tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21744090757289819322024-03-05T04:27:42.995-08:00How to write in English?Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-84241663006398186462013-11-05T09:31:00.000-08:002013-11-28T03:05:36.722-08:00Storytelling and academic writing. Part 1Two weeks ago I started a storytelling course with approximately 60 000 students from all over the world. The first week we had lectures to teach us about some basic elements in story building. Now it is already the second week, and we are talking about TV series - a topic not exactly in the very heart of my interest in storytelling...<br />
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Instead, I would like to investigate <a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/10/taking-your-writing-to-next-level.html" target="_blank">storytelling in academic writing</a>, because I believe it can bring science much closer to the "ordinary" people, or even, to the researchers themselves. Statistics show, that most of the articles published, only have one single reader. That means we have to learn some new ways of telling people about our work. <br />
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One good example of popular science´s success is TED-talks project. Everyone can listen to these talks, and experience, how complicated stuff are made short interesting chunks for global audiences. They even have a special <a href="http://www.ted.com/playlists/62/how_to_tell_a_story.html" target="_blank">section about storytelling</a>, containing 6 talks. I would like to share with you the first one of these, presented by a Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is talking about "the danger of a single story".</div>
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Another way of sharing, is using graphic storytelling. Ken Robinson´s Ted-talk about Changes in Education Paradigms, was drawn on a whiteboard by graphic facilitator, and become viral. Today more than 10 million people have seen the clip in youtube. Simple picture, and few selected words make a very powerful combination.</div>
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These two examples make it clear, that using the possibilities of storytelling can make a difference. But how to bring the elements of storytelling into academic writing? </div>
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I will give you a great example of an academic article published in 2009 by professor Rosalind Gill from UK. </div>
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<i>How are you? </i></blockquote>
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<i>I am totally stressed at the moment, to be honest. Work is piling up and I'm just drowning. I don't know when I'm going to have time to start on that secrecy and silence </i><i>book chapter – I’m so, so late with it now, and I feel really bad that I'm letting Roisin </i><i>down, but I literally never have a second. </i></blockquote>
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<i>I know, I know exactly what you mean. </i></blockquote>
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<i>I mean, I had 115 e-mails yesterday and they all needed answering. I'm doing 16 hour </i><i>days just trying to keep on top of it. I feel like I'm always late with everything, and my 'to </i><i>do' list grows faster than I can cross things off it. It’s like one of those fungi in a horror </i><i>movie that doubles in size every few hours! (Laughter)And I never ever have chance to </i><i>do any of my own work. I’m sleeping really badly and it all just feels completely out of </i><i>control… </i></blockquote>
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<i>It's the same for me. Reading? What that? Thinking? No chance! And you feel awful, </i><i>don’t you. With me I feel like I’m constantly stealing time from the kids too- I’ll go off to </i><i>check messages in the middle of a game of Monopoly or something. Sometimes I just </i><i>feel like quitting. </i></blockquote>
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<i>Yeah I know. It just gets worse. Still hoping to win the lottery, then?(laughter) But how </i><i>are you? </i></blockquote>
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<i>Do you really want to know?! (laughter) (Yeh) well, awful actually. I’m really fed up. I </i><i>heard yesterday that my article for x journal was turned down. (Oh no!) You know, the </i><i>one I worked on for ages and ages.I poured so much of myself into that piece (I know). </i><i>And one of the referee's comments was vile – it said something like "my first year </i><i>undergraduates have a better understanding of the field than this author does -- why are </i><i>they wasting all of our time". When I read it it was like a slap in the face, Ros. It was all </i><i>I could do not to burst out crying in the postroom, but I had a lecture right afterwards so I </i><i>somehow managed to pull myself together and go and do that. But last night, I just </i><i>didn't sleep (poor you) I just kept on going over and over with all these negative </i><i>comments ringing round my head. And you know the worst thing is, they are right: I am </i><i>useless (no you're not), I'm a complete fraud, and I should have realised that I was going </i><i>to be found out if I sent my work to a top journal like that. </i></blockquote>
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This is the way how she starts her article "<a href="http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/cmci/people/papers/gill/silence.pdf" target="_blank">Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia</a>". I love her beginning! You just cannot help, but to feel sympathy, to find mirroring elements of your own personal academic struggles, you want to be connected, and find out more of the lives of these people. She goes on changing the gear to a more of an academic approach, explaining the context, analysing, but still keeping her personal voice, the I in the discussion...<br />
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<i>This is a transcript of a conversation I had with a female friend in the few days before<br />(finally) beginning work on this chapter. Both speakers are white, both work in ‘old’ (pre-1992) British Universities, and both are employed on ‘continuing’ contracts - thus are already marked as ‘privileged’ in multiple ways in the contemporary academy. Mine is easily recognizable as the voice which worries about how late this article is! Some readers may find this fragment of conversation rather odd, but I suspect for many more it will appear familiar and may strike deep chords of recognition. It speaks of many things: exhaustion, stress, overload, insomnia, anxiety, shame,<br />aggression, hurt, guilt and feelings of out-of-placeness, fraudulence and fear of exposure within the contemporary academy. These feelings, these affective embodied experiences, occupy a strange position in relation to questions of secrecy and silence. </i></blockquote>
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Professor Gill is breaking the traditional rules of academia, and sharing her own academic life, her personal effort to create this piece of writing, and connecting it to the wider problematics of neo-liberal society, and its academia. Partly literature, partly research. Touching the borders, and inviting to think together... </div>
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<i>What would it mean to turn our lens upon our own labour processes, organisational governance and conditions of production? What would we find if, instead of studying others, we focussed our gaze upon our own community, and took as our data not the polished publication or the beautifully crafted talk, but the unending flow of communications and practices in which we are all embedded and enmeshed, often reluctantly: the proliferating e-mails, the minutes of meetings, the job applications, the peer reviews, the promotion assessments, the drafts of the RAE narrative, the committee papers, the student feedback forms, even the after-seminar chats?</i></blockquote>
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Don´t you just want to hug her? On my computer I do have more examples of this storytelling kind of academic writing. Unfortunately not all of it is publicly available. Perhaps I will share some more already next time... </div>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-48436030277859151302013-11-05T08:16:00.001-08:002013-11-05T08:17:18.925-08:00Political Philosophy MOOC: An Online Reading List<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was writing about my interest into <a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/11/struggling-online.html" target="_blank">political philosophy earlier today</a>. Here follows the online reading list for the course provided by the joint action of students taking part. My special thanks to Jessica Anon and Hamish Morrison, and others for making the hard work of searching. </div>
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<li>Noberto Bobbio "Stato, governo, società" (Democracy and Dictatorship). <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/59897290/Norberto-Bobbio-Democracy-and-Dictatorship-The-Nature-and-Limits-of-State-Power" target="_blank">Scribd preview</a> </li>
<li>Max Weber "<a href="https://archive.org/details/MaxWeberEconomyAndSociety" target="_blank">Economy and Society</a>" "<a href="http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Politics-as-a-Vocation.pdf" target="_blank">Politics as a Vocation</a>" </li>
<li>Niccolo Machiavelli "<a href="http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/machiavelli/Machiavelli-Discourses-Titus-Livius6x9.pdf" target="_blank">Discourses of the First Decade of Titus Livius</a>" and "<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm" target="_blank">The Prince</a>" </li>
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Jessica´s comments: "<i>It is a cruel irony that Machiavelli was remembered for the one book he wrote about dictatorship and none of the dozens he wrote about democracy. Alas. Worth noting that it is unclear whether or not reading the Prince is expected to be important to this class at all, though it is clear that Machiavelli's other work is considered more important.</i>"<br />
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<li>Fragments of Carl Schmitt's <a href="http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/burt/spliceoflife/SchmittConceptofthe%20Political7and8.pdf" target="_blank">The concept of the political</a> (p.60-79)</li>
<li>Immanuel Kant "<a href="https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm" target="_blank">Perpetual Peace</a>" </li>
<li>Cerutti (2010) "<a href="http://www.philos.unifi.it/upload/sub/Didattica/Cerutti/Cerutti_rev%202010.pdf" target="_blank">Filosofia politica: Un'introduzione</a>"</li>
<li>Antonio Gramsci "<a href="http://courses.justice.eku.edu/PLS330_Louis/docs/gramsci-prison-notebooks-vol1.pdf" target="_blank">Prison Notebooks</a>"</li>
<li>Hans Morgenthau "<a href="http://www3.nd.edu/~cpence/eewt/Morgenthau2005.pdf" target="_blank">Politics among Nations</a>" </li>
<li>Karl Marx"<a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/" target="_blank">German Ideology</a>" </li>
<li>Steven Lukes "<a href="http://mavdisk.mnsu.edu/parsnk/Linked%20Readings/Citizens%20and%20Power/lukes14-39.pdf" target="_blank">Power: A Radical View</a>" </li>
<li>Michel Foucault "<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/26150474/Foucault-M-Discipline-Punish-The-Birth-of-the-Prison-Tr-Sheridan-NY-Vintage-1977-1995" target="_blank">Discipline and Punish</a>" and Stephen Shapiro's <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/second/en229/marxfctintros_/foucault_reader.pdf?__hstc=162494947.c79428e34594a9ecb93ea14ebc4d17ca.1382109325061.1383646664633.1383661049186.12&__hssc=162494947.13.1383661049186&__hsfp=580104783" target="_blank">reader/workbook on Foucault's "Discipline and Punish"</a></li>
<li>Hobbes "<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3207" target="_blank">Leviathan</a>" </li>
<li>Kenneth Waltz "<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/40007016/Kenneth-Waltz-Theory-of-International-Politics" target="_blank">Theory of International Politics</a>", "<a href="http://www.questia.com/library/118057907/man-the-state-and-war-a-theoretical-analysis" target="_blank">Man, State and War</a>", and the <a href="http://www3.nd.edu/~cpence/eewt/Waltz2001.pdf" target="_blank">introduction to it</a>.</li>
<li>David Easton (1957) "<a href="http://online.sfsu.edu/sguo/Renmin/June2_system/Political%20System_Easton.pdf" target="_blank">An Approach to the Political Analysis</a>" (article) and "The Political System"</li>
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The extensive reading list is accompanied by a suggestion how to be able to manage it all.<br />
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<i>"Please start with <b>Bobbio</b>, in particular the chapter on the state, leaving aside for the moment the chapter regarding democracy and dictatorship. </i></blockquote>
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<i>Then go over to <b>Max Weber</b>, in particular Economy and Society, vol.1, part 1, ch.1, in particular §§ 1,2,5, 8,9, 16,17. Weber's 'orgies of differentiation' (the ability to make distinctions and definitions remains nonetheless the highest virtue of a political philosopher!) may scare you; in this case turn to his more easy-going (if any in Weber's work!) Politics as a Vocation - in which you will however miss the conceptual completeness of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. This work is nearly hundred years old, this means a classic rather than a result of present theorization. </i></blockquote>
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<i><b>David Easton's</b> main work The Political System (1965) will soon be fifty, hence it cannot be said to mirror the present state of affairs in political science. But in the last decades I have not read a general conceptualization of politics equalling its overarching and vigorous character. Let me urge you to look around, perhaps finding a recent book, not necessarily in English, that may satisfy your needs in a way compatible with the method followed in this course. </i></blockquote>
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<i>Among the classical readings that may serve as historical illustrations to some aspects of this first Part, try <b>Machiavelli</b>: not only and not so much Il principe (*The Prince* ), but rather the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, in which the role of institutionalized conflict for the preservation of the Roman Republic is highlighted. </i></blockquote>
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<i>Also see <b>Carl Schmitt's</b> The Concept of the Political as an example of the search for the specificity of the political as different from other spheres of action. Kant on the other hand wanted to define the dependence of politics on rational-reasonable morality rather than its autonomy (see Appendix to Perpetual Peace ), but I would suggest to save him as well as Aristotle and Hobbes for the other parts of this MOOC." </i></blockquote>
The illustrations to the post is a fresco of the <a href="http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/l/lorenzet/ambrogio/governme/" target="_blank">Good and Bad Government</a> by Ambrogio LORENZETTI.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-63289074638396551692013-11-05T07:17:00.001-08:002013-11-05T07:17:30.441-08:00Struggling online Besides the wonderful "<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/10/taking-your-writing-to-next-level.html" target="_blank">Future of Storytelling</a>" MOOC, I am also enrolled in a course of Political Philosophy: An Introduction. Both of the courses are provided by <a href="https://iversity.org/dashboard" target="_blank">IVERSITY</a> platform.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Izz4HWl5Z98?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Today I was listening to the lectures by dr Furio Cerutti. He is an old Italian professor working hard to provide people with the necessary means to learn about political philosophy. I really admire his way of communicating with the audiences. He has a unique kind of sincerity, and a special charm when taking the students through the complex dynamics of political philosophy.<br />
