The LTD Project Blog

The snapshot below represents content inspired by one of Tom Barrett’s Interesting Ways collections. It’s of a mindmap that I’ve whipped up with a tool scooped by Nik Peachey in his Tools for Learners collection (…SpiderScribe, 2011.06.22). A link to the actual mindmap is here. I can hardly wait to get permission to contribute it to Tom’s crowd-sourced Google Presentation: Interesting Ways* to Use Google Forms in the Classroom.

Google Forms in the Classroom

[79 words]

Though I don’t remember . . . where such a meme may have originated, nor where I cottoned on to it, nor what labels or tags the original meme suggested using, here goes, in hope that whatever mechanism(-s) the original author envisioned and implemented to identify and collate responses will serve to collect this one.

• Do explain clearly and completely what and why you wish your audience to comprehend;
• Don’t expect your audience to disambiguate references that you make in your messages or posts (a precept that I have intentionally violated in this one); and
• Duh! Focus your messages and posts on single, or unified, topics.

Happy meme-ing!

Paul

Catching up on An A-Z… through a feed I read in Google Reader, I happened upon another couple of interesting yet very different posts:

• A is for Aspect « An A-Z of ELT (2011.03.20), and
• E is for ELF « An A-Z of ELT (2011.04.03).

The firsts sports less text; it offers a six-minute video clip instead. The post is as yet uncategorized, but bears numerous grammar-related tags: “aspect, grammar, present continuous, present progressive, tense” (A is for Aspect, retrieved 2011.04.07).

The second, reflecting on TESOL conference offerings, is more of a read. It also is uncategorized, but the tags reflect what the acronym in the title stands for: “EIL, ELF, English as a Lingua Franca, English as an International Language, Global English, World Englishes” (E is for ELF, retrieved 2011.04.07).

There are plenty of other interesting posts where those come from – A to Z and back again, which remind me that conglomerated categories and tags on this blog still await chipping apart and sifting for keepers.

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to find a Gmail message from Blogger notifying me of a fresh comment on a welcome message post I’d made yesterday on a blog that I use for a writing course. However, the comment turned out to be spam – carefully targeted spam at that. The comment began with brief praise, shifted to general observations – arguably on topics related to the blog and the post, and ended with thanks followed by a link to an external site.

I followed another link in the notification message from Blogger to the post itself, only to find “0 comments” on it. So I opened the Comments tab in the blog dashboard, and found the comment of which I’d been notified by mail not in the Awaiting Moderation inbox, but in the Spam inbox, instead.

Blogger comment spam inbox

That too was a pleasant surprise, because somehow or other Blogger had picked up on the inappropriacy of that comment, and quickly if not immediately decided not to display it on the course blog. That is, even though I had set comment moderation to apply only on posts more than one day old. There is no evidence on the post itself to indicate that the comment ever appeared on it.

Following the discovery of that comment in the Spam inbox, I tried to follow the link that accompanied it to the comment author’s profile (Essay). It was no surprise to find no public Blogger profile for the comment’s author. While I allow comments from Registered Users (Blogger Dashboard: Settings: Comments), rarely have I found spammers with public profiles, and even when I have, I do not recall them ever displaying blogs of their own.

Thanks to Blogger for successfully implementing an anti-spam scheme last year (2010), I’m a happy Blogger blogger.

[299 words]

newhumanities Channel

Check out Richard E. Miller’s presentation for the Modern Language Association’s Presidential Forum, December 28, 2008, “to tell the story of how reading and writing have been transformed by the web” (YouTube, newhumanities, 2009.01.15), and see whether those are the kinds of reading and writing that we teach.

This Is How We Dream, Part 1

• Embedded
• Fullframe

This Is How We Dream, Part 2

• Embedded
• Fullframe

Screenshot from course wiki

The thumbnail image in the screenshot above adds color and variety to an extended and growing list of thematically related resources on a course wiki page. I found the picture using Compfight, retrieved the code from Flickr™, and embedded it in a widget in Wikispaces.

If all goes well, a screencast explaining the process follows (below). … Well, that sure didn’t work the way the way Sue says it does (Embedding Videos from Video Sharing Websites…, 2009.07.29).

So here’s a link to use to view it on the website:

• 2010-08-25_1538-FindingPicture (Screencast.com).

An outline for the screencast, derived from Freemind, appears below this snapshot of the mindmap/storyboard I followed:

Mindmap for screencast

Example of
Picture Finding &
Use with Permission

• ~ compfight.com
  • search for tags
  • keyword: world
  • options:
    • Creative Commons: Only
    • Seek Original: On
    • Safe Search: On
• ~ Flickr
  • Check License: “Some rights reserved” (sidebar)
  • Read owner’s explanation:
    • “All my images are copyrighted. If you intend to use any of my pictures for non-commercial usage, you have to sign them with © alles-schlumpf[.] It would be nice if you contact me first” (alles-schlumpf / Daniela Hartmann, c. 2009.05.28).

      “If you have any commercial usage, you need to contact me always first. USE WITHOUT PERMISSION IS ILLEGAL” (alles-schlumpf / Daniela Hartmann, c. 2009.05.28).

