Apr 18
tengrrlBedford Bits, composition, social media
I’m late! I’m late for a very important date! No time to say “Hello,” “Goodbye.” I’m late, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!
There’s no way around it. I’m late on posting last week’s summary of posts from Bedford Bits. Fortunately the posts are still fresh and ready for readers. No stale or moldy content here! Read on for details on all of the new entries posted last week:
A Few Extra Links
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: Rabbit Clock by chuckyeager, on Flickr]
Apr 11
tengrrlBedford Bits, composition, social media
Thanks for helping us celebrate our 30th anniversary publishing books and media for the composition classroom. We had a great time in Atlanta and enjoyed seeing so many of you at our party at Turner Field.
Now we have a present for you. Sign up for email updates about what we do for teachers and request our free professional resources today.
Read on for details on all of the new entries posted on Bedford Bits last week:
A Few Extra Links
- Check out our #CCCC11 roundups to find links and resources shared in Atlanta:
- For those of you who didn’t attend CCCC in Atlanta this year, we missed you at our party at Turner Field, but we invite you to browse our latest offerings online, and request your exam copies today!
- Picked up an exam copy you’ve realized you don’t need? Download pre-paid mailing labels and return items free of charge.
We’re always looking for suggestions. Tell me 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: "30" by Lincolnian (Brian) - BUSY, on Flickr]
Apr 03
tengrrlBedford Bits, composition, social media assessment, CCCC11, CCCC2011, comics, graphic novels, inquiry, naming, poetry, storytelling, trauma, TYCA, war, writer's block, writing
The solution to writer’s block is cake! A round-up of Tips for Fighting Writer’s Block, from the Inside Higher Ed’s University of Venus blog, includes everything from setting rigid deadlines to sitting down for some cake and coffee.
Cake may not be the answer to every problem, but it can’t hurt to give it a try. My suggestion for curing writer’s block? Why not take a break and read one of the new entries posted on Bedford Bits last week?
- Holly Pappas discusses her techniques to foster a sense of curiosity, inquiry, and wonder in Learning to Ask the Questions.
- A picture might be worth a thousand words. But words paired with pictures? That’s worth even more! Andrea Lunsford discusses Words . . . and Images, and teaching graphic novels.
- What role does the Writing Center play in Writing-About-Writing? Blogger Doug Downs explores how tutors contribute to the pedagogical approach in WAWriting Center.
- What kind of progress students can make in one semester? Barclay Barrios shares another student paper and his comments in More Sample Work: Student Progress.
- High School Bits blogger Jodi Rice asks why people read literature and what reading will look like in the digital age in Storytelling 2.0.
- Where does the military get names for their operations? Reflecting on the Operation Odyssey Dawn, Traci Gardner talks about Naming and the Rhetoric of War.
- Susan Naomi Bernstein reflects on classroom assignments and her own writing in Writing for the Catastrophic Moment.
A Few Extra Reminders
We’re still looking for suggestions. Tell me 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: Chocolate cake slice by alexanderward12, on Flickr]
Mar 28
tengrrlBedford Bits, composition, social media assessment, blogging, checklists, dictionary, hero, OED, twitter
Last week, the OED announced a new batch of words that have been added to the dictionary. Among this year’s inductees are OMG, short for “Oh My God,” and LOL, short for “Laughing Out Loud.”
My favorite part of the announcement is the background on the word LOL: “the letters LOL had a previous life, starting in 1960, denoting an elderly woman (or ‘little old lady’; see LOL n./1).” Other fun new words include ego-surfing, smack talk, meep, and muffin top.
OMG! It’s hard to compete with all these new words, but I’ll try. LOL! Here’s a run-down on the new entries posted on Bedford Bits last week.
A Few Extra Reminders
Finally, let me hear what you want to know about teaching writing or about using digital tools in the composition classroom by leaving a comment. Your suggestions will shape upcoming posts.
—Traci Gardner
[Photo: 15 by Cofrin Library, on Flickr]
Mar 13
tengrrlBedford Bits, classroom activity, composition, social media, technology, visual rhetoric class discussion, gaming, movies, plagiarism
When I was little, I couldn’t remember the difference between Daylight Savings Time and Standard Time. Mom always repeated a little saying: “Spring ahead; Fall back.” I haven’t seen a flower pop its head above ground yet, but as I set my clock ahead this weekend, I know Spring can’t be too far away.
We’re springing ahead with a brand-new website for Bedford/St. Martin’s. It has a cleaner look and feel, new navigation elements, and helpful resources that make your search for course materials quick and easy. Check it out, and let us know what you think!
You probably noticed that we’ve been busy at Bedford Bits this past week too, with posts on posts on plagiarism, class discussion, video games, and more. Here’s a look back before you spring ahead into a new week:
—Traci Gardner
[Photo: spring by Aunt Owwee, on Flickr]
Dec 01
tengrrlMy Writing, social media audience, blogging, purpose, seo, titles
How do you write a title that makes people want to read your text? That was one of the major lessons of Chris Pirillo University (CPU): Writing for Google, an online seminar I attended last month. The on-demand version of the webinar is now available for rental on YouTube.
The session, led by Jake Ludington, covered writing titles, choosing keywords, using links, naming files, and including rich media—all the things that Google and other search engines pay attention to when they rank web pages. It’s what social media experts and marketing folks call Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
My blogs have a very specific audience of teachers and educators, so I’ve never thought much about SEO. I don’t write entries that the general person using Google or Bing is going to look for. Jake’s explