Thursday, January 31, 2008

Top Web Tools for Students

Top Web Tools for Students
We’ve done several posts on web tools for students. Larry Ferlazzo recently posted his top 14 list here. Ferlazzo’s top rated Web 2.0 tool is called Tumblr. Tumblr’s technology helps you make a “tumblelog.” What is that? Well, here’s how Tumblr defines it, “If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.” Basically, tumblelogs are a place [...]

We’ve done several posts on web tools for students. Larry Ferlazzo recently posted his top 14 list here. Ferlazzo’s top rated Web 2.0 tool is called Tumblr. Tumblr’s technology helps you make a “tumblelog.” What is that? Well, here’s how Tumblr defines it, “If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.”

Basically, tumblelogs are a place where you can quickly add information in multiple mediums. The creators say, “Blogs are great, but they can be a lot of work. And they’re really built to handle longer-form text posts. Tumblelogs, on the other hand, let you easily and quickly post and share anything you find or create.”

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Next Student also has a top ten list. Their number one suggested tool is called Bookfinder. Bookfinder, Next Student says lets you search through “125 million books for sale from 4,000 sellers.” I’ve always used AddAll for this but BookFinder seems to include more sellers.

And if you’re curious about our own Web 2.0 recommendations, check out our old posts here and here.

Posted By Sindya Bhanoo


educationbangalore.com - Education News for Bangalore

educationbangalore.com - Education News for Bangalore
Thanks to EducationBangalore.com. I have not missed any Admission or Exam or Result notifications. I get all education news in this one place.

The Theory of Gravity

Trying to come up with something professional and politically correct to say about this has proved fruitless. There are too many sweet spots to hit and if I start I won’t be able to stop. Inside Higher Ed had this up today: A new Web site has been created to serve as a clearinghouse [...]

Trying to come up with something professional and politically correct to say about this has proved fruitless. There are too many sweet spots to hit and if I start I won’t be able to stop. Inside Higher Ed had this up today:

A new Web site has been created to serve as a clearinghouse for the presidential candidates’ positions on science and technology issues. The site — created by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of American Universities — features the candidates’ positions on topics such as competitiveness, science education, health care, and energy research. The information is largely a listing of candidates’ stated positions and does not focus on stances taken by some candidates that run counter to scientific thinking — Mike Huckabee’s opposition to evolution isn’t mentioned.

Related post: Hope For College Science Majors

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Write ?Buffalos and Dinosaurs? in Cursive

I’m not sure if it’s a nostalgia twinge for my elementary school days or if it’s just my own weirdnesses with regards to these, our modern keyboard-centric times, but I’m a little sad to learn that cursive writing might soon be a thing of the past. It’s being slowly phased out in schools. [...]

I’m not sure if it’s a nostalgia twinge for my elementary school days or if it’s just my own weirdnesses with regards to these, our modern keyboard-centric times, but I’m a little sad to learn that cursive writing might soon be a thing of the past. It’s being slowly phased out in schools. I fully admit that I sound like an old-timer: devoted to horses and bitching about those new-fangled cars. I should open my eyes and embrace all that is Now.

Oof. Can’t do it. I trust pens and paper, not silicon chippy things and keyboards. Seriously: cursive writing? They’re taking away cursive writing? It’s not that I want us all to be wearing impractical clothing and writing perfect Victorian letters to each other. The half-printing, half-cursive handwriting called “italic cursive” is totally acceptable. That’s how most people write, and it’s faster than strictly printing or traditional cursive (which I admit I do not remember how to do properly).

Maybe I’m worried that in a few generations we’ll all be running around communicating only by typing and printing and text messaging. Possibly grunting. Is the end of teaching cursive backward or forward motion? Probably forward but it still makes me sad.

Read for yourself what The Christian Science Monitor had to say about it:

[Cursive writing] is an endangered species given the rise of computers, the growing proportion of class time spent preparing for standardized tests, and the increasing perception that cursive writing is a difficult and pointless exercise.

“You still need to be able to write a signature and a personal thank-you note as well as read cursive,” says Cathy Van Haute, a pediatric occupational consultant. And “you can’t tell me everyone has easy access to a computer.”
Robert Martin, principal of O’Donnell Elementary, agrees. “It’s a dangerous path to go down if the only way you can communicate or record information is electronically or with printed letters. Cursive teaches things like how letters connect and a different type of hand-eye coordination that’s important.”

Kate Gladstone is a “handwriting repair expert” in New York. She is not surprised to see cursive going the way of the dinosaur, with only 15 percent of adults using cursive after high school. She’s not disappointed. She disagrees with the idea that students should first learn to print and then to write in cursive.

“You don’t teach someone English by first teaching them Chinese,” Ms. Glad­stone says. “We need to decide what the best way to handwrite is and just teach that.”

Gladstone promotes italic cursive, which she says is the fastest, most natural, and most easily readable form of handwriting. It’s also the easiest and quickest to teach children, she says. She also claims it’s the fastest-growing way to teach handwriting: 7 percent of students are learning this method, compared with 1 percent ten years ago.

The Palmer and Zaner-Bloser penmanship methods ruled the day for decades. Students spent 45 minutes every day on handwriting. Penmanship was a separate grade on report cards. Today, handwriting instruction might get 10 or 15 minutes a few times a week. Keyboarding skills are taught much earlier, now.
But in this era of standardized testing, Gladstone says, teachers need to train their charges to express themselves quickly with a pen or pencil. And that means italic cursive, to her.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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