Teachers on the Thinkfinity Community have been busy collecting answers. Theresa Gibbon suggests trying ReadWriteThink’s interactive Word Mover for “I Have a Dream” and Word Mover for Holes and asking students to rearrange the words on the whiteboard as a class experience. Find dozens of additional ideas on the Thinkfinity Community discussion board.

This post is the introduction from “August 10 to 16 on ReadWriteThink.” Read the rest of the post in the Thinkfinity Community site.

It’s important, then, to teach students how to write strong headlines, titles, and subject lines—and I have a great technique you can use, based on an observation Guy Kawasaki shared on Google+.

Kawasaki posted a screenshot from his blog indexing site, Alltop.com, and observed, “You can see who the good headline creators are when you see them side by side.” Indeed, you can.

Try the technique yourself by clicking on the screenshot above. It shows headlines from four blogs on the Writing page on Alltop. Even with the limited number of titles in the screenshot, you can see that some headlines are better at catching your attention than others. I want to go read The Other N-Words, for instance.

The blogs at the top of an Alltop page tend to be stronger, so there’s not an obvious dud in the image. If you visit the Writing page on Alltop though, you’re likely to find some headlines that don’t work. On the current page, for example, I’m uninterested in Exercise 9, 10, 11, or 12 from Aldys Fiction. Aldys Fiction may be a great site, but based on those headlines alone, there’s nothing to convince me to go read anything.

To show students how to write strong headlines, titles and subject lines, just customize this activity a bit. Here’s a basic outline of what to do:

1. Choose a page on Alltop that focuses on a topic that students are familiar with. Alltop has pages for hundreds of topics, ranging from American Idol to Zombies, and from Anthropology to Zoology. Nearly any topic students are exploring can be found on Alltop. (That makes the site great for research too, but I’ll save that for a later post.) Be sure to review the page you choose to ensure the blog titles are all appropriate for the classroom.
2. Print the Alltop page. You can work on the live website, but when you mouse over a blog title, more information from the post will pop up. Since you want students to focus on the titles alone, the live site isn’t the best option. Further, Alltop is updated hourly, so an inappropriate blog title may appear. Printing the pages avoids both of these problems. If you want a paper-free option, print to PDFs and work from the files rather than the live site.
3. Pass out the Alltop page, and ask students to mark 10–15 blog posts that they want to read. Encourage students to move quickly through the options. The point is to make fast decisions. Give them two or three minutes.
4. Next ask students to identify 5 blog posts that they would not read. Again, ask them to work quickly, as if they were scrolling down the list on a computer screen.
5. In small groups, have students share their selections and note posts chosen by more than one person. Have them create a group list of approximately 15 blogs the group would read.
6. Ask group members to compare the 15 blog titles and identify what makes the titles compelling. Encourage students to look for similarities. You might work through an example title to demonstrate features that typically make a headline stand out.
7. Have students use the similarities to create guidelines for strong titles. Students can consider the 5 posts they each said they would not read to see how they violate their guidelines as well.
8. Compile all the group guidelines into a class list. Groups can share their lists with the class. As a group shares its guidelines, note new ideas on the board. Work to group related ideas as the groups present their lists. Once all groups have shared, review the class list together and make any revisions.
9. Talk about how to apply the headline guidelines to paper titles and subject lines. Add suggestions on how to adjust the information for different rhetorical situations.
10. For homework, ask students to strengthen the titles on their texts by using the guidelines that the class has created. If desired, students can submit a before and after version of their titles that you review during the next class session.

As you go through the activity, you may find the opportunity to review the rules for using capital letters in titles. You can point to the guidelines in your class text. For a thorough review, point students to the details on Capitalizing Titles from Grammar Girl. For a bit of fun, you can try out the SongCase – the song title capitalizer.

So there you have it. It’s fairly simple, but it should influence the headlines, titles, and subject lines that you see after the class completes it. Do you have any tricks for teaching students about headlines, titles, and subject lines? Leave me a comment!

