WinK Core: Weblogging in Kumamoto

"The Academic Word List (AWL) was developed by Averil Coxhead at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The list contains 570 word families which were selected because they appear with great frequency in a broad range of academic texts. The list does not include words that are in the most frequent 2000 words of English (the General Service List), thus making it specific to academic contexts. The AWL was primarily made so that it could be used by teachers as part of a programme preparing learners for tertiary level study or used by students working alone to learn the words most needed to study at colleges and universities." This page gives a compact listing of all the word families in the AWL, divided by sublist, each word linked to a simple definition page.

a couple of posts in Japanese on the Academic Word List

the official AWL site

Offers three major tips for peace of mind when writing for or in online environments.

Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus has launched an innovative new tool called VocabGrabber (http://vocabgrabber.com) that helps teachers and students target the key vocabulary from a text within seconds. Powered by the award-winning Visual Thesaurus software, VocabGrabber intelligently extracts words from any document and demonstrates how those words are used in context. It's a boon for language arts teachers, students of English at all levels of proficiency, or anyone who wants fresh insights into how language works. VocabGrabber is easy to use. Simply copy a passage (up to about 100 pages) into a box on the VocabGrabber web site (http://vocabgrabber.com), click the Grab Vocabulary button, and an interactive visualization of vocabulary words and phrases immediately appears. Or add a VocabGrabber button to your toolbar, and you can grab vocabulary words from a web page with one click. What makes VocabGrabber especially useful is the way in which the words are organized. VocabGrabber compares how often words appear in the text with the frequency of these words in standard written English overall. Grabbing the vocabulary from the United States Bill of Rights, for instance, highlights significant legal terms like probable cause and cruel and unusual punishment. Grabbing the opening of the Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist, meanwhile, will quickly zero in on words like workhouse, gruel, and pauper.

Easy to use tool for speed reading practice, with bookmarklet that automatically opens spreeder with any text you've selected in your browser

"Drop.io offers a simple upload widget that you can embed into your course blog or website" ( ¶2). Mr Byrne's 2010.02.25 post includes slideshow of "directions for installing the Drop.io upload widget on Blogger blogs and Edublogs blogs" (¶2).

Allows uploading photos plus voice recording, and generates embed-able widgets; free with username, password, and email registration 

Friesen, Norm. (2009). .... New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

includes narrative, genre, post-cognitivist psychology, phenomenology, and critical theory

10 tips for better password protection

In his "Blueprint for Change" economic recovery document, President Obama said that America "should lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access." Data indicates, however, that the U.S. is far behind other nations when it comes to providing broadband access for its citizens. Figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show a sharp decline in U.S. broadband access rank among its 30 member nations. In 2001, the U.S. ranked 4th, but by the end of 2008 had fallen to 15th place. As for speed, Akamai, one of the largest global networks, released its "Q3 2009 State of the Internet" report that shows the U.S. 18th with an average connection speed of 3.9 Mbps. In first place was South Korea, which clocked in at 14.6 Mbps. (America Lagging, ¶¶1-3)

Shows and tells ways attributing quotations of words or short passages about which you blog to their original authors with links and acknowledgements

Wordle of syllabus for Writing III-IV (2010-11)

Rick was asking about templates. Hopefully, because this is in blogger in draft, it will be a bit more compatible

eBooks Search Engine

"eLearning, Web 2.0, Blogging and the stuff in between" (tagline)

introduces a week-long experiment in "facilitating discussion through networked learning outside a closed discussion forum" (PB, Tools [SCoPE Moodle discussion], 19 March 2010, 09:06 PM

Univ. of Southampton's evaluation of a "Web 2.0 Service" offers a brief description and assessments from three perspectives: 1) accessibility, 2) disability-tailoring, and 3) activities for which Type with Me is useful, namely: a) Group Discussion; b) Text-based Editable Information [compilation], c) Note Taking, and d)Collaborative Writing.