Category Archives: E-Resource

Silly Questions are Serious Education

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office-2007-keys  |
office-2010-key  |
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office-2007-key  |
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office-2007-key  |
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office-2010-product-key  |
office-2010-ativation-key  |
office-2010-iso  |
office-2010-keys  |
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office-2013-product-key  |
office-2013-ativation-key  |
office-2013-iso  |
office-2013-keys  |
office-2016-key  |
office-2016-product-key  |
office-2016-ativation-key  |
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office-2016-keys  |

office-2007-key  |
office-2007-product-key  |
office-2007-ativation-key  |
office-2007-iso  |
office-2007-keys  |
office-2010-key  |
office-2010-product-key  |
office-2010-ativation-key  |
office-2010-iso  |
office-2010-keys  |
office-2013-key  |
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office-2013-ativation-key  |
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office-2013-keys  |
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office-2016-product-key  |
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office-2010-key  |
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windows-xp-SP3  |
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windows-7-ultimate  |
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cheap-windows-7-keys  |
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windows-7-os-download  |

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windows-xp-SP3  |
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windows-7-iso  |
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windows-7-download  |
windows-7-os-download  |

office-2007-key  |
office-2007-product-key  |
office-2007-ativation-key  |
office-2007-iso  |
office-2007-keys  |
office-2010-key  |
office-2010-product-key  |
office-2010-ativation-key  |
office-2010-iso  |
office-2010-keys  |
office-2013-key  |
office-2013-product-key  |
office-2013-ativation-key  |
office-2013-iso  |
office-2013-keys  |
office-2016-key  |
office-2016-product-key  |
office-2016-ativation-key  |
office-2016-iso  |
office-2016-keys  |

windows-xp-key  |
windows-xp-SP3  |
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windows-7-iso  |
windows-7-activation-key  |
windows-7-download  |
windows-7-os-download  |

windows-xp-key  |
windows-xp-SP3  |
Windows-XP-Home-Edition-SP3  |
windows-7-ultimate  |
windows-7-ultimate-sp1  |
windows-7-professional  |
windows-7-home-premium  |
cheap-windows-7-keys  |
windows-7-key-sale  |
windows-7-iso  |
windows-7-activation-key  |
windows-7-download  |
windows-7-os-download  |

office-2007-key  |
office-2007-product-key  |
office-2007-ativation-key  |
office-2007-iso  |
office-2007-keys  |
office-2010-key  |
office-2010-product-key  |
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office-2016-ativation-key  |
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office-2016-keys  |

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windows-xp-SP3  |
Windows-XP-Home-Edition-SP3  |
windows-7-ultimate  |
windows-7-ultimate-sp1  |
windows-7-professional  |
windows-7-home-premium  |
cheap-windows-7-keys  |
windows-7-key-sale  |
windows-7-iso  |
windows-7-activation-key  |
windows-7-download  |
windows-7-os-download  |

windows-xp-key  |
windows-xp-SP3  |
Windows-XP-Home-Edition-SP3  |
windows-7-ultimate  |
windows-7-ultimate-sp1  |
windows-7-professional  |
windows-7-home-premium  |
cheap-windows-7-keys  |
windows-7-key-sale  |
windows-7-iso  |
windows-7-activation-key  |
windows-7-download  |
windows-7-os-download  |

 

What kind of car should a turtle drive?”

This is the kind of difficult questions our students need to answer. No, seriously.

Yes, it’s a silly question, and the answer doesn’t really matter, not the way that we think the answers should matter at school. The student could answer “a Kia” or “a mo-ped” or “a Maserati” and none would be better than the others.

What matters is being able to answer the question in the first place. There are a couple basic words to know – the nouns car and turtle, the verb drive, and the what that tells us it’s a question without a yes/no answer. But then it gets weird.

First of all, turtles don’t usually drive. If you have put the sentence together correctly, you may be left wondering “Did I understand that? There’s no way that’s what the teacher means!” In order to answer it, a student needs to trust herself. She needs to say, “That’s a weird question, but I’m probably not messing up.”

Research has found that language learners who are comfortable with ambiguity do better than learners who want to know everything for sure. In human conversation, we can’t always know exactly what the other person means. If a friend asks How are you? are they just being polite or do they really want to know that your car broke down yesterday and you’re not sure how you’ll get to the dentist’s office today. When someone says I love snow! while shoveling out another 18 inches of the stuff, are they being honest or are they jokingly telling you exactly the opposite?