Now setting up a profile for a company had occurred to me before I saw this list of news companies. I confess that as soon as the red invite envelope showed up on my Google+ page, I sent invites to myself for the two clients I do social networking for, ReadWriteThink and Bedford Bits.

Before I set up either profile, however, I found an article that said I shouldn’t proceed. The LA Times reported that Google asks businesses to stay out of Google+ — for now. The article explains that Google+ is for individuals only. Businesses, schools, clubs, non-profits, and everyone will use a business version of Google+ that will connect to Google products like Analytics and AdWords. The original post on the Google+ blog is coming up 404 as I write, but Christian Oestlien, who wrote the post, also recorded a video explaining the request for businesses to stay out of Google+:

So following the instructions, I filled out Google’s online form for beta testers. I was particularly persuaded by the last note in the LA Times article. Oestlien stated, “We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles” (emphasis mine).

I resolved to wait. After all, one interview suggested that the business profiles may be available in just a few weeks, though the video suggests, less optimistically, “later” this year.

This afternoon, however, I found that dozens of companies have ignored Google’s request and set up profiles anyway. Even companies like PC Magazine that reported the request for businesses to stay out of Google+ have set up a profile on Google+ anyway. Is Google likely to delete companies like NPR, Al Jazeera, and PC Magazine? Probably not. If non-user profiles are shut down, I suspect they’ll be small businesses and non-profits that don’t have the clout or ability to fight back.

This all looks like another case where following the rules and doing as you were asked means you’re left out. What’s the best wisdom here for smaller groups and companies that don’t have the firepower of those bigger companies? Do we add ourselves and risk deletion? Will the power of companies adding themselves overcome Google’s policy? I wish I knew the answers.

[Photo: Break the Rules...Who Knows Where It Will Lead? by BrentDPayne, on Flickr]

The collection of texts “primarily authored by Laura Fleming represents one educator’s vision of what transmedia is, and what it can be, for teachers and students learning to read and write in a digital age.” You’ll find an explanation and history of transmedia as well as example texts and pedagogical reflections.

Also out last week are these posts from Bedford Bits posts:

• Looking for a new way to do group writing? Holly Pappas explores The Collaborative Writing Sprint: Product & Process.
• Andrea Lunsford shares her Tip for New Teachers #7: Setting Up Effective Peer Groups.
• Jack Solomon explores the semiotics of recent scandals in Congressmen Behaving Badly.
• Whether you want to catch up with poetry or keep up it, High School Bits blogger Jesse Tangen has a solution for you in The Poetry Foundation’s New Website: A Walk-through.
• Traci Gardner explores how to use cell phones and encoded images in the writing classroom with QR Codes for Composition Teachers.
• Susan Naomi Bernstein considers what happens when students compose in that precarious space outside the box—or outside the standardized curriculum in Crooked Seams, ADHD, and Basic Writing: A Narrative of Personal Experience.

A Few Extra Links

• Writers tell stories that demonstrate how everyone is a writer in the video “Who is a Writer: What Writers Tell Us” from the National Conversation on Writing and and the WPA Network for Media Action.
• Learn How the Internet Is Revolutionizing Education in this infographic that takes us from TV lectures to YouTube & Facebook.
• For a diversion, “Test Your Literature IQ” with quizzes on first lines, classic texts, and even cats in fiction.
• Sign up for our Ink’d In newsletter and request free professional resources today.
• Have great assignments or student essays to share? Jay Dolmage is Looking for Essays and Assignments and paying up to $100 for works chosen for publication.

For regular updates from Bedford Bits, be sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Have a great week!

—Traci Gardner

[Photo: Gunter Somerfeld, Transmedia Development & The New World Model by Gulltaggen, on Flickr]

If you’re struggling a bit with your choices, take a look at Lifehacker’s How to Create an Awesome Summer Reading List for some tips on where to find books, ways to track your progress, and recommendations from other bookworms.