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Prof Cerutti gives the global audiences some good old lectures of key terms that are provided online with an extensive reading list for those seriously interested. No special tricks, no special struggles, nothing too complex for an introductory course. I just love this kind of simplicity and clarity!<br />
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The professor from Florence is also special because of his very nice letters to students. I will post here the last one he sent us earlier today. Here is something to learn for all of us working online and writing - how to maintain our authentic voice, and stay close to our audiences. <br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Dear students,</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">as the lectures, called on the iversity website 'chapters', are intended to be an ongoing argument from the first to the fifth video (or micro-unit), you will find the quizzes as well as the slides used in the lecture in the fifth video of each lecture or chapter.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">As soon (in twelve days or so) as I have the shooting of part 2 of the course behind me, I will design and upload some 'discussion questions' that may enhance your interaction, and also go back to some of the questions raised in the Forum.</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Technology and format of a MOOC are uncharted waters for all, especially for your old professor; he still hopes he can rely on your patience for the adjustments that become necessary. To put it as the Austrian philosopher of science Otto Neurath put it with regard to scientific knowledge, "we are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom".</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Sincerely</span></i></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Furio Cerutti</span></i></blockquote>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-63426618734996694942013-10-18T11:04:00.001-07:002013-10-18T12:41:39.845-07:00Taking your writing to the next level: Storytelling #storymooc<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well, it has been quite a while since I was sharing some new ideas or materials about writing on this page. Now I am back from holidays, creating writing workshops, and a small poetry festival, reading and writing myself. The autumn has arrived in Sweden. It feels that I am ready now to continue my journey in English writing.<br />
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Besides grammar, academic argumentation, and rhetorics, one must also learn to built up a living connection between yourself as a writer, your topic, and your readers. It is one thing to know what to say, but knowing how to say it so that people get engaged in what ever you have to say, is the most important part of your writing. <br />
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Just few days back, I discovered an interesting webinar "<a href="http://www.esbri.se/webbinarium/" target="_blank">Researcher, write to be read</a>!". Swedish researcher Jenny Helin was talking online about the research texts that are killing the audiences with their boring stereotyped lines. She asks for the ethics of writing: <b>What kind of reality are we creating with our boring academic texts that no one wishes to read? </b><br />
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I totally agree with her suggestions to think of an academic text as a meeting place for a discussion. Instead of purely informing, open a dialogue, invite your reader to participate, and collaborate. It is of course much easier to say than to do. Especially, because of the traditionally very strict academic publishing rules that allow very little creativity, and experimentation in forms.<br />
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Something has to be done, because already today, Jenny Helin says, there is an average less than one reader per academic article. Isn´t that alarming? Why to write about your research in the first place, when no one is actually reading it? What greater meaning will our thousands of hours of serious work have, if nothing grows out of it in the future?<br />
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During my personal academic career, I have come across some pretty good examples about communicative scientific texts. One of my favourite being Susan Engel´s "<a href="http://www.academia.edu/1268822/Childrens_Need_to_Know_Curiosity_in_Schools" target="_blank">Children´s need to know: Curiosity in Schools</a>". She twines the elements of storytelling with research facts, and creates an argumentation that is much more appealing than in most other cases. <br />
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In order to take my own writing further, and break the mainstream trend of boring texts, I decided to participate in the online course about the <a href="https://iversity.org/courses/the-future-of-storytelling?enrol=true&signup=true#shareCourseModal" target="_blank">future of storytelling</a>. I will learn how to bring stories to my writing, and make it more alive.<br />
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The course starts in few days. See you there!<br />
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<b>You might also be interested in:</b><br />
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<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/p/beginning.html" target="_blank">The Beginning</a><br />
<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/06/discussions-with-apple-tree.html" target="_blank">Discussions with an Apple Tree</a><br />
<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/creative-imagination-in-writing.html" target="_blank">Creative imagination in writing</a><br />
<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/search/label/academic%20writing" target="_blank">Research plan guidelines</a><br />
<a href="http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">My creative writing blog in English</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-48707718745958143952013-06-19T16:16:00.004-07:002013-06-19T17:04:15.599-07:00Me and another 1288 students made it! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibPfg6SMmloEaaZtgOY5S0_40SGegI78BOjMXMu0EKuLMehzYcxjOXB09fYcS7ipZylyO6p3Y0mp74baJ8MrtrrfAvx9IA2pyHPb5za7cx7a6Fqc9fK8XQkTxoAO60GfX8FY6R9DlFric/s1600/learning+is+more+than+a+test+score.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibPfg6SMmloEaaZtgOY5S0_40SGegI78BOjMXMu0EKuLMehzYcxjOXB09fYcS7ipZylyO6p3Y0mp74baJ8MrtrrfAvx9IA2pyHPb5za7cx7a6Fqc9fK8XQkTxoAO60GfX8FY6R9DlFric/s320/learning+is+more+than+a+test+score.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
After a week on a holiday I opened my mailbox and found a letter:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.285714149475098px; line-height: 22.39285659790039px;"><i>Congratulations are in order for the 1289 students who earned a Statement of Accomplishment for English Composition I: Achieving Expertise. About half of those students had a score of 85% or higher. As such, I decided to award a Statement of Accomplishment with Distinction to those students.</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.285714149475098px; line-height: 22.39285659790039px;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.285714149475098px; line-height: 22.39285659790039px;"><i><br /></i></span>We started with 60 000 participants, most of them failed. In my opinion it is not about the certificate, but about learning. Congratulations to all who learned something new during the process! I know I learned a lot.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-89121351238828041652013-06-10T02:50:00.000-07:002013-06-10T02:59:17.240-07:00Research Plan Guidelines<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBayWr5iollQI3ua3rNmHWiyyszl0jMMJvlFoJj0n2BqiReVSTkLJ25JCNjlr3ZI_ijzBW2DoXH3MS-f55HKA5bELvjUtn8E4BRnVD1dd_8hpGKaKFzki1cGBAVkyI350pPynl4V4jyJo/s1600/books.jpg.scaled696.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBayWr5iollQI3ua3rNmHWiyyszl0jMMJvlFoJj0n2BqiReVSTkLJ25JCNjlr3ZI_ijzBW2DoXH3MS-f55HKA5bELvjUtn8E4BRnVD1dd_8hpGKaKFzki1cGBAVkyI350pPynl4V4jyJo/s320/books.jpg.scaled696.jpg" width="234" /></a></div>
<div>
I have another deadline facing me in few days. It has to do with the Writing II: Rhetorical Composing coursera I am taking. It is already week 7 by now. I have managed to make all the deadlines so far. Lets see how it goes this time... </div>
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At the moment they suggest me to make a research plan. To support the process have the professors provided nice guidelines some of which I would like to share:</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Given your claim, audience, and argumentative purpose, consider message, medium, and manner as well as recency, relevance, and readership in examining and evaluating the research and evidence you’re compiling: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Message: </i>Identify your persuasive claim and purpose. What is your claim and what end do you envision your text achieving? Are you hoping to make your audience better informed? Consider alternative perspectives? Become more tolerant of alternative perspectives? Change an opinion? Move to action?<br />
<i>Medium:</i> What form will the argument take? What are the implications for you as a writer as you engage readers in this medium or genre? If you’re writing a blog post, how does that affect how you argue? How does it affect how you cite your sources? If you’re writing an opinion piece for a professional newsletter, how do the conventions and constraints of that genre and location affect the decisions you make about how you use and refer to your sources?<br />
<i>Manner:</i> Consider again rhetorical appeals, metaphors, commonplaces, rhetorical tense, and visual rhetoric as you work toward a draft of your research assignment. How will you employ these elements in service of achieving your persuasive ends?<br />
<i>Recency:</i> In what ways does the recency of source material matter? In other words, from what timeframe are you most likely use material? Why?<br />
<i>Relevance:</i> Of what relevance to your argument is the material? In other words, what kinds of material—and from what sources—have you found and why are you considering using it? Why is it relevant for this audience? For this purpose? For this venue?<br />
<i>Readership: </i>What material will be most persuasive to your audience? Why?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Now consider how you might align or adapt the source materials you’ve collected to suit your audience, purpose, and argumentative goal:<br />
<i></i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Alignment: </i>Do the sources you’re using align with your opinions or claims? To what extent or under what circumstances? Alternatively, if you’re using sources you’re contesting, how do those sources diverge from or not align with your position? It’s important to clarify—both for yourself and for your readers—your position relative to your sources.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Adaptation:</i> In what ways might you need to adapt or adjust evidence from your sources to suit your argument? For example, if a source addresses the effects of spousal abuse on women in their 60s but you’re addressing the effects of spousal abuse on women in their 30s, what adaptation might you need to make to maintain both the integrity of the evidence (your source) and your claim and argument? </blockquote>
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All the vocabulary and tools used before the writing process starts, are explained quite well in these few short sections. I am writing nearly every day. Details like that become automatic and I do not actually analyse each time in such a linear way how I am addressing it all, but I still have an explanation to each of these, if someone cares to ask. </div>
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Since I have not had time to start the research process for this assignment just yet, I do not have a clear picture to share here now. I have been reading and thinking about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault" target="_blank">Michel Foucault</a> and <a href="http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/postmodernism/pmhome.htm" target="_blank">postmodern research in education</a> since I am giving a lecture about the topic next week in Norway. I will probably write something in this direction. Just two days ago I was visiting Uppsala, it is one of the places where Foucault used to work, he wrote his "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madness_and_Civilization" target="_blank">Madness and civilization</a>" there. Unfortunately the Swedish professors at the time did not realise the value of the ideas the young man was presenting and so he had to move to another university in order to get his doctoral thesis accepted. It is a wonderful story about madness and higher education system. Perhaps I´ll write about that... </div>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-65492380521223248602013-06-09T06:58:00.000-07:002013-06-09T06:58:51.022-07:00English Composition I: final reflection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKWMmNfD3ZqYJlJ0sutPRN0YDXMaefTjdrkKs2LCflV1rSZh1abwnYONIMh3tUcpzWi3hTL97EKm2Ce8EzDP-Zxu4jmASfx1kv2EjZlLuaUSibTsBJpiuQleZGmM00vrM6I1Fy6zXxmo/s1600/learning+is+more+than+a+test+score.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdKWMmNfD3ZqYJlJ0sutPRN0YDXMaefTjdrkKs2LCflV1rSZh1abwnYONIMh3tUcpzWi3hTL97EKm2Ce8EzDP-Zxu4jmASfx1kv2EjZlLuaUSibTsBJpiuQleZGmM00vrM6I1Fy6zXxmo/s320/learning+is+more+than+a+test+score.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<h1 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 3.3pt; margin-top: 4.3pt; mso-line-height-alt: 6.95pt; vertical-align: top;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">The following were the course
learning objectives:</span></b></h1>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Summarize, analyze, question, and evaluate
written and visual texts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Argue and support a position<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"> Recognize audience and disciplinary
expectations<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Identify and use the stages of the writing
process<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Identify characteristics of effective
sentence and paragraph-level prose<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Apply proper citation practices<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Discuss how to transfer and apply your
writing knowledge to other writing occasions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">What have
you learned in this course? <i>Choose 2-4 of
our course learning objectives, describing each objective and referring
specifically to particular passages from your coursework that demonstrate your
progress towards and/or struggles with that objective. Indicate why you have
chosen those objectives as the most important for you. Cut and paste specific
portions of your coursework, and use them as evidence for your argument. In
this way, by having an introduction, argument, evidence, and conclusion, your
“portfolio cover letter” will both discuss and demonstrate how effectively you
have achieved the goals of the course. Length: ~500-750 words.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The common struggles for any academic writer is <b>summarizing, analyzing, questioning, and evaluating written and visual
texts</b>. What a challenge it is! Every text or a visual image has so many
meanings as there are people. During this course I have had an excellent chance
to work more closely with this problematic. One on hand, composing the essays
for assignment demanded working with several texts on my own. Secondly, since
the course has peer-to-peer review as its main evaluation and learning tool, it
has given me, as a writer, a possibility to experiment and see how my texts are
summarized, analyzed, questioned and evaluated by outside readers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Critical feminist writing is a field that meets a wall of indifference by
some audiences, at the same time it is an emerging area of interests for many.
How to be able to write in an open way and invite people to critically examine their
assumptions and agendas hidden from most of the members of our society? That has
been a big question mark during this course. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">To give some examples of my writing I would like to point out two possible
passages. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Firstly, I would like to invite you to read an excerpt of my case study
about who are the experts in education. Among others I quote Ivan Illich known
for his critical writing about US school systems already back in seventies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 24.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 8.4pt; mso-line-height-alt: 7.55pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As a possible future
innovation Ivan Illich is inviting people to think about “<strong style="line-height: inherit;">learning webs”</strong>. According to him the
good educational systems will: </span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">“provide
access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want
to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and,
finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the
opportunity to make their challenge known.” (2012:75)</span></strong></span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">While being part of MOOC, some people have perhaps experienced that Illich
has a point here. Even though there are minor drawbacks and some try their best
to control and institutionalize, the realm of educational practices is
shifting. People are taking more responsibility of their personal learning as
well as teaching others. It is indeed happening online with the help of the
learning webs.</span></i></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 24.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 8.4pt; mso-line-height-alt: 7.55pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">This case study is available online in my blog
AppleTree: </span><a href="http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/who-are-the-experts/"><span lang="EN-US">http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/who-are-the-experts/</span></a><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #222222; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The second passage is taking my readers to a Nordic conference about early
education where the only speakers are male at the same time when audience, Norwegian
kindergarten teachers, is female with only few exceptions. I present a picture
of a professor talking about himself and his work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode";"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode";">“This picture presents us with a sentimental
stage of expertise in educational research. As I am the one who took the
picture just a few days ago, I know that the audience mainly consisted
of women. It is a typical picture of educational conferences held in
Europe. An old man talking about his work, talking about something that has
been done a long time ago and having a lot of women carefully listening and
making notes. This is a picture of expertise in the field of education, where
most of the people occupied with the work are women but the know-how still
belongs to men. I would argue that the expert in my area of study often looks
like an old white Western male presenting himself, having only very little to
do with the actual field of the research. The gap between educational theory
and practice is therefore profound.</span>” <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode";">This was an excerpt of
my visual image analyses assignment. You can read the full assignment in my
blog AppleTree </span><a href="http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/mom-watch-me-im-doing-the-impossible-part-ii/"><span lang="EN-US">http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/mom-watch-me-im-doing-the-impossible-part-ii/</span></a><span lang="EN-US">. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode";"> </span><i><span lang="EN-US"> </span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In both of these sections I not only analyze, question and evaluate, but I
also give <b>arguments in support</b> of my
positions. The course outline has fitted into multiple approaches and enabled
everyone to work in their own realms coming together as a global writing
community and support each other in our personal growth. Even so, it has been a
great challenge to incorporate my writing style and interests, the demands of
the course curricula and my timetable. To do that I have sometimes made
compromises but not really that many. Thank you! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-25204022624983885972013-06-06T03:42:00.000-07:002013-06-06T03:57:39.268-07:00Discussions with an Apple Tree<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One day I realised that the world was talking to me more than ever before and there was a strong need to replay. I was going through the forests and everything was suddenly breathing. It was not an abstract idea of nature that is growing, I felt it with my body, I felt it with all my senses. I knew then that trees were alive not because they said so in my biology lessons, I just knew because I had seen trees breathing…</div>
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There is a great Swedish writer Stig Claesson who describes his discussions with a wise apple tree in a book called “You sleep I will do the dishes”. Sometimes I wished I had my own apple tree to talk to…</div>
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“Women without men” is a book written by a woman from Iran. She is writing about the voiceless women in this violent society, they try to find their way to became alive. In one episode she tells us about a woman who grows herself roots and after a while branches and then the leaves come. In that way she was able to realise herself, she became free, finally… she was able to give seeds and send them with the flow of the river to meet the world…</div>
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I have been a tree whole my life, my family name means oak in Estonian. When I was a little girl I was called acorn – an oak seed. Perhaps this is why I feel so close to those writers, why I feel so close to nature. I do not need to grow the roots or leaves, my roots are very deep in the soil as it is and my leaves touch the sky.</div>
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With my online writing I want to meet myself and the world around me. I have no idea where it will lead or who is coming to join me during this journey of life, the virtual life. I will send out the first seeds. I have grown and become a young oak tree by now…</div>
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You can find my discussions in the blog "<a href="http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Collected discussions with the AppleTree</a>".</div>
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Comments with grammar corrections and philosophy discussions about life are welcome here and in the AppleTree blog!</div>
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This is my personal philosphy essay submitted to <a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/06/composition-2-personal-philosophy-essay.html" target="_blank">Composition 2 coursera.com</a> course. </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXAodXXgh7ri8RVl3-h0p3ENDrYXtrZOo11KL8HDnZ78Cz3IRvG8NgvPrNCaDMBHFGuZ0FYV8w-xR2m0iESl-_p4MgfL4ARfBa7QfDWwfcdB-FXkPOgaATtBJOQDaZD_un3r17iPTY_Cg/s1600/if+you+do+not+tell+the+truth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXAodXXgh7ri8RVl3-h0p3ENDrYXtrZOo11KL8HDnZ78Cz3IRvG8NgvPrNCaDMBHFGuZ0FYV8w-xR2m0iESl-_p4MgfL4ARfBa7QfDWwfcdB-FXkPOgaATtBJOQDaZD_un3r17iPTY_Cg/s320/if+you+do+not+tell+the+truth.jpg" width="228" /></a><i>Compose a 400-500 word personal philosophy essay in which you lead your audience to recognize and understand why a specific belief is important to you. Before you begin, review the modules and slides from week two. Imagine that you are writing to another person enrolled in this course, someone who doesn’t realize that you hold this particular belief or that you hold it so strongly.<br />This essay is not fiction; instead, it is a way to share your belief about one aspect of your life. For example, you might write about one of the roles you play in your life, an important value you hold, a significant relationship you’ve had, a position you take on an issue, a personal goal, and so on.</i></blockquote>
</div>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-35439538261104170312013-06-05T08:34:00.002-07:002013-06-05T08:34:52.899-07:00Collected statisticsI started this blog on the 24th of May and today, two and a half weeks later, I discovered having already more than thousand pageviews. Thank you for visiting and very special thanks to all of those people who have taken time to comment! Even when I write this post I know that I have comments to answer to.<br />
<br />
As a surprise present I decided to make an overview of the page statistics. I like sharing the blog backstage information, it makes one feel being part of the process. At least I feel that way whenever I get to read someone elses statistics.<br />
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<b>MOST VISITED?</b><br />
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During this time I have written 17 blogposts about MOOCs, writing and other related topics. The most visited ones being these:<br />
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<tr __gwt_row="0" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG-" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-834" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" tabindex="0">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.com/2013/05/authors-guide-to-slow-twitter.html" style="border: 0px; color: #1155cc; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Author´s guide to slow twitter #artofeducation</a></div>
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May 28, 2013, 5 comments</div>
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137</div>
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<table style="border-spacing: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><tbody style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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<tr __gwt_row="1" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG0" style="background-color: #f3f7fb; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-834" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.com/2013/05/personal-benchmark-statement-for-first.html" style="border: 0px; color: #1155cc; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Personal Benchmark Statement for First-Year Compos...</a></div>
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May 27, 2013, 2 comments</div>
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</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-835" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
133</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-836" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<table style="border-spacing: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><tbody style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 33.9375px;">
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<tr __gwt_row="2" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG-" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-834" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.com/2013/06/mooc-miracle-27-courses-in-10-months.html" style="border: 0px; color: #1155cc; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Mooc miracle: 27 courses in 10 months</a></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Jun 3, 2013</div>
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125</div>
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<tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 12.5px;">
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<tr __gwt_row="3" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG0" style="background-color: #f3f7fb; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-834" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.com/2013/05/creative-imagination-in-writing.html" style="border: 0px; color: #1155cc; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Creative imagination in writing #artofeducation</a></div>
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May 29, 2013</div>
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</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-835" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
83</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-836" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<table style="border-spacing: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.333333015441895px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><tbody style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<tr style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44.66666793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 35.72916793823242px;">
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</td><td style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="50px"><div class="GIL3GQOBLN" style="background-color: #5b8fc3; border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 10px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 0px;">
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<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-are-cliches-in-english.html" style="border: 0px; color: #1155cc; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">What are the clichés in English?</a></div>
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May 29, 2013, 3 comments</div>
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<br />
Most commented post is "<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/authors-guide-to-slow-twitter.html" target="_blank">Author´s guide to slow twitter</a>" with its five comments. The same post has received eight likes on google+. The second most liked post in google+ is "<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/creative-imagination-in-writing.html" target="_blank">Creative imagination in art of education #artofeducation</a>" which has received 6 likes.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>SOCIAL MEDIA MENTIONS</b><br />
<br />
Since I have been active in social media for some years by now I am used to send my seeds out and share materials (created by me or others). Facebook is the most common place where I send my articles or small news pieces but also Google+ and more recent discovery twitter.<br />
<br />
During the last weeks I have had many mentions out there in the social media world. Most of them initiated by me but also by the other writers or readers. At first it came as a big surprise when a "real" writer took time to comment or send a message. I have been especially interested in twitter world in these recent weeks probably because it is new to me, therefore I would like to share some of the twitter comments here: <br />
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<a class="account-group js-account-group js-action-profile js-user-profile-link js-nav" data-user-id="573516549" href="https://twitter.com/TimebendersJim" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><strong class="fullname js-action-profile-name show-popup-with-id" style="color: #333333;">Timebenders Author</strong> <span class="username js-action-profile-name" style="direction: ltr; font-size: 12px; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="color: #bbbbbb;">@</span>TimebendersJim</span></a><small class="time" style="color: #bbbbbb; float: right; font-size: 12px; margin-top: 1px; position: relative;"><a class="tweet-timestamp js-permalink js-nav" href="https://twitter.com/TimebendersJim/status/339422941387300864" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" title="6:48 PM - 28 May 13">28 May</a></small></div>
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<a class="twitter-atreply pretty-link" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" style="color: #0084b4; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #66b5d2;">@</span>tammevelin</a> Excellent blog piece on
Author´s Guide to Slow Twitter <a class="twitter-hashtag pretty-link js-nav" data-query-source="hashtag_click" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23artofeducation&src=hash" style="color: #0084b4; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #66b5d2;">#</span>artofeducation</a> Evelin! Thx for connecting! <a class="twitter-timeline-link" data-expanded-url="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/authors-guide-to-slow-twitter.html" dir="ltr" href="http://t.co/bFmux5Ff3r" rel="nofollow" style="color: #0084b4; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/authors-guide-to-slow-twitter.html"><span class="invisible" style="font-size: 0px; line-height: 0;">http://</span><span class="js-display-url">ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/author</span><span class="invisible" style="font-size: 0px; line-height: 0;">s-guide-to-slow-twitter.html</span><span class="tco-ellipsis"><span class="invisible" style="font-size: 0px; line-height: 0;"> </span>…</span></a></div>
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<a class="details with-icn js-details" href="https://twitter.com/TimebendersJim/status/339422941387300864" style="color: #999999; display: inline-block; margin-right: 2px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="details-icon js-icon-container"></span><span style="color: #0084b4;">Expand</span></a> <ul class="tweet-actions js-actions" style="display: inline-block; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="action-reply-container" style="display: inline;"><a class="with-icn js-action-reply" data-modal="tweet-reply" href="https://twitter.com/i/connect#" role="button" style="color: #0084b4; margin-left: 8px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="icon sm-reply" style="background-color: #0084b4; background-image: url(https://abs.twimg.com/a/1369885592/t1/img/twitter_web_sprite_icons.png); background-position: 0px -220px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; display: inline-block; height: 13px; vertical-align: text-top; width: 12px;"></span> <span style="color: inherit;">Reply</span> </a></li>
<li class="action-rt-container js-toggle-state js-toggle-rt" style="display: inline;"><a class="with-icn retweet" data-modal="tweet-retweet" href="https://twitter.com/i/connect#" role="button" style="color: #0084b4; margin-left: 8px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="icon sm-rt" style="background-color: #0084b4; background-image: url(https://abs.twimg.com/a/1369885592/t1/img/twitter_web_sprite_icons.png); background-position: -20px -220px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; display: inline-block; height: 13px; vertical-align: text-top; width: 14px;"></span> <span style="color: inherit;">Retweet</span> </a></li>
<li class="action-fav-container js-toggle-state js-toggle-fav" style="display: inline;"><a class="with-icn favorite" href="https://twitter.com/i/connect#" role="button" style="color: #0084b4; margin-left: 8px; text-decoration: none;"><span class="icon sm-fav" style="background-color: #0084b4; background-image: url(https://abs.twimg.com/a/1369885592/t1/img/twitter_web_sprite_icons.png); background-position: -40px -220px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; display: inline-block; height: 13px; vertical-align: text-top; width: 10px;"></span> <span style="color: inherit;">Favorite</span> </a></li>
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<button class="btn-link with-icn dropdown-toggle" style="-webkit-box-shadow: none; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; color: #0084b4; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px;" type="button"><i class="sm-more" style="background-color: #0084b4; background-image: url(https://abs.twimg.com/a/1369885592/t1/img/twitter_web_sprite_icons.png); background-position: -280px -220px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; display: inline-block; height: 13px; margin-right: 1px; vertical-align: text-top; width: 15px;"></i> <span style="color: inherit;">More</span></button></div>
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Jim Denney is an author of a series called "Timebenders" and has a blog here <a href="http://jimdenney.wordpress.com/">http://jimdenney.wordpress.com/</a>.<br />
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<a class="account-group js-account-group js-action-profile js-user-profile-link js-nav" data-user-id="411169286" href="https://twitter.com/BettysTips" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><strong class="fullname js-action-profile-name show-popup-with-id" style="color: #333333;">Betty Wryte-Goode</strong> <span class="username js-action-profile-name" style="direction: ltr; font-size: 12px; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="color: #bbbbbb;">@</span>BettysTips</span></a><small class="time" style="color: #bbbbbb; float: right; font-size: 12px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 1px; position: relative;"><a class="tweet-timestamp js-permalink js-nav" href="https://twitter.com/BettysTips/status/339307375884390400" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" title="11:09 AM - 28 May 13">28 May</a></small></div>
<div class="js-tweet-text tweet-text" style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 17.99715805053711px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;">
The Daily Wryter is out! <a class="twitter-timeline-link" data-expanded-url="http://paper.li/BettysTips/1325667986" dir="ltr" href="http://t.co/GmTXRjrSgH" rel="nofollow" style="color: #0084b4; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="http://paper.li/BettysTips/1325667986"><span class="invisible" style="font-size: 0px; line-height: 0;">http://</span><span class="js-display-url">paper.li/BettysTips/132</span><span class="invisible" style="font-size: 0px; line-height: 0;">5667986</span><span class="tco-ellipsis"><span class="invisible" style="font-size: 0px; line-height: 0;"> </span>…</span></a> ▸ Top stories today via <a class="twitter-atreply pretty-link" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/TimebendersJim" style="color: #0084b4; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #66b5d2;">@</span>TimebendersJim</a> <a class="twitter-atreply pretty-link" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/niniehammon" style="color: #0084b4; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #66b5d2;">@</span>niniehammon</a> <a class="twitter-atreply pretty-link" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" style="color: #0084b4; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #66b5d2;">@</span>tammevelin</a></div>
<br />
Betty Write-Goode invites people to a writers blog "<a href="http://paper.li/BettysTips/1325667986?edition_id=432a4c10-c776-11e2-9053-0025907212f4" target="_blank">The Daily Wryter</a>" that on the 28th of May featured my piece about Isol:<br />
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0.75em 0px 0px; position: relative;">
<a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/how-to-write-childrens-books-learn-from.html" target="_blank">How to write children´s books? Learn from Isol, the winner of ALMA price 2013.</a></h3>
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I have been active in twitter nearly every day and really like the idea of being present while tweeting. Welcome to connect and slow tweet with me @tammevelin.</div>
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<b>WHO ARE THE VISITORS?</b></div>
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It is so inspiring to know that people who arrive here to learn to write in English come from all over the world. US and Sweden are the most active in visitor numbers but there are also many other countries on the list. Blogspot.com stats are quite poor because they show you a very limited number of entries and because of this I do not know exactly how many contries could be listed if we counted each. I will post here the list that is available via blogspot.com. There are possibilities to use other tools for counting but I am not so seriously into the statistics, it is much more about the writing process, communication and sharing than numbers to me. </div>
<div>
<h3 class="GIL3GQOBDN GIL3GQOBAN blogg-title" id="topCountriesLabel" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(235, 235, 235); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<h3 class="GIL3GQOBDN GIL3GQOBAN blogg-title" id="topCountriesLabel" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(235, 235, 235); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Pageviews by Countries</h3>
<div aria-labelledby="topCountriesLabel" style="border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="Graph of most popular countries among blog viewers" class="gwt-Image" role="img" src="http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chf=bg,s,EAF7FE&chs=320x160&cht=t&chco=F9FFED,E0FFD5,236A13&chld=BRDEEEGBINLBNLRUSEUS&chd=s:EEJIPHEY39&chtm=world" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; height: 160px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 320px;" /></div>
<div aria-hidden="false" class="GIL3GQOBGN" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div aria-label="Popular countries" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<table __gwtcellbasedwidgetimpldispatchingblur="true" __gwtcellbasedwidgetimpldispatchingfocus="true" cellspacing="0" class="GIL3GQOBN0" style="border-spacing: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13.333333969116211px; font-style: inherit; height: 32px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 348.8888854980469px;"><colgroup><col></col><col></col></colgroup><thead aria-hidden="false" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<tr __gwt_header_row="0" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><th __gwt_column="column-gwt-uid-252" __gwt_header="header-gwt-uid-253" class="GIL3GQOBM- GIL3GQOBK-" colspan="1" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(111, 114, 119); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; color: #4b4a4a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 3px 15px; text-shadow: rgb(221, 221, 255) 1px 1px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Entry</th><th __gwt_column="column-gwt-uid-254" __gwt_header="header-gwt-uid-255" class="GIL3GQOBM- GIL3GQOBE0" colspan="1" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(111, 114, 119); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; color: #4b4a4a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 3px 15px; text-shadow: rgb(221, 221, 255) 1px 1px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Pageviews</th></tr>
</thead><tbody style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<tr __gwt_row="0" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG-" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" tabindex="0">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
United States</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
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</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
249</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="1" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG0" style="background-color: #f3f7fb; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
Sweden</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
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</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
224</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="2" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG-" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
Russia</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
98</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="3" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG0" style="background-color: #f3f7fb; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
India</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
63</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="4" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG-" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
Estonia</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
38</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="5" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG0" style="background-color: #f3f7fb; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
United Kingdom</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
33</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="6" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG-" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