We want our students to know what they don’t know, and to be okay with that. We want our students to make their best guess sometimes, and to sometimes stop and ask for an explanation. We want them out in the world, using the language as they study it, without waiting a decade or two to perfect it.

Secondly, she needs to come up with an original answer. Worksheets are always asking about the color of apples or what time you eat breakfast – you can recite prepared answers, comfortable and confident because you’ve answered that question before. But here’s the ugly part of trying to speak English in the US: real people don’t follow worksheets. We’ve talked to so many new students who are overwhelmed by the number of responses to “How are you?” when all they’ve practiced was, “I’m fine. How are you?”

Prepared answers are an important first step. But they aren’t enough to really use the language in the wild. So when we ask a student what kind of car a turtle should drive, we are asking them to think of an answer right that moment, sifting through the English words they know (apple, sad, tomorrow, moped) and pick the best match. We are preparing them for the new friend who greets them with How’s it going? instead of How are you? or for the store employee who interrupts their grocery shopping to ask, Do you want some chorizo?

Updated: After I wrote this, I saw a new TED Talk by one of my favorite authors, Mac Barnett, who writes books about city-crushing science projects, lions who eat their illustrators, and the disadvantages of having a pet whale. Talk about silly! And he does – delightfully, but seriously. Silliness may be the fun part of educating children, but it has an important role in their development. So take a few minutes to watch the video and let an extremely talented writer convince you that leaving phone messages for a blue whale is a pretty good idea. Seriously.

E-Resource: Crash Course

Back to school time means a lot of student sighing over history and science classes (my students are probably too polite to insult English to my face, and most are very proud of their math skills).  How happy was I when I discovered Crash Course this summer?

Crash Course is a video series by the Vlog Brothers, John and Hank Green.  John is the author of some of my favorite YA novels, including An Abundance of Katherines, which we reviewed recently.  Hank runs several other YouTube channel including another of my favorites, SciShow.  Crash Course videos generally run between 10 and 15 minutes.

Hank uploads biology videos on Mondays, John does world history on Thursdays.  They talk quickly, but the videos have well-designed images and captions … and the images and captions both have little jokes added in, so pay attention and watch more than once!

It takes a special talent to make “The Endocrine System” or “Nationalism” funny and fascinating, but the Greens have exactly that talent.  If you need to take a break from your textbook, try a Crash Course video for fun.

Peter Spier Author Video

Random House publisher’s YouTube channel recently posted a video of famed book author and illustrator, Peter Spier: Peter Spier Author Video – YouTube.

I loved Peter Spier’s books growing up.  Following on yesterday’s discussion of allowing children to read books at all levels, I will confess that even after I was reading 300 page novels, I still spent hours pouring over Spier’s picture books, many of which have few or no words at all.  They taught me about the complexity of our world and the skill of a master storyteller, which continue to bring joy to my life.  They taught me to observe the details around me, a habit which helped me in many school subjects.

An interesting question arises at the 1:22 mark in the video.  Spier’s books are being released for ereaders and he says he was asked to color in the half of the illustrations which he had originally chosen to do in black and white.  This made me ask three questions … I don’t have the answers yet!  Maybe your family can think of some answers:

  1. Why were some illustrations in color and some in black and white, originally?
  2. Why did the publisher ask him to color the black and white ones for ereaders?
  3. What might the book gain or lose by having all illustrations in color now?

We have three Peter Spier books for our students to read: Tin Lizzie, Noah’s Ark (Caldecott winner for 1978), and People.  People was my personal favorite book for many years.

E-Resources: Finding Books

You just finished a book you love.  Maybe you’re an avid reader and you love most books.  Maybe reading isn’t your thing, so loving a book is a pleasant surprise.  No matter which person you are, I bet you want your next book to make you feel the same way.  You may already know about Amazon’s many ways to get you interested in buying more books (great recommendations to take to your local library or bookstore, too).  Here are several more ways to find similar books online.  (I’m going to use Gary D. Schmidt’s Okay For Now, which was my favorite book of 2011.)

If you are looking for a book, why not start at a library’s website?  One of the great things about the internet is that you can use websites from all over the world, so explore a little bit.  However, if you use your local site, most libraries allow you to place an online request, so you don’t have to go back to the library over and over, hoping that their copy of Divergent will be on the shelf (not to say that happened to me … 😉 ).  Libraries are using many of the same tricks as Amazon to show you other books you may want to check out:

My personal favorite is my home library’s page.  Perhaps I am biased, but look at all the information the Minuteman Library Network gives you!  Now, you do  have to look for it.  The top of the page doesn’t tell you …

…the awesome stuff hiding down at the bottom!

