Turning Blog Posts Into a Book Draft

2010 NaNoWriMo Winner BadgeAfter thirty days of thinking, sorting, and scribbling, I turned a variety of notes and blog posts into a very rough and informal book draft of 52,967 words.

 

  1. My blog entry on Orwell’s 1984 was mentioned on the NY Times learning blog.
  2. I published the October Teaching Carnival, a guest blog entry for ProfHacker, on the Chronicle of Higher Education website.
  3. I joined the network staff of the Geekshed IRC Network.
  4. I published 367 posts on my personal blog in 2010 (including news summaries).
  5. I posted news updates to @newsfromtengrrl every day from August 1 to December 31 (that's 153 consecutives days).
  6. I am a National Novel Writing Month winner for 2010.
  7. I started using a new word processor, Literature & Latte’s Scrivener, which has changed the way I organize and write print-friendly documents.

 

[Photo: 365.14 (Blogging) by kpwerker, on Flickr]
 


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ECNing Blurb:

Text + Image = Tagxedo: The Next Generation of Word Cloud Fun
 
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan PoeWordle brought us word clouds a couple of years ago. Tagxedo, which I used to create this cat image from Poe’s “The Black Cat,” takes things to the next level.
 
Tagxedo arranges the word clouds for the text into the shape of an image that you choose. You can customize the colors, contrast, and other features. Read more on my blog for details on how to use this tool in the classroom.

 

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The 10 worst wives and girlfriends in literature | Guyism.com # 2010-04-20

 

 

I like to emphasize that students’ grammar, punctuation, and mechanics are not under scrutiny in online discussions, for instance. As long as we can figure out what the student means, it’s fine. If there are questions about such things, take them to a private message. Don’t let fear of corrections silence conversation.