The LLD Project Blog

A buddy in Vancouver, British Columbia pointed out this wonderful new channel on YouTube in a recent post on his blog (New Muppets Youtube Channel, 2009.11.24). The new channel has lots of short video selections to challenge your comprehension and entertain you.

I got a big kick out of this one, currently most viewed in a series which makes fun of various online activities and related expressions (Compiled Criticisms, 2009.11.23):

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A fellow teacher pointed out this awe-inspiring video of recreating a 19th century pictorial dictionary. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did.

Pictorial Webster’s: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

From the discovery of the 1898 International Dictionary to linotyping the entries to printing the last print on the vandercook to cutting the fingertabs of the deluxe edition, this video gives a quick overview of the process of creating the Pictorial Webster’s fine press edition.

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Today you tried some listening, reading, and viewing activities on the Go4English site. Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher in California, recommended that site in a blog post: Best Internet Sites for English Learners – 2008, Number six (2008.08.28).

Larry also has his own site, where he collects links to lots of other good sites for learners and teachers. I recommend browsing through his English Themes For Beginners and Early Intermediate learners. He says, “Most links on this page have both audio and text.”

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After making sure that the Class Feeds widget was still working (and no longer showing a link to jokes that I felt may be in bad taste), I rearranged and reformatted sidebar elements. I extended the Blogroll with fresh Pageflakes for ‘09-10, and a cross-link to The WinK Ning. I also expanded the listings to give you an idea where the links might take you.

I hope those changes makes navigation through this blog, and to related sites, easy for you. If so, you might want to make similar revisions in your own blog sidebars (Dashboard: Appearance: Widgets). If you have any questions about how add categories, links, and the like to your blog layouts, please ask in class.

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The feed widget in the sidebar works again! Please see: English VII-VIII & LLD Project Wikis and Blog. I replaced feeds in it from the two wikis with an aggregate of those two wiki feeds plus the feed from this blog. Clicking on the green button below will show a page with all the feed details.

xFruits aggregate feed

If you’d like to see what’s new on the public sites for English VII-VII whenever you open your own blog, you can add a widget just like the one on this blog to your sidebar:

1. Click on “Get this widget!” (here or below the widget).
2. Then, at the SpringWidgets site, click on the “Click Here to Get The Code” button.
3. In the “Share this Widget” menu of options, select HTML, and copy the code.
4. Open your blog dashboard (Site Admin): Appearance – Widgets.
5. Add a new Text widget to your sidebar.
6. Paste the HTML code into the new widget; make sure to put it in the text field, not the title field.
7. The text widget title is optional, but you must save changes to the widget before you close it.

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73 Ways to Become a Better Writer | Copyblogger (Mary Jaksch, 2009.07.27)

Thanks to Claudia Ceraso for social bookmarking this blog post. It’s replete with dozens of tips to improve our writing. Number 30 is one of my favorites.

Posted with Press This

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Thank you for your participation in selection of blogs for best titles, layouts, sidebars, posts, and pages. The pie chart for overall best shows a near tie between BLUE FITTER… (5) and the lodger is a bat (6). The spreadsheet below shows which blogs you and your classmates picked in each category (Data).

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Ever wonder whether people from around the world are visiting your blog? ClustrMaps can help you find out.

The thumbnail map in this post replicates a widget that I’ve just added to a sidebar, where it will remind me I’m writing for an audience. Getting one for your own blog is quite straight-forward. First you create a map; then you create a widget for it:

• Create a Map

1. Open your blog in a separate tab or window.
2. Click on the image above (Visitor locations); it links to the ClustrMaps site.
3. In the header, above the big map on that site, find “Create yours: ….”
4. Copy your blog URL and paste it into the space for “your site.”
5. Copy and paste (or carefully type) your gmail address into the space for that.
6. Click on the button labeled “Make my map;” you’ll go a ClustrMaps – Admin page with the recommended code for your widget.
7. Check your gmail for a message with a link and temporary password.
8. Follow the link in the message back to the ClustrMaps – Admin page.
9. Change your password to one you will remember; you’ll need both your exact blog URL and the temporary password to do so.
10. Record your new password for ClustrMaps and other details on your Usernames and Passwords worksheet.

• Create a Widget (for Edublogs)

1. Open your blog dashboard.
2. Open the widget manager (Design: Widgets).
3. Add a Text widget to the sidebar (of your choice, if two).
4. Click the Edit link on the new widget thumbnail; a text input box will open.
5. Type in a heading (optional).
6. Copy the recommended code from the ClustrMaps – Admin page for your blog (Create a Map, step 6, above).
7. Paste the code for your map into the main part of the text input box (Create a Widget, step 4, above).
8. Click on the Change button on the text input box to save the code and close the box.
9. Click on the Save Changes button to add the new widget to your blog display.
10. Display your blog (Visit Site) and admire your map!

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Gmail signatures are a good way to convey information automatically with every message, for example your full name, student number, interest group(s), and blog URL.

This quick post is to let you know that I’ve combined the Gmail Signature assignment scheduled for later in the semester, with the Gmail assignment from earlier.

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Some of you have reported trouble remembering usernames and passwords for sites that we’ll use frequently for English VII-VIII, §c. So I have prepared a worksheet that you can use to keep track of yours. If you decide to use this worksheet for usernames and passwords, please keep your copy of it in a safe place.

Usernames and Passwords by Paul Beaufait is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

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