While you’re looking for great texts to read, be sure you’ve read the great ideas for the classroom or professional development in these Bedford Bits posts from last week:

• Blogger Holly Pappas addresses The Semiannual Plagiarism Outbreak with some ideas for plagiarism-proofing assignments.
• Andrea Lunsford offers her fourth Tip for New Teachers – On Responding to Student Writing, Part 1.
• High School Bits guest blogger Elizabeth Hollow shares a strategy to help students develop comparative theses in Apples to Apples? Developing a Comparative Thesis.
• So is Facebook, in essence, populist or elitist? Jack Solomon explores The Dark Side of the Social Network.
• What basic tech literacy skills do you assume students bring to the classroom? Barclay Barrios questions the assumptions teachers sometimes make in http://ass.u.me.
• How did people connect before Facebook and Twitter? Traci Gardner discusses MOOs: Online Social Networking Before Social Networks.

A Few Extra Links

• Is your doctor well-versed in literature? Does she write about her experiences? Listen to NPR on the value of stories in Can Literature Make A Better Doctor?
• Andrea Lunsford’s recent post on building a syllabus is listed in Weekend Reading: First Summer Show Edition from ProfHacker!
• Challenge students to take notes without words? Read how one educator is Teaching a whole new way to read as the class explores graphic novels.
• Sign up for our Ink’d In newsletter and request free professional resources today.
• Have great assignments or student essays to share? Jay Dolmage is Looking for Essays and Assignments and paying up to $100 for works chosen for publication.

For regular updates from Bedford Bits, be sure to like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Have a great week!

[Photo: Summer reading list by soundfromwayout, on Flickr]

Look back to that entry for some ideas for writing or discussion, and for more ideas for the classroom or professional development, look back to these Bedford Bits posts from last week:

• Andrea Lunsford describes how she designs a course syllabus as blueprint for action, and a guide from the first meeting through the last class in Tips for New Teachers #4 – Building a Syllabus.
   
• Doug Downs describes how a writing-about-writing course helps nontraditional and returning students by its focus on enabled writers in As If We Took Them Seriously.
   
• Nedra Reynolds describes her summer plans to teach a travel writing class online in Armchair Teaching? A Trip into the Online Environment.
   
• Can students connect the work they’re doing in the classroom to the work they will come to do in their disciplines and majors? Barclay Barrios shares an assignment that helps ensure they do in Thinking about Research in the Disciplines.
   
• What’s your take on the death of blogging? Traci Gardner argues that we need to rethink the question in Technology, Genre, and the Alleged Death of Blogging.
   
• Now that classes are over, Susan Naomi Bernstein talks about The Three Rs of Summer: Reading, Reflection, and Renewal.

A Few Extra Links

• Interested in having students Tweet? Try 5 Unique Uses of Twitter in the Classroom from US News & World Report.
   
• When’s the best time to read teaching evaluations? ProfHacker explores the options.
   
• Looking for a visual rhetoric project? Visit the National Writing Project’s Digital Is… for Danielle Nicole DeVoss’s When Images “Lie”: Critical Visual Literacy.
   
• Sign up for our Ink’d In newsletter and request free professional resources today.
   
• Have great assignments or student essays to share? Jay Dolmage is Looking for Essays and Assignments and paying up to $100 for works chosen for publication.

Let us know what you want to know about teaching writing or about using digital tools in the composition classroom by leaving a comment. Your response will help shape upcoming posts.

[Photo: Always Faithful, Doberman, Military Working Dog, MWD, World War II Memorial, War Dog Cemetery located on Navel Base Guam by Beverly & Pack, on Flickr]

I disagree with some: “You aren’t learning anything when you’re talking.” ~Lyndon B. Johnson. Fiddlesticks. Learning while talking is sometimes the point, especially in the socially collaborative classroom. I smiled at others: “If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.” ~ Mark Twain. Yes. Absolutely true. A life lesson is described right there.

As I reviewed the list, I began wondering how I might use the quotations in class. I admit that I didn’t fact-check or authenticate the quotations, so one activity might be doing so and hypothesizing where errors came from. Another activity could be arranging the quotations into categories (e.g., those about experience) and then comparing all the quotations in a specific category. The simplest activity perhaps is asking students to each choose a quotation that fits some experience from their lives, and then tell that story so that the quotation is the conclusion—a sort of moral at the end of the fable.