  • Get code
    • “Share this” (dropdown menu):
      • “Grab the HTML/BBCode[.]“
        • Select size:
          
          • in this case, “Thumbnail (67 x 100)”.
        • (Select HTML [default])
      • “Copy and paste the code below: …” (Flickr).
  • Post comments
    • BEFORE
      
      • “Great image! I’d like to use it on an English course wiki for university students I teach”
        (pabeaufait: c. 2010.08.24, 13:00, JST).
    • AFTER
      
      • “I used a thumbnail, linking back to Flickr, followed immediately by: ‘Global Player [/] © alles-schlumpf [/] Some rights reserved’” (pabeaufait: c. 2010.08.24, 17:00, JST).
• ~ Wikispaces
  • Widget: Other HTML
    • Code from Flickr
      • <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/29487767@N02/3574392846/” title=”Global Player by alles-schlumpf, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3161/3574392846_68f6ca215d_t.jpg” width=”67″ height=”100″ alt=”Global Player” /></a>
    • Title and rights statement (see comment 2 [above]) with links
      • ~ from title to picture page on Flickr
      • ~ from rights to Creative Commons

This quick post is to point out the addition of Scott Thornsbury’s blog to the LTD Project Blog’s Blogroll (in the sidebar). I’d had An A-Z of ELT in Google Reader for a while already, and decided to make a bit more of it than a private browsing location. For a description here on the awfully inert of late LTD Project Blog, I’ve called An A-Z of ELT, “Thought provoking observations and suggestions for [language] teacher development” (PB, 2010.07.31), while pondering where to put an auto-updating RSS feed display.

Instructional Designers’ Resolutions:
http://www.ltgreenroom.org/episodes/86 (includes show notes)

LearningTimes discussion (Re: Instructional Design Changes for the New Year?): http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=2283667 (login required)

LearningTimes show notes (LTGR Ep. #72 – “Instructional Designers’ Resolutions”): http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?go=2283652 (includes links to discussion, login required)

This piece developed in response to an invitation I’d received via LinkedIn to take the Language Teacher Development Wiki over to WikiEducator, a response starting like this:

Thank you for having taken a look at the LTD Project Wiki, as well as for your suggestion to bring it over to WikiEducator (… [author's name removed {PB}], personal correspondence …, Nov 21, 2009). While I haven’t assessed WikEducator in these terms before, you’re right; the community members, and especially people like you there, have a great deal of experience and expertise to offer. I appreciate the reminder. People using WikiEducator are a wonder to behold. …

And ending like this:

… I’m afraid that reasons for not following your suggestion, including a horrendous learning curve, outweigh currently perceivable benefits from porting one of many wikis over to WikiEducator.

On one hand, as you may know, I’m involved with several wikis in Wikispaces, the interface of which I find visually appealing, intuitive, and user-friendly enough for low-intermediate students of English as an additional language to use in the target language. Those wikis are in addition to a DokuWiki, MediaWikis, pbWikis, pmWikis, and a bit of dabbling in Zoho Wiki, too. In general, I’ve found developers at Wikispaces responsive to inquiries and suggestions.

On the other, the invitation I’d received precipitated wonder whether a massive translocation of wiki content from one engine to another would be feasible and easy, or better yet automated and reliable. A quick and dirty approach, I thought, would be to plant an RSS feed in a user page on WikiEducator, at least temporarily, to display content from selected wikis and blogs.

However, even after racking up years of experience with wikis, and having audited several introductory workshops about WikiEducator, I find MediaWikis hard to fathom, and WikiEducator – in particular – frustrating to attempt to navigate, understand, and use. For example, I opened a user page to edit it (still thinking of quickly planting an aggregate RSS feed over there), but running short on time could find no cancel option.

I thought a prominent “dismiss” link might do the job, but something else disappeared when I activated that. I searched for “dismiss,” and have found nothing so far except no “search” help on the Help:Contents page or All pages (Help namespace). Though the Practice editing page refers and links to “the user manual” (P.S.2), that link leads straight back to Help:Contents.

A circuitous and fruitless foray like that into WikiEducator suggests that its wiki engine [, {its} search engine,] and the collaborative venues in flux or stagnating around it (e.g.: WikiEducator policies, “Work in progress … last modified October 4, 2008″) may be too complex for comfort, too cluttered for practical use with English-as-an-additional-language learner collaborators, and too convoluted to unravel and reweave in what little time I have. I feel that, for the time being, the wiki pages I continue to develop, or to [archive or] disregard … [and allow to stagnate] as the case may be, are fine where they are.

Not long ago, Heather Ross asked about institutional social networking policies, and also about institutional access to third-party sites educators use.

What’s Your Institution’s / School’s Social Networking Policy (2009.08.17)

Though I tried commenting on that post, I got error messages twice, and then fedback to this effect, “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!” Since I’m unsure what got through, here goes again.

I thought Heather might be interested in an encapsulated gem I found the other day, and have described like this in Diigo:

Jenna McWilliams’ post frames and follows on from Steve Taffee’s post comprising Proposed Guidelines for Use of Social Networks by School Faculty and Staff (Blogg-Ed Indetermination, Social Networking Guidelines for School Employees, 2009.02.12). Her follow-ons focus “On ‘Misrepresentation’” and “On Course Use of Social Networking.”

on social networking guidelines … (2009.06.02)

The stimulus for Jenna’s post (Taffee, 2009.02.12) points further to a Facebook source, Faculty Ethics on Facebook, a group to which Taffee belongs.