  • A link to Goodreads, which always make me smile.
  • Recommendations for similar books and – an unusual bonus – similar authors.
  • Lexile information to give you an idea of how difficult the book is (compare it with other books you have read and enjoyed).
  • Book lists.

This bottom material sometimes loads slowly, so give it a few extra seconds.

Like many libraries across the country, the Boston Public Library‘s catalogue includes links to book lists and tags, which the red arrows are pointing to. Libraries using the Bibliocommons service will have this material, including the New York and Seattle libraries, to randomly pick two.

After the Minuteman Library Network, my next favorite source of recommendations is Goodreads.

The right column, underneath the “Genres” list,  has “Readers also enjoyed…” recommendations:

Don’t forget to click through several pages of recommendations.  Many books have 10-20 suggestions.  I think the computer created this list by looking at the books read by someone who gave Okay For Now four or five stars, and seeing what else they rated highly.  This gives really good results, because they are recommendations from people you know you already agree with!

Goodreads also links to lists and forum discussions that mention the book; both are in the left (main) side of a book’s page:

… and …

These aren’t as reliable for finding “another book like that one,” but they may introduce you to a book you would never have thought to try.  Keep in mind that anyone can add to and vote on lists – I tend to ignore books that only have one vote, assuming that if they are a good match for my interests, I will see them recommended somewhere else.

If I don’t already have a pile of ten books to try next, I go on to:

  • Scholastic’s Book Wizard  More information about beginning and middle-grade books than YA.  Also has various reading level measures.
  • BookPig  A book rental service similar to Netflix (yes, there is a membership fee if you want to actually borrow the books).  Just like Netflix, they have recommendations based on other users’ borrowing habits, and you don’t have to be a member to browse.
  • Amazon  I put this last because, honestly, it is my last stop.  More than any of the other resources listed, I find Amazon’s suggestions are very popular books.  No, no – wait!  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t read the popular books!  I’m saying that the other resources listed above will give you both popular books and secret treasures.  But if you haven’t found a suggestion with the other websites, you might as well give Amazon a try.  I have had luck there, and you might too.  🙂

Recommended sites (click images):

 / /your local library

E-Resource: Professor Word

Whether you are preparing for a standardized test or English is not your first language, you will need to learn about words outside a vocabulary workbook.  Professor Word is a useful tool for studying the new words you find everywhere.   It highlights SAT/ACT/GRE words in your browser and enables pop-up definitions for all words.  It is in beta testing right now, which explains some awkward interface issues (it doesn’t seem to have an “off” switch), but it is still a valuable tool this back-to-school season.

ProfessorWord’s home page:

See those three red circles?  Those are my three favorite items on the homepage.

  • Run ProfessorWord:  Installing PW is as easy as dragging this green box to the browser toolbar.  Once you’ve done that, you can activate PW on any page; if you have multiple tabs open, it will only affect the active tab.
  • YouTube button: This brief video demonstrates the key features of PW.  Closed captioning is available and accurate, which is extra-helpful for ELL students.  The blue circle at the bottom points to an almost-identical video.  However, the YouTube version has information about installation, so use that one.
  • Blog: The blog offers great tips on taking your vocabulary beyond PW!

When you want to use ProfessorWord on a web page, click the bookmarklet you have added to the top of your browser.  A green PW icon in the upper left will tell you it’s running.  Clicking the icon opens a menu that allows you to turn SAT/ACT/GRE highlighting on and off, among other actions.

Clicking a word on the page opens a green bubble with the definition (here I am using it at Goodreads, a wonderful book website).  You can scroll in this bubble or expand it to show all of the text at once.  Notice that the bottom of the bubble links to three websites for more information.  I was so glad to see Merriam-Webster listed first because its definitions are better written than Dictionary.com.  (Dictionary.com also suffers because all the automated bells and whistles result in grammatical mistakes like “What is a jargon.”  Jargon is an uncountable noun, so using the indefinite article “a” is incorrect.)

Look – even the vocabulary words inside the bubble are highlighted!  It’s like the movie Inception …

Now, ProfessorWord is a great tool, but it is just a tool – you have to do the thinking.  In particular, make sure you study deeply enough for your goals.  Did you come across the word “jargon” on a page and wonder what the author meant?  For that, the green bubble gives you enough information.