Lebanon</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
30</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="7" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG0" style="background-color: #f3f7fb; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
Netherlands</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(243, 247, 251); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
17</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="8" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG-" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBI-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
Germany</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH- GIL3GQOBC0" style="border: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
16</div>
</td></tr>
<tr __gwt_row="9" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GIL3GQOBG0 GIL3GQOBN-" style="background-color: #eeeeee; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBI- GIL3GQOBO-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-256" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="GIL3GQOBBO" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; text-overflow: ellipsis; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: nowrap; width: 220px;">
Brazil</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
</div>
</div>
</td><td class="GIL3GQOBF- GIL3GQOBH0 GIL3GQOBC0 GIL3GQOBO-" style="border: 2px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 2px 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-257" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-style: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
15</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<b><br /></b>
<b>SHARE YOUR STORY!</b><br />
<br />
One of the most important part of social media and blogging is that it is connecting us in our thinking, writing or other creative work. To be connected means to get engaged in the process via commenting, sharing, reblogging. The bloggers are like a huge global community constantly working in millions of different directions. The beauty of this fragmented lot becomes visible when we start to find the connecting points and really meet each other.<br />
<br />
Part of this blog is the idea to be publishing texts of other people. We are nearly always quoting each other but I would like to share some stories about learning experiences of people from all around the world. Therefore I invite you to send me a story where you tell how you become a writer or started to write in English. I would like to feature your story in this blog to inspire others who are just starting their journey.<br />
<br />
If you have a story you would like to share, please send it to tammevelin@gmail.com. Who knows perhaps your story is the one that will be published and read worldwide? <br />
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-19217096667757114472013-06-04T06:45:00.001-07:002013-06-04T06:45:19.644-07:00Coming This Year: A MOOC for English Language Learners<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0bPjErR8bOimRjLhyphenhyphenZvWKkKOiNss53XnKtsdNDqCwWHVntd_hxBo6ONjVvx03R_MY2RSmeLo5OCVVLhGxKIBo_snFw3bdKDH-sY2eDz1meKoIJURpeCHKQZgtAefZshzrnBMk8IjzAxc/s1600/Memmed+arvutiga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0bPjErR8bOimRjLhyphenhyphenZvWKkKOiNss53XnKtsdNDqCwWHVntd_hxBo6ONjVvx03R_MY2RSmeLo5OCVVLhGxKIBo_snFw3bdKDH-sY2eDz1meKoIJURpeCHKQZgtAefZshzrnBMk8IjzAxc/s320/Memmed+arvutiga.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
The University of California, Berkeley will offer another free online course in writing under the title College Writing 2x: Principles of Written Communication.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>College Writing 2x is a writing course designed specially for learners of English. It will be offered through edX.org, and will be completely free. It will use some of the most advanced tools in online writing instruction. Students will have meaningful ways to practice their writing and get feedback on how well they are doing.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The course will be taught by Maggie Sokolik. Dr. Sokolik received her Ph.D. in applied linguistics from UCLA. She has taught writing and technical communication at UC Berkeley since 1992. She is the author of over twenty ESL and composition textbooks, including Sound Ideas, co-authored with Michael Krasny. She has also written for and been featured in several educational video projects in Japan. She travels frequently to speak about grammar, writing, and instructor education.</i></blockquote>
The course plan includes:<br />
<br />
- 5 weeks studies of Written English (A review of basic grammar terminology and understanding; writing effective sentences and paragraphs; introductions and conclusions; strategies for writing longer texts; thesis statements); <br />
<br />
- 5 weeks studies of Techniques in Editing and Revision (Proofreading and self-editing; revision vs. editing; common errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling; understanding tone and diction; vocabulary development.)<br />
<br />
- 5 weeks studies of Modes of Written Communication (Formal and informal writing; effective email communication; academic writing; memos; project proposals; creative writing; technical writing)<br />
<br />
The initial plan is to make the course available twice a year. The first course starts in September 2013.<br />
<br />
Source: <a href="http://writing.berkeley.edu/classes-and-awp/mooc">http://writing.berkeley.edu/classes-and-awp/mooc</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-70245090064895166322013-06-03T16:00:00.001-07:002013-06-03T16:02:08.245-07:00Composition 2: personal philosophy essay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZbef6xG4FKbGrI-wCS3aOlSLoY6rtqhGNW3ZEGCHdTJ0j1svct_AbKTUuhyyPBbEdUZzeKSTc-E3nvYehFGbq_-sMqrl3wpi9rw2Ri3Odgi-W6LAvUow6e4redh_PfqtpRdCHxMaBzTA/s1600/if+you+tsand+for+nothing+you+will+fall+for+nothing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZbef6xG4FKbGrI-wCS3aOlSLoY6rtqhGNW3ZEGCHdTJ0j1svct_AbKTUuhyyPBbEdUZzeKSTc-E3nvYehFGbq_-sMqrl3wpi9rw2Ri3Odgi-W6LAvUow6e4redh_PfqtpRdCHxMaBzTA/s320/if+you+tsand+for+nothing+you+will+fall+for+nothing.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
As I am nearly finished with Composition 1, the next course has already started. This week I have to submit my first assignment. I was thirst thinking of posting here the description of the challenge. The description was retrieved from the coursera.com homepage.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Compose a 400-500 word personal philosophy essay in which you lead your audience to recognize and understand why a specific belief is important to you. Before you begin, review the modules and slides from week two. Imagine that you are writing to another person enrolled in this course, someone who doesn’t realize that you hold this particular belief or that you hold it so strongly.</i></div>
<div>
<i>This essay is not fiction; instead, it is a way to share your belief about one aspect of your life. For example, you might write about one of the roles you play in your life, an important value you hold, a significant relationship you’ve had, a position you take on an issue, a personal goal, and so on.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>Guidelines:</i></div>
<div>
<i>Begin the essay with a question, a challenge, a startling fact, a dramatic incident, or a significant quotation (or some equally compelling strategy for beginning a personal philosophy essay). Do not start with a dictionary definition. Use “I,” since this is a first-person essay.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>In the body of the essay, in order to support your argument—the reason you hold your specific belief—share a focused anecdote that illustrates why you hold your belief. The specific and concrete details you present in the anecdote are the evidence for your argument.</i></div>
<div>
<i>In your anecdote, consider the three elements of the rhetorical triangle and the ways they might function in your essay.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>Conclude by returning to the way you captured the audience’s attention at the beginning of the essay; for example, explain how you have answered the question, challenge, or startling fact with which you began.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>Once you have completed your essay, create a title for the essay that synthesizes your belief and that captures your readers’ attention and interest.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>Your essay will be evaluated by how well it (a) begins with a way to capture readers’ attention and interest in the title and the opening, (b) focuses on a specific personal belief, (c) presents an anecdote using specific and concrete details to illustrate your belief, (d) concludes by returning to the way you began, and (e) conforms to conventional language in grammar and mechanics. </i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
I am not sure yet about my exact topic for this assignment but I am certain that I will figure it out soon... 400 - 500 hundred words feels almost like a piece of cake. It can be of course that it turns out to be very hard and challenging to write something with so few words. </div>
<div>
<i> </i></div>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-64097842406354794262013-06-03T15:20:00.001-07:002013-06-03T15:20:22.461-07:00Learning Objectives of English Composition online course<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_xN6hyphenhyphenxIpVMZNArdROn_BdvYkXsi74oXE29uSehMUSR-4SIxhQ-ee1PWKuLRoJOdYhC44pVbPH-8OOw-BNZ-H0jbkYVF1lOok60HVMIXgH7wlIVmabq-KrHQ8NMwl7j4LatiU-_fIl5w/s1600/ajaleht.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_xN6hyphenhyphenxIpVMZNArdROn_BdvYkXsi74oXE29uSehMUSR-4SIxhQ-ee1PWKuLRoJOdYhC44pVbPH-8OOw-BNZ-H0jbkYVF1lOok60HVMIXgH7wlIVmabq-KrHQ8NMwl7j4LatiU-_fIl5w/s320/ajaleht.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
Since I am now finishing the course about writing I decided to share the list of learning objectives set for us by professor Denise Comer. Here you can see what we have been working with and what were the goals.<br />
<br />
<b>Course Learning Objectives</b><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Summarize, analyze, question, and evaluate written and visual texts</li>
<li>Argue and support a position</li>
<li>Recognize audience and disciplinary expectations</li>
<li>Identify and use the stages of the writing process</li>
<li>Identify characteristics of effective sentence and paragraph-level prose</li>
<li>Apply proper citation practices</li>
<li>Discuss how to transfer and apply your writing knowledge to other writing occasions</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Project 1 (Weeks 1-3): Critical Review</b><br />
How do we become experts? I will ask you to draft and revise a critical response to an article about expertise by Daniel Coyle. Specifically, we will focus on how to:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>read critically;</li>
<li>summarize, question, analyze, and evaluate written text;</li>
<li>engage with the work of others;</li>
<li>understand the stages of the writing process;</li>
<li>workshop writing;</li>
<li>respond towards revision;</li>
<li>incorporate reader feedback;</li>
<li>integrate quotes/evidence;</li>
<li>cite the work of others; and</li>
<li>craft effective titles.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Project 2 (Weeks 4-5): Analyzing a Visual Image</b><br />
What does expertise look like? How do we define it? I will ask you to select a visual image depicting your selected area of expertise and then explicate that image in order to make an argument about what expertise looks like and how it can be defined. Specifically, we will continue to work with the elements we learned in Project 1, as well as build on them by focusing on how to:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>summarize, questions, analyze, and evaluate visual texts;</li>
<li>argue and support a position;</li>
<li>use evidence;</li>
<li>achieve cohesion;</li>
<li>develop paragraph unity;</li>
<li>revise; and</li>
<li>edit.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Project 3 (Weeks 6-9): Case Study</b><br />
What can we learn about expertise in a particular area? What does it take to succeed? I will ask you to research a particular example of expert achievement in your selected area and, drawing on multiple resources, make an argument about expertise. Specifically, we will continue to work with the elements we learned in Projects 1 and 2, as well as build on them by focusing on how to:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>conduct research;</li>
<li>write an extended argument;</li>
<li>develop an intertextual conversation;</li>
<li>understand popular sources and scholarly sources;</li>
<li>create effective introductions; and</li>
<li>write strong conclusions.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<b>Project 4 (Weeks 10-12): Writing an Op-Ed</b><br />
What do you think people need to know about expertise in your selected area? In this fourth and final project, we will turn to a more public form of writing as I ask you to write an op-ed (opposite the editorial page) about your selected area of expertise for a publication of your choosing (you do not actually have to submit it to that publication, but I encourage you to do so). We'll also be working together to collaboratively crowdsource a bibliography of potential resources. Specifically, we will continue to work with the elements we learned in Projects 1,2, and 3, as well as build on them by focusing on how to:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>write for more public audiences;</li>
<li>write concisely;</li>
<li>edit and proofread thoroughly;</li>
<li>decide whether to use active or passive voice; and</li>