According to the site list, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.” Consider expanding the dimensions of your mind by checking out the ideas in these Bedford Bits posts from last week:

• Do you explicitly teach reading and vocabulary? Holly Pappas shares Thoughts on Vocabulary (with Questions).
• Andrea Lunsford offers Tips for New Teachers #3: A Word in Praise of Textbooks.
• Jack Solomon reminds us of the importance of seeing the reality between social constructions like cultural mythologies in Of Myths and Memes.
• How do you handle Plagiarism? Barclay Barrios discusses the tensions of responding as a teacher & as an administrator.
• Are e-books gaining momentum & reaching a tipping point? Steve Bernhardt considers how students influence the answer in Whither e-Books.
• Is There Any Way to Streamline the Grading Process? Traci Gardner shares some strategies to a smoother assessment.
• Do you remember who spoke at your college graduation? Jay Dolmage explores the genre of The Graduation Speech.

A Few Extra Links

• Catch up on what happened at the Computers and Writing Conference 2011 with the Ephemera collected on the Collaborvention site.
• Are we outsourcing our brains to the cloud? The New York Times explores The Twitter Trap, and Gizmodo responds with New York Times Editor Is a Horrible Troll Who Doesn’t Understand the Modern World. Pair the articles for a lively class discussion.
• Sign up for our Ink’d In newsletter and request free professional resources today.
• Have great assignments or student essays to share? Jay Dolmage is Looking for Essays and Assignments and paying up to $100 for works chosen for publication.
• Kairos is is seeking submissions for two sections: Reviews and Interviews.

Let us know what you want to know about teaching writing or about using digital tools in the composition classroom by leaving a comment. Your response will help shape upcoming posts.
 

[Photo: cat tail by blhphotography, on Flickr]

As you reach the end of the term where you teach, I hope the ceremonies and celebrations go well (even if they aren’t what you originally expect them to be). As move on to the second half of the month, take a few minutes to check out these Bedford Bits posts from last week:

• Now that testing is finished for the year, High School Bits blogger Jesse Tangen-Mills shares some classroom activities that work well for Treating Post-Test Syndrome
• Andrea Lunsford argues that Texting IS Writing, and that we need to pay very close attention to it and learn from our students how they use this new way to communicate.
• Mary Tripp discusses Self-Efficacy in the WAW Classroom: Preliminary Research Results. Her report includes interesting student visualizations of themselves as writers.
• Want to create a super-mobile, super-light virtual classroom? Barclay Barrios describes the system he is adopting for his class this summer in Twitter Me This.
• Are students doing Long Writing vs. Hard Writing? Traci Gardner explains the difference (and why it matters).
• Nancy Sommers reflects on her year of teaching and shares some plans for the summer in Looking Back, Looking Forward.
• Susan Naomi Bernstein reminds students what is important to them—where they come from, what and whom they love, why they have succeeded in the past—in Writing Beyond Stereotypes.

A Few Extra Links

• Will the Internet Destroy Academic Freedom? The Chronicle of Higher Education asks whether the cherished principle of academic freedom is being Googled to death.
• Sign up for email updates about what we do for teachers and request our free professional resources today.
• Submit your suggestions in the Idea Survey for what our illustrator should draw in The Everyday Writer, 5th edition, by Andrea A. Lunsford, and choose a free trade book or professional resource as our thanks.
• Have great assignments or student essays to share? Jay Dolmage is Looking for Essays and Assignments and paying up to $100 for works chosen for publication.
• Kairos is is seeking submissions for two sections: Reviews and Interviews.

Let us know what you want to know about teaching writing or about using digital tools in the composition classroom by leaving a comment. Your response will help shape upcoming posts.