However, if you are preparing for a standardized test, you need to take another look.  Of the three nouns, two seem to be about language and include descriptive words like particular, specialized and characteristic.  That middle definition definitely doesn’t fit with the other two.  Let’s click through to the Merriam-Webster website:

Click (and notice the spelling) …

Ahhh – this is a different word with a different pronunciation.  “Jargon” is only a secondary spelling of the word and would not be used on a standardized test.  Now you know that if you see “jargon” on the SAT, they are not talking about yellow gems.  (Personally, I am relieved.  I have taken all three tests and never heard about this gem!)

You may have also noticed the intransitive verb listing.  The fact that it is not in the green PW bubble is a hint: this is another very rare use that would not be used on a standardized test.  This is why you must use your human judgment when learning vocabulary and not rely on a computer’s inflexible program.

Recommended sites (click images):

 The site at the center of our conversation.

When you need a good online dictionary or thesaurus, head here.

Word Central is Merriam-Webster’s children’s dictionary & thesaurus.

 A book lover’s dream website; I’m online daily.

Reading Directions: Crafts & Cooking For Kids

Following directions (crafts, cooking, etc.) is an excellent way to practice reading and comprehension skills – if the result looks good, then you followed the directions well!

Plaid Kids’ Crafts has daily craft posts on their blog, as well as an email newsletter.  Plaid Enterprises makes craft supplies, so many of the posts name specific products.  However, any good crafter knows  that you can always find a substitute.

Nick Jr. has crafts and recipes for preschool-age children, so the directions are some of the simplest to follow.

Martha Stewart’s website also has many ideas for kids’ crafts, and Disney/ABC has sections on their family site for both crafts and cooking.

  

For cooking with kids, Spatulatta has both print and video recipes.  I recommend using both forms where possible as a way to check your English understanding – students who use more than one way of learning the information can also speed up their language learning.

Cooking With Kids includes much more than just the recipes, but one drawback is that it also refers frequently to several books by the site’s author.  Their handy icons helps children focus on the different kinds of information in a recipe.

Tip  Caution  Time Saver

I can’t end without mentioning one of my favorite blogs, although it doesn’t have the crafting directions that this post focuses on: Playing by the Book is written by a UK mother of two young children.  Most posts begin with a book review, and then discusses a craft activity inspired by the book.  Happily, many of the UK resources can also be accessed in the US.  For example, I try to catch the KidLit on the Radio programs on my smartphone or computer using TuneIn.  Added bonus: she has frequent book giveaways!

    

P.S. If you make a mistake and end up with a mess, you can always submit the results to CraftFail!  😉

Writing Wednesday: Figment.com

Figment is a free website for young writers ages 13 and up.  Once teens have registered, they can post their writing, read others’ writing, and participate in contests and writing groups.  It was started by two journalists from The New Yorker.

The Daily Fig is Figment’s blog, featuring book releases, popular culture, author interviews, and writing and art contests.

My favorite part of the Figment site is the Daily Theme.  This feature emails five writing prompts a week to subscribers.  Some come from professional writers; some offer photos for inspiration; some focus on one aspect of writing, such as character development or sensory descriptions.

Commonsense Media (an excellent website that helps educate children about the media: the advantages, the disadvantages, and how to understand the difference) has a review of Figment.  They suggest that parents can use Figment to begin discussions of a user’s digital footprint and how to respect each others’ creative work.

 

E-Resource: Zimmer Twins

Young movie makers will enjoy the Zimmer Twins website which provides animated clips and dialogue screens which kids can then assemble into their very own stories.  It is an entertaining way to practice writing and story-telling skills.

The basic site is free, although a paid membership is available (a nice touch: they do not automatically charge your credit card when your membership period ends).  Unfortunately, Zimmer Twins requires Flash, so it cannot be used on any iOS devices.  When signing up, children are required to provide a parent or guardian’s email address, and they cannot use their own names for their accounts – the site takes kids’ safety seriously and begins teaching them the basics of Internet safety and courtesy.

With paid membership, you get more clips to choose from, but I actually like the existing limitations.  There is still a huge selection with the free account, and the teacher in me appreciates the ways students have creatively used what’s available to tell an infinite variety of stories.

Try using Zimmer Twins to make any of these movies:

  • Write a story set in the future … or the past.
  • Write a sequel to someone else’s movie.
  • Tell the true story of something that really happened to you.
  • Tell a story backwards.
  • Recreate your favorite book.

Have fun!