethical issue with plagiarism checkers - the questionable use of students' work as a money maker for these services. ... Turnitin and the other services are making money off of content that they did not create. Perhaps worse, unlike Facebook where the content owner typically uploads it willingly, students have no say in whether their paper is uploaded by the teacher to the plagiarism checker. Many students and teachers are less than thrilled by this idea. Turnitin has specifically claimed fair use in defense of its use of this content, and in 2008 Turnitin's parent company iParadigms won a lawsuit brought against the company by four students claiming copyright violation. In its ruling, the court agreed that the content's use was indeed fair. 'It is clear that iParadigms' use of the Plaintiff's works has caused no harm to the market value of these works,' Judge Claude Hilton ruled at the time. That has not stopped faculty and students from having qualms about the use of students' papers in a for-profit enterprise." (The Problems with the Solution, para. 4-7)

"We might be tempted to suggest Grammarly for students or learners of English, but the fact that Grammarly has nothing to say about so many of our intentionally incorrect sentences leads us to the sad conclusion that Grammarly is useless for everyone. Grammarly might improve, but as of early 2012, we can't in good conscience keep advertising it on our site." (Conclusion, ¶2)

Quick summary of practices for consumers

"Book reviews typically evaluate recently-written works. They offer a brief description of the text's key points and often provide a short appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the work" (¶1, last edited 2011.09.27).

This study guide comprises "an interactive online tutorial designed to help ... [students] to understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. There are different versions of the tutorial available tailored to the needs of different subjects" (Don't cheat yourself, ¶1). It sports a Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales. Ready-made subject areas range from bio-science to psychology (2011.08.01).

Check out the tailor-made tutorial for English (and American studies)!

This journal article provides an example of tailor-made writing samples, and explains their use to teach students "the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable [writing] practices" (Abstract).

"In this interview, Tara shares her experiences as a public speaker, and her approach to creating impactful, memorable presentations" (deck, ¶1). This blog post incorporates a presentation loaded with tips for improving public speaking gigs (Tips for taking public speaking to the next level, ¶1).