(Mostly Edtech) Resources for English Education Professors & English Teachers by Todd Finley
From MBTI Type, here’s mine:
INFP: “Fanatic”
Always searching for an Answer with a capital A. Unlike the INFJ, they are usually openminded enough to realize the current one isn’t good enough after a few years.
From creative bastard:
It’s one of those slow days today. A little while ago I put together a little application on our phone system so that when a telemarketer calls in, I can transfer them to this extension and annoy the hell out of them. I thought about it a bit more and decided to make it a little more interesting, so I can get them to hold on the line as long as possible. Today I recorded a bunch of different voices sounding really interested in what a telemarketer would be offering. Have a listen.
From Techcrunch:
Google is adding a feature to its Google Books service today to allow PDF downloads of out-of-copyright books… To search the database of available full titles, go to books.google.com and click the “full view books” option when searching.
I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is…
I’m a fan of his short stories.
The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History,’ by Jonathan Franzen – The New York Times – Book Review – New York Times
Indeed the young Mr. Franzen comes across as less of a Snoopy — “the warm puppy who amused the others with the cute things he said and then excused himself from the table and wrote cute sentences in his notebook” — than as a kind of mean-spirited Lucy on steroids
Advantages? Google has its data center, Matt Glotzbach says
Photo by Jeffery Newbury
Instead of trying to displace the hundreds of millions of copies of Office installed on business PCs, Google will try to snare users once they start sharing the Word and Excel files they’ve created. “The right way to view Writely and Google Spreadsheets, especially in the context of a larger business, isn’t necessarily as a replacement for Word or Excel,” says Matt Glotzbach, head of enterprise products at Google. “They’re the collaboration component of that.”
From Cognitive Dissonance:
It’s getting harder to have grants funded because of the rules on defining “rigorous evidence” in educational research. Basically, it’s the medical “clinical trial” model. The reference document is a how-to guide for selecting interventions based on the quality of research behind them. Remember that NCLB REQUIRES that interventions be supported by relevant research.
First: The research MUST use randomized control experimental designs. This is not optional.
Second: The research MUST be done in at LEAST two schools, one of which is “similar” to the proposed application site.
What does that LOOK like when you’re trying to do the research?
As a researcher, I need to convince at least two schools that students should be assigned to a control and experimental group for regular instructional activities. The guidelines specifically indicate that lab-style applications are invalid and require that the research be done using “normal teachers.”
This definition was sent by Mahalia Breen:
The word Moodle was originally an acronym for “Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment,” which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It’s also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodle is a “Moodler.”
Pretty cool, huh?
I use Google Notebook to write out my lesson plans and save them for the following semester to tweak and review. I never knew where to put these before, and I like this place, because it’s so easy. I also hear good things about Clipmarks.
This handy utility installs as a tiny icon in the corner of your browser and gives you a way to quickly copy snippets of content, URLs, and nearly anything else you find to it. What’s cool is that all you have to do is highlight what you’re interested in, right click, and select “Note this” to copy it to your Notebook.To peek inside your Notebook, you can click the icon in the corner of your browser to open a small preview or choose to view the whole thing as a page. The thing I like best about it (and what I think you’ll find useful as well) is that your Notebook effectively “moves” with you from computer to computer. If you’re at work and want to remember a URL, right click & copy it to your Notebook – when you’re at home, log in to the Notebook and you’re ready to pick up where you left off with all information perfectly preserved.