[Photo: Lightning!! by aresauburn™, on Flickr]

The NIH-funded study of the brain activity in rats found that “if you deprive them of sleep (aah, sleep), parts of their brains take a nap anyway. Even though they appear awake and active, brainwave measures show that scattered groups of neurons in the cortex are nodding off on their own.” Okay, so there may be questions about the research that readers bring up in the comments, but if you need an excuse for not getting enough done today, it’s a handy study to be able to mention.

Before you head off for a nap though, head on over to Bedford Bits for classroom activities and teaching strategies, which were posted last week:

• What atmosphere do you establish in class? Andrea Lunsford discusses classroom ethos in Tips for New Teachers #1: Classroom Ethos.
   
• Do you teach reading in writing courses? Blogger Doug Downs explains that Yes, We Should Teach Reading in Writing Courses.
   
• Nedra Reynolds discusses resources that have helped her give style center stage in the writing and rhetoric classroom in her entry, In Honor of Enargeia and Polysyndeton.
   
• Barclay Barrios asks what you do to push through to the end of the semester—either personally or in your classes in End of Semester Boost.
   
• High School Bits Blogger Nathan Odell talks about narrative and shares TV Tropes and the Periodic Table of Storytelling.
   

• Traci Gardner shares ways to manage and organize links for the classroom with Paper.li in the Classroom: Alternatives and Activities.

A Few Extra Links

• Paranoid? You Must Be a Grad Student according to a recent article from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
   
• Sign up for email updates about what we do for teachers and request our free professional resources today.
   
• How would you illustrate the “Language” section of The Everyday Writer? Submit your idea in the Idea Survey.
   
• Do Adjunct Votes Count where you teach? Inside Higher Ed discusses efforts in change the system in Massachusetts.
   
• Take a look at resources on How to Create Accessible Documents from Profhacker for tips you can use yourself and share with students in professional communications classes.

Let us know what you want to know about teaching writing or about using digital tools in the composition classroom by leaving a comment. Your response will help shape upcoming posts.

[Photo: Day 4: Truffle sleeping on the job again (and browsing dogster.com)! by star5112, on Flickr]

You think I’m making this all up, don’t you? That’s why I think it would make the beginning of some interesting classroom projects. How do you write about “Rabbit Population Management” persuasively? What strategies will convince readers to take your story seriously? How would you talk about the project with students, faculty, staff, and the public? This one little story from the Chronicle of Higher Ed has so many possibilities for discussing persuasion, business reports, and technical writing!

If you’re looking for other classroom activities and teaching strategies, hop on over to Bedford Bits for more on these entries, which were posted last week:

• Holly Pappas considers the many concerns teachers face when they assign the personal narrative and wonders how teachers can best respond when students write about intimate or painful topics in The Trauma Narrative.
   
• Andrea Lunsford describes the peer tutoring program at Stanford in Writing Tutors Save the World!
   
• Jack Solomon explains why educating students about the complex operations of social class is one of our most important tasks in the teaching of cultural studies in The Middle Class Goes to the Movies.
   
• Barclay Barrios discusses the difference between Ideas and Examples and shares a response worksheet and some teaching strategies.
   
• Steve Bernhardt reflects on thirty years of attending the CCCC Convention and describes the highlights of the convention in What’s up at CCCC?
   
• Traci Gardner reviews a free, online resource classes can use to share student work and discuss current events or pop culture in Paper.li in the Classroom: The Basics.
   

• Jay Dolmage explores what Disability Accommodations look like in the writing classroom with some specific examples.

A Few Extra Links

• Sign up for email updates about what we do for teachers and request our free professional resources today.
   
• How would you illustrate the “Language” section of The Everyday Writer? Submit your idea in the Idea Survey.
• Show students How to Use Dropbox as a Killer Collaborative Work Tool.
   
• He found? He stated? He argued? Demonstrate how verb choice matters with examples from Walden Writing Center’s Using Verbs Carefully
   
• How do you teach students to read critically that which has no text? Read about “Calibrating Students’ B.S. Meters“
   

Let us know what you want to know about teaching writing or about using digital tools in the composition classroom by leaving a comment. Your response will help shape upcoming posts.

[Photo: Bunny Rabbit by wwarby, on Flickr]