<li>transfer the knowledge, practices, approaches and skills we learned in this course to new writing contexts.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Here you can see that mooc courses are much more than just an easy way to certificate. I have been writing a lot, learning a lot and giving so much feedback that it is a whole special chapter of this online learning experience. </div>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-68909220382654509772013-06-03T05:30:00.002-07:002013-06-03T09:05:46.273-07:00Mooc miracle: 27 courses in 10 months<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am finishing with one of the writing moocs I have been taking during the last months. It feels like being part of a writing marathon. The last deadline for the writing assignment in English Composition one course has just passed. We had to write an op-ed using about 800 words. I managed in time but was quite close to give up because of the time frame not fitting in my last weeks schedule. I ended up writing about change in education, if you are interested in the topic then it is possible to read it online in AppleTree "<a href="http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/where-is-the-change-in-education/" target="_blank">Where is the change in education?</a>". <br />
<br />
When I was posting my link to the facebook group of the course I discovered a posting made by a fellow student Achint Nigam from Kanpur, Uttar Paradesh * in India:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}" style="color: #333333; line-height: 1.38;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>"Finally, this one is also over, and its time for a break from moocs, this was my 27th mooc..btw.. over a period of 10 months :D"</b></i></span></span></blockquote>
There are people really taking the most of the MOOCs as you can see. Twenty seven moocs in ten months time! Why not?!? Here is some great piece of advice for the beginners shared in the same thread by the experienced online student.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>do not engage in courses that are not directly going to help you. i.e. just for the sake of doing a course. I did some courses which I did not understand a bit, but they were very easy to complete hence completed them and wasted some valuable time. Second, don't get disheartened in courses which have written assignments, there are times when you don't get marks that you deserve, and become a cry baby on forum, remember there is no redressal for such errors yet. its better to quit some courses in order to do other with adequate rigor.</i><i> And lastly there are so many platforms with moocs, so occasionally keep checking what is starting where. And to finish off, you will make many friends, from the other side of globe so interact and enjoy. There are times when there is evening on other side, and you have just waken up.. </i></blockquote>
<br />
There has been a huge discussion about the dropout rate being exceptionally high in moocs (about 95%) and this student also gets question about the number of his dropouts in the thread.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>ya, i dropped out of many.. last month only I dropped form two psychology courses.. and another english course. Earlier dropped some statistics courses, which were not related to my area of interest.</i></blockquote>
I have dropped out many as well, the statistics course being one of these. It was so theoretical and boring even I am doing statistics much and usually like it.<br />
<br />
But anyway, it is amazing how much you can learn through the courses! My experience about writing in English has been very positive. One can only learn to write while writing and an online course can provide a great possibility to do so. I will receive my first certificate within a week after having given feedback for the other students.<br />
<br />
Where to next? I´ll keep posting.<br />
<br />
<br />
*<span style="font-size: x-small;">Kanpur, previously Cawnpore, is the largest industrial city of Uttar Pradesh and also is the administrative headquarters of Kanpur Nagar district & Kanpur division. It is known as the Economic and Industrial Capital of Uttar Pradesh. It is also known as Leather City as it contains one of the largest and finest tanneries in India and in South Asia.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-25577557459985527762013-05-29T15:28:00.001-07:002013-05-29T15:37:33.920-07:00What are the clichés in English?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpAka_-kIZnutdJSuKd8gW_rWmMf6KGzNeFKYHEJZhZNiGPQwlcDJgg67jdmwZlXMaemL5KnTWe1U8kYnaC4zWLeYsmUSMtdURAROCWY5gwFPqEklfqkXtIUkBsaWfgh1olnuKzXL_lAc/s1600/haridusreform+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpAka_-kIZnutdJSuKd8gW_rWmMf6KGzNeFKYHEJZhZNiGPQwlcDJgg67jdmwZlXMaemL5KnTWe1U8kYnaC4zWLeYsmUSMtdURAROCWY5gwFPqEklfqkXtIUkBsaWfgh1olnuKzXL_lAc/s400/haridusreform+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Some things that might be so obvious to people using only English, are totally invisible to people who have English as their second, third, fourth or fifth language, and are living in a non-English speaking country. I learned English as my fourth language, so it is hard to guess, what are the combinations of words to avoid. I do not have such a strong feeling for the language to be sure of the difference; therefore I decided to write a blogpost about clishés and try to collect some good links and hints for me and other people like me.</div>
<br />
<a href="http://scottswrittenwords.blogspot.se/2011/12/have-you-ever-read-something-and.html" target="_blank">Scott Bury</a>, an editor, journalist and writer living in Ottawa, says that <b><span style="font-size: large;">clishés are words or "<i>phrases that sounded fresh once, but have had the life squeezed out of them through overuse by lazy writers.</i>" </span></b>So, these are the combination of words that show clearly you being a careless writer. Clishé is like an intellectual shortcut, the difference between art and copies.<br />
<br />
So lets now make a short collection of not-to-do-it-at-home-while-writing found online.<br />
<br />
<b>List of "new clichés" by Scott Bury from 2011: </b><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>thin blue line, meaning the police force</i><br />
<i>splitting headache</i><br />
<i>fallen on deaf ears</i><br />
<i>snapped like a whip</i><br />
<i>peppered with gunfire</i><br />
<i>master plan</i><br />
<i>pushing the envelope</i><br />
<i>out of the box</i><br />
<i>going forward, meaning the future</i><br />
<i>hit on</i><br />
<i>tagged and bagged, meaning a dead body</i><br />
<i>more than meets the eye — the writer’s job is to show the reader more than their eyes will see.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Dr. Michael Spear ´s journalistic clichés from the <a href="http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/cliche.html" target="_blank">WritersWeb</a>:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<table align="center" border="0" style="color: black; width: 468px;"><tbody>
<tr><td width="148"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>all walks of life</i></span></td><td width="143"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>give the devil his due</i></span></td><td width="155"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>never a dull moment</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>behind the eight ball</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>hook, line, and sinker</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>nipped in the bud</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>bitter end</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>by hook or crook</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>patience of Job</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>calm before the storm</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>in the nick of time</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>paying the piper</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>checkered career</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>in the same boat</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>sands of time</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>chomping at the bit</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>leaps and bounds</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>selling like hot cakes</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>cool as a cucumber</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>leave no stone unturned</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>stick out like a sore thumb</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>cry over spilled milk</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>lock, stock, and barrel</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>whirlwind tour</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>fall on deaf ears</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>long arm of the law</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>winds of change</i></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>from time immemorial</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>march of history</i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>writing on the wall</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The same writers´ webpage is teaching how to identify clichés by yourself. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>When writing, question any comparison or image you are about to use. Cliches often sneak in the barn door (that's a cliche, by the way) when we try to be descriptive. Is the phrase you're about to use one that you've heard frequently in casual conversation, newscasts, and advertising? If so, it is probably a cliche or on its way there.</i></blockquote>
W<b>orn-out or vague phrases found in student work</b>, and alternates (or at least advice):<br />
<table align="center" border="0" style="color: black; height: 198px; width: 462px;"><tbody>
<tr><td width="102"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Phrase</span></strong></td><td width="350"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alternative</span></strong></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">everyday life</span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">can be cut completely or made specific. Consider: everyday life is very different for a college student and, say, a stock broker or homeless person!</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in today's society</span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">today, currently</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">pros and cons</span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">advantages and disadvantages, costs and benefits</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">people</span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">which ones? Be specific.</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">society</span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who is "society"? Too many alternates exist to list. Instead, be specific about which specific group of people considered</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">this day & age</span></td><td><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">today, presently</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>Pearl Luke ´s</b> collection of<br />
<h1 class="hbg" style="background-color: white; color: #c02c49; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 20.66666603088379px; text-align: -webkit-center; width: auto;">
<a href="http://www.be-a-better-writer.com/cliches.html" target="_blank">681 Cliches to Avoid in Your Creative Writing</a></h1>
<div>
I was going through some of them, there are 681!!! I do not think that I use that many myself, it is probably because I am not so familiar with the overused phrases in the first place, so I am not able to use them. Some of them are actually quite funny, like </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<h1 class="hbg" style="background-color: white; color: #c02c49; font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 20.66666603088379px; text-align: -webkit-center; width: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 14px;">curiosity killed the cat</span></h1>
<div>
<br />
I do not think I will be using it in my academic writing even though research is all about being curious and many experiments have been made using small animals, usually rats or rabbits. Well, that was a Nordic joke.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>David Z. Morris</b>, a writer, musician, and currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of South Florida, compares jargon and clishés in his blog "<a href="http://mindslikeknives.blogspot.se/2010/06/academic-cliche-watch-in-particular.html" target="_blank">Minds like knives</a>". Even though the name of his blog "minds like knives" sounds in itself a bit like a clishé to me, I invite you to take a look at what David is writing.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Jargon condenses a whole discourse into a single word, and when used judiciously, and with a consciousness of audience, makes writing richer. A cliche, by contrast, is the performance of a conventional linguistic gesture that has actually lost whatever original meaning it might have had, a verbal twitch that has more to do with sounding like an academic than actually thinking carefully. </i> </blockquote>
<div>
He has a quite good description about what we should be avoiding while writing academic texts. He does not stop with this explanation but goes on stating that<span style="font-size: large;"><i> clishés in academic writing</i></span><i><span style="font-size: large;"> "deserve to be banned from the lexicon forever. There's a wealth of these that enrage and frustrate me, </span><b><span style="font-size: large;">utterly empty phrases that cloud minds and swell word counts to absolutely no effect</span>. </b>Since the journals are providing new bad writing all the time, I'm hoping the topic will keep me angry and productive basically forever." </i><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Well, there you go! Some people really hate clishés and are ready to spend their free time to fight against this kind of bad language. We have to be careful not to be pushed to the walls and having our throats cut off by these angry academic people. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At the same time I see why they are angry. Some people do misuse the language in a way that should be pointed out. Scott Bury suggests: <i>"Think of new ways of getting these images across. No, it won’t be easy, but did you think the writer’s job would be easy?" </i>He says that writing must be simple but not easy. </div>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-25373269057980998772013-05-29T11:45:00.002-07:002013-05-29T12:55:19.764-07:00Looking for lonely island #artofeducation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"I took a step back and was watching people, watching how everybody reacted" says the science fiction <a href="http://www.writing.ie/interviews/demons-at-his-heels-the-writing-life-of-peter-v-brett-by-michael-j-martinez/" target="_blank">author Peter V. Brett</a>, leans back and writes his bestselling book about 9/11 while other people are freaking out and going mad of horror. Instead of following the crowd in their emotions, he decides to behave rationally, and write.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I read somewhere that the best time to write is when you first arrive at a new place, whether that’s a new country, city, or even restaurant. Everything is fresh and new and strange. You don’t have those lenses over your eyes that tell you what to ignore and what to notice. We writers can be social misfits. While sometimes that’s uncomfortable, it gives us a creative edge. When you’re an outsider, you see things others don’t.</i></blockquote>
This is an excerpt of Joe Bunting´s handbook for writing "The Write Practice: 14 Prompts"(2011:17) that he shares free of charge via his homepage <a href="http://thewritepractice.com/">http://thewritepractice.com/</a>. The lines what I chose were actually a small part of Joe ´s first exercise for writers. He suggest to write about the "out of space" experiences, the awkward moments when we feel misplaced, uncomfortable (ibid.).<br />
<br />
<b>Why is the distance important?</b><br />
<br />
Getting a distance requires you to "transcend the immediate moment in your mind" explains Maria Konnikova referring to the work of psychologist Yaacov Trope. In her recent book "<a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness/2013/01/04/how-to-think-like-sherlock-holmes-the-value-of-creativity-and-imagination-excerpt/" target="_blank">How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes: The Value of Creativity and Imagination</a>" she goes even further, and claims that "[o]ne of the most important ways to facilitate imaginative thinking is through distance."<br />
<br />
To get distance is nowadays becoming quite a challenge, because we are actually getting more and more connected to each other. For writers, it means creating a distance in a very conscious way, it means choosing to be alone, choosing the strange situations, new places, cutting off from mass communication and think or work in solitude.<br />
<br />
There are people writing together in groups but at least I have never yet experienced, that it is possible to compose a good sentence in a room filled with people who are communicating with me. Writing is much more fruitful in a lonely island. I am living in a small village surrounded by the sea, forests, small cliffs and open fields in Sweden. Sometimes I feel it is not distant enough.<br />
<br />
#slowtwitter to find a lonely island<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-89619911258614620382013-05-29T09:38:00.002-07:002013-11-06T05:23:47.857-08:00Creative imagination in writing #artofeducation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am at this point now, where there is a deadline coming closer and closer, but I have nothing to deliver. The usual student syndrome. How to find the creative side in myself despite the stress?<br />
<br />
Hours are passing. I am writing nothing. But instead reading, small talking, chatting, skyping, blogging, reading again...<br />
<br />
<b>What is the flow?</b><br />
<br />
First I am in the #slowtwitter discussion @tammevelin with a Swedish educational scientist (<a href="http://torestad.blogspot.se/" target="_blank">Bertil Törestad</a>) about the meaning of "flow" and unconscious in our behaviour. That keeps developing. What is creativity and how does it occur? I am very creative here, flow is the main mood of working for me.<br />
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<a class="account-group js-account-group js-action-profile js-user-profile-link js-nav" data-user-id="291301928" href="https://twitter.com/makeras" style="color: #999999; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.63636302947998px; line-height: 17.99715805053711px; text-decoration: none;"><strong class="fullname js-action-profile-name show-popup-with-id" style="color: #333333;">Bertil Törestad</strong> <span class="username js-action-profile-name" style="direction: ltr; font-size: 12px; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span style="color: #bbbbbb;">@</span>makeras</span></a><br />
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<small class="time" style="color: #bbbbbb; float: right; font-size: 12px; margin-top: 1px; position: relative;"><a class="tweet-timestamp js-permalink js-nav" href="https://twitter.com/makeras/status/339697472077185025" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;" title="12:59 PM - 29 May 13">5h</a></small></div>
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<a class="twitter-atreply pretty-link" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" style="color: #0084b4; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #66b5d2;">@</span>tammevelin</a> I think flow is when you are unconsciously processing what you are up to and everything just flows....</div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17.987499237060547px;"><br /></span></span>Törestad has a PhD in psychology. I disagree because I have a book called "Flow" from Csikszentmihalyi (I´ll never learn to write the name correct! I guess that is not so special.):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Flow</b> is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, this positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)</a></blockquote>
I think that the flow means that you are fully present and conscious of what you are doing, the senses are wide open but you stay focused. It is exactly the opposite of unconscious mood. The psychology PhD says nothing after a while, I guess he did not know about the flow so much. So I am all alone and getting back to my previous topic which was to write something for coursera.com.<br />
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<b>Word is the beginning of intelligent design</b><br />
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A moment later I am sitting here watching videos with David Dennett about "Intuition pumps" and "intelligent design", again getting into a discussion. Now I am disagreeing with some of his arguments. Dennett talks about his newest book "Intuition pumps and other tools for thinking", there are 77 thinking tools he is sharing in the book, he presents some of them to this audience. Interesting, he calls it the App-s for the brain. Sounds like something you would like to download: "rhetorical question" we should try to answer these anyway (!), "surely-alarm" being usually the weakest link in argumentation and "rathering-signals" that very often present a false dichotomy. These are nice little tools that are used regularly, start noticing it and you are able to avoid at least some of the classical "white men´s traps".<br />
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Dennett himself is a nice old man, little bit like a grandfather or a Santa Claus figure for a mankind. Sweet and innocent. I have a good relationship with old men with white beards, at least usually I have. Perhaps that is changing now because recently I wrote a blog post "<a href="http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/mom-watch-me-im-doing-the-impossible-part-ii/" target="_blank">Mom, watch me, I am doing the impossible</a>" questioning "their" real expertise in a most straightforward manner. That, of course, is nothing personal, I am just exercising my rights to think and question the world as perceived by our grandfathers, turning off some of the common "fixed points" or "intuition pumps", to use Dennett´s vocabulary.<br />
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Dennett´s discussion and claims were actually quite interesting, until he mentioned Stalin "treating" people instead of "punishing" and asking if we want Stalin`s methods back. That is a tricky road, specially from a person talking about thinking tools while standing in front of an admiring global audience... Hearing that sentence, made my my eyeballs want to jump off, and roll away to opposite directions. What a naive approach from an old educated man, especially if you want to advocate for punishment, as Dennett did! I guess he has not heard of Gulag prison camps in Siberia and millions sent there to die. Punishment was the favourite thinking tool for Stalin, he exercised it on millions and millions of people. It was no way a therapy or a treatment machinery that put 10 016 persons (June 1941) and 20 701 people (March 1949) in Estonia on animal wagons and send them to Siberia (Estonian population all together was about 1 million or even less back then). They were innocent people sent to die of hunger and cold, 90% of them never returned (women, men, children, old people). Calling that treatment, is an obvious misstatement.<br />
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I find it interesting how people build up their claims, it is a kind of emotional ladder, very often there is no rational explanations behind the ideas. These old men with their beautiful Santa beards are probably one of the cleverest people on Earth, they are used to people just staring at them. This admiration does not mean that we are stupid, we just love the Santas. I have the feeling that real discussions are not posted online because clever people sometimes underestimate their audiences, they underestimate us, ordinary people. I love to meet these men every now and then and talk face-to-face because they are just so sweet and lovely. It always feels like Christmas then. <br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>IMAGINATION. Am I becoming the Sherlock Holmes of the www?</b><br />
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How to write new meaningful texts for wider audiences?<b> </b><a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness/2013/01/04/how-to-think-like-sherlock-holmes-the-value-of-creativity-and-imagination-excerpt/" target="_blank">Maria Konnikova</a> says: "Imagination takes the stuff of observation and experience and recombines them into something new." She advises people to step back and take a wider view on the topic they would like to write about, because "one of the most important ways to facilitate imaginative thinking is through distance." The Sherlock Holmes´ view reveals details left unnoticed, enables us to combine our knowledge in a new way, create and innovate. When I moved to Sweden then I slowly discovered much more about Estonia and Estonian culture, the ways of being there. That 300 kilometres distance changed my view tremendously.<br />
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<b>It is easy to be creative and write if you are passionate about your topic. I could write books about Estonian history for example. I have collected materials, stories, pictures etc through many years. This is a way how to get your imagination going! The hardest thing for me to manage is discipline, it is not so easy to keep the focus, when distractions are everywhere... </b><br />
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Time is passing, the lines are here, but still I have nothing to deliver. @tammevelin in #slowtwitter mood.<br />
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-21295224074773495932013-05-28T09:35:00.001-07:002013-05-28T09:37:47.309-07:00Reading your own writing: A.A. Milne reads "Winnie-The-Pooh"Don´t you just love to meet the famous authors and listen to how they read their own stories? What about Alan Alexander Milne? He is the author of one of the most popular children´s book through all times - "Winnie-The-Pooh".<br />
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I have the feeling that his books are especially popular amongst adults. I remember how I enjoyed reading it to my daughter when she was small... <br />
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In this recording you can listen to <b>Alan A. Milne reading his book "<a href="http://www.epubbud.com/read.php?g=NHEB6LCR" target="_blank">Winnie-The-Pooh</a>"</b> from 1929.<br />
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Got exited? Watch and listen also how Isol, the winner of this years Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner, reads her books. <a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/how-to-write-childrens-books-learn-from.html" target="_blank"><b>How to write children´s books? Learn from Isol, the winner of ALMA price 2013.</b></a><br />
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More news about writing and the future of education in my <a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/authors-guide-to-slow-twitter.html" target="_blank">#slowtwitter</a> account <a href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" target="_blank">@tammevelin</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-33553286612170104882013-05-28T09:12:00.000-07:002013-05-28T09:16:00.904-07:00Online handbooks about scientific writing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There are loads of online material available for everyone who would like to write and publish something. The more I am getting into it, the more links I am finding with tips and pieces of advice. It seems to me that the reason for poor writing cannot not be the lack of online materials to support your writing process. It must be something else... yet to be figured out...<br />
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Before you can start your scientific writing, you need to do a lot of reading. That comes first, nothing can replace that (not even a great editor). And then, before starting with your writing process, it is important to think about the audiences and language you are using and many other aspects in writing. There are so many things to consider before the actual writing, not to mention of course that there is so much to think while writing. Thinking, thinking, thinking...<br />
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<b>- Where to find support then? </b><b>And be short!</b><br />
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For example there is a useful free online journal that helps you through the process of getting your scientific article published created by Elsevier writers with the title " <a href="http://www.elsevier.com/authors/publishing-process" target="_blank">Understanding the Publishing Process: how to Publish in scientific and medical journals</a>". Perhaps that will give you some firsthand assistance?<br />
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All the upcoming findings about writing in English and the future of education in my <a href="http://ingliseke.blogspot.se/2013/05/authors-guide-to-slow-twitter.html" target="_blank">#slowtwitter</a> account <a href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" target="_blank">@tammevelin</a>.<br />
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-63950687699492085012013-05-28T04:26:00.001-07:002013-05-28T04:26:19.038-07:00Author´s guide to slow twitter #artofeducation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I started with twitter @tammevelin few weeks ago, and was going through all the experiences described in most of the guides for beginners in twitter... I have found out that many online writers learn soon how to start to use the twitter tools for automatic online marketing and tend to forget about the real meaning of communication between us, human beings. Instead it is the machine that chooses whom to follow or whom to dump, it is the machine that finds the keywords of the day, they will RT(retweet) because then you are kind of forced to return the favour etc. <br />
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Human beings are machines<br />
human beings are machines<br />
human beings are machines<br />
human beings are ...<br />
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Are we? Machines? <br />
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Thanks to your <a href="http://rastephensonauthor.blogspot.se/2012/08/indie-authors-guide-to-twitter.html?showComment=1369738197847#c3457083987639405956" target="_blank">blogpost</a>, Richard, I found some new information about how some "professional" people treat others with the help of the available online tools. I know now, that I have to learn to make a difference between the real communication, personal meetings online, you sending me a message, and the advertising industry shallow lines to sell a product. <br />
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I do not need to sell anything and I buy so very rarely. Writing is a way of life to me, meeting people is a possibility to co-create our worlds together. You might think that it is naive but I call it authentic and slow life. Meeting the Other is what brings value, that is what creates what´s human in us.<br />
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I like the idea of being present while communicating with others and dislike the automatic approach, the social media machinery. I am inviting people to think twice before giving up their personal presence while sending out their unique messages to the world, sending their messages to us. The automatic messages loose their value, you will be alone much too quickly, we all will be alone because no one will be reading these automatic messages sent in every 24,5 minutes 24 hours a day 7 days a week. In this way you turn yourself into machines, you are part of something else, something not human and the communication has lost all its meaning. There is no you and me anymore. It is just the machinery continuing the "business as usual".<br />
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I look outside through my windows and see how the spring is coming, write some lines and send a tweet or write a blog post. My life is not automatic, it is real. I am present.<br />
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#artofeducation<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-8848308923263439832013-05-28T01:15:00.003-07:002013-05-28T06:59:45.500-07:00How to write children´s books? Learn from Isol, the winner of ALMA price 2013.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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News from the world. Isol from Buenos Aires won one of the highest children´s literary prices in the world, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA price) in 2013. Isol is an author and an illustrator. Her books can be found in more than 20 countries and since the news about the price has spread, many more will follow.<br />
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Swedish TV channel made a beautiful programme with Isol where you can watch her showing her pictures, telling the stories and explaining some of the ideas behind.<br />
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One of the most intriguing tips she gives to other authors is to be simple and complex at the same time. This is her way of creating the characters of her books and finding a visual language to it. The interview was made in English and has Swedish subtitles. I encourage you to take the time and learn from this wonderful women who creates children´s books that have won the love and appreciation of so many in the world.<br />
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Find the video here: <a href="http://www.ur.se/Produkter/176733-UR-Samtiden-Isol-Almapristagare-2013-Samtal-med-Isol#start=7&stop=954" target="_blank">Samtal med Isol</a> in UR Samtid.<br />
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-42984452902599034032013-05-27T16:17:00.003-07:002013-05-27T16:17:46.302-07:00Science writing online. Who participates?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Stanford University had an online writing class for science writing autumn semester in 2012 and 11 000 people responded to their pre-course survey. Who were these people taking free online classes at Stanford University in order to improve their writing?<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>-35% are graduate students; 17% are undergraduates; 22% are research scientists or engineers; 8% are academics/professors; and 3% are professional writers. (The remaining 15% don’t fall in one of these bins.)</i><br />
<i>-33% are from computer science, engineering, or math; 28% from biology or medicine; 15% from physics, chemistry, or earth science; and 10% from the social sciences. (Another 7% are in other scientific areas; and 7% are non-scientists.)</i><br />
<i>-69% of you indicated that you intend to participate in all the assignments, including writing papers and editing your peers’ work. </i><br />
<br />
The information is based on the welcoming note sent out on <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 21px; text-align: right;">Mon 1 Oct 2012 8:55 AM CEST (UTC +0200) </span>and available online at coursera.com course homepage.<br />
<br />
As you can see most of the people who take the writing classes are professional and well educated. In one of my recent posts at the AppleTree I asked <a href="http://evelintamm.wordpress.com/?s=who+are+the+experts" target="_blank">who are the experts in education</a> and did not answer. Perhaps that here provides us with a small hint about MOOC. <br />
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-72979520142117986262013-05-27T15:11:00.002-07:002013-05-28T01:26:29.226-07:00Personal Benchmark Statement for First-Year Composition 2.0<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today I started a new coursera.com writing course. It will be my fourth. It is a kind of a marathon but I ´ll try to keep myself on top of it. So far so good.<br />
<br />
The team of the First-Year Composition 2.0 with Dr. Karen Head as their leading figure promises that I "<i>will gain confidence in using written, visual, and oral communication to critique and create documents and presentations." </i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Over the next 8 weeks, not only will you will draft and revise a personal essay, create or select an image to illustrate the same concept, and transform that essay into an oral presentation, but you will also develop confidence in yourself as a communicator along the way. More specifically, the work you do in First-Year Composition 2.0 will help you to practice and improve your competence in the following areas: </i></blockquote>
<i><b>Critical Thinking:</b> Evaluate the effectiveness of personal essays, images, and oral presentations. Assess your work and the work of your peers. Reflect on your own processes and performance. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>Rhetoric: </b>Analyze the ways in which you and other communicators use persuasion. Think about and use context, audience, purpose, argument, genre, organization, design, visuals, and conventions. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>Process: </b>Apply processes (read, invent, plan, draft, design, rehearse, revise, publish, present, and critique). </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>Digital Media:</b> Produce written, oral, and visual artifacts. </i><br />
<br />
<br />
One of the very firsts tasks is to write a short <b>Personal Benchmark Statement.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Within the next weeks I will write at least 10 blog posts related to writing in English and at least one longer article for a magazine. I will improve my grammar and active vocabulary. </b><br />
<br />
Follow my learning news in twitter @tammevelin. <div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-33784779238302771812013-05-27T13:50:00.000-07:002013-05-27T13:50:19.344-07:00List of five to ten nouns and adjectives week2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL0p58w3mwAdiW616lntfHx4Kb5uZ2w0oWOoJIfF_DZ_nvfD_by6Cj3eD2bEpuFLntp87HCMzElhToEnpOdJ-kJd7V-JENLbOcVgvwc7PM_4eMMG1Onz3Fipg2_9noLmZqWLTV-lpiRio/s1600/if+you+do+not+tell+the+truth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL0p58w3mwAdiW616lntfHx4Kb5uZ2w0oWOoJIfF_DZ_nvfD_by6Cj3eD2bEpuFLntp87HCMzElhToEnpOdJ-kJd7V-JENLbOcVgvwc7PM_4eMMG1Onz3Fipg2_9noLmZqWLTV-lpiRio/s320/if+you+do+not+tell+the+truth.jpg" width="229" /></a><i>Write down a list of at least five to ten nouns and five to ten adjectives as you observe a scene at home, work, or in your community.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
girl<br />
iphone<br />
sofa<br />
bookshelf<br />
books<br />
photo<br />
lamp<br />
window<br />
forest<br />
cliff<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
dark<br />
tired<br />
green<br />
slow<br />
academic<br />
boring<br />
important<br />
soundless<br />
messy<br />
bourgeois<br />
<br />
There is a teenage girl sitting on the sofa watching her iphone as if it was more important than life. I feel tired. Everything is kind of slow and a bit messy; bookselves are filled with books and photos, some of these are on the walls and some are on the floor. Dark forests and soundless cliffs on the other side of the living room windows. I see a shadow of an academic light. It is my lamp in a bourgeois living room. This is where I live and work. Just another woman without a room of its own.<br />
<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Reading list</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91r/" target="_blank">A Room of One´s own</a> by Virgnia Woolf<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-41728077277229880302013-05-27T07:04:00.001-07:002013-05-27T07:04:32.653-07:00 8 sentences describing an action you witnessed Week3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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That morning I looked outside the window of my living room and noticed that something had changed. At first I could not recognise what it was exactly so I kept focusing to figure it out. It had been raining in the morning. There was nothing so special about that. Rain is common in Sweden. Then I realised that the colour of the nature had changed overnight. It was gray and brown but now everything was greenish and fresh, growing and blooming. What a tremendous difference it was!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2174409075728981932.post-51491433389284736122013-05-27T06:49:00.000-07:002013-05-27T06:49:25.043-07:00The 8 Parts of Speech Week2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Crafting an Effective Writer Week 2</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
1. Nouns<br />
2. Pronouns<br />
3. Adjectives<br />
4. Verbs<br />
5. Adverbs<br />
6. Prepositions<br />
7. Conjunctions<br />
8. Interjections<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Definitions</b></span><br />
<br />
<b>Noun</b><br />a person, place, thing, quality, or action and can function as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or an appositive<br />
<br />
<b>Pronoun</b><br />renames nouns to reduce repetition<br />
<br />
Adjective<br />modifies nouns and pronouns<br />
<br />
<b>Verb</b><br />indicates action or state of being<br />
<br />
<b>Adverb</b><br />modifies verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs<br />
<br />
<b>Preposition</b><br />acts as relationship between words in the form of condition, direction, location, or time<br />
<br />
<b>Conjunction</b><br />links words, phrases, and/or clauses<br />
<br />
<b>Interjection</b><br />brief, emotional responses to a situation or event<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Nouns:</b><br />
• Common or proper<br />
• Person, place, thing, living creature, idea<br />
<br />
<b>Pronouns:</b><br />
• Subject<br />
• Object<br />
• Indefinite (subject or object)<br />
• Relative (introduce relative clauses)<br />
• Demonstrative (subject, object, adjective)<br />
• Possessive (refer to specific belonging)<br />
• Interrogative (questions)<br />
• Reflexive/Intensive (refer back to noun/pronoun; function as objects)<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Adjectives:</b><br />
• Descriptive (describes quality of noun)<br />
• Proper (formed using proper noun)<br />
• Predicate (after noun, connected by linking verb)<br />
• Determiner (a, an, the)<br />
<br />
<b>Verbs:</b><br />
• Action (show an action)<br />
• Linking (explain condition)<br />
• Helping/auxiliary (describe main verb)<br />
◦ helping verb + main verb = complete verb<br />
<br />
<b>Adverbs:</b><br />
• Some end in -ly, some do not<br />
<br />
<b>Prepositions:</b><br />
• Prepositional phrases – begin with preposition and end with noun or pronoun<br />
<br />
<b>Conjunctions:</b><br />
• Coordinating<br />
• Correlative<br />
• Adverbial<br />
• Subordinate<br />
<br />
<b>Interjections:</b><br />
• Not used in academic writing<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/tammevelin" data-widget-id="342410213942497282">Tweets by @tammevelin</a>
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</div>Evelin Tammhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10146912643193510148noreply@blogger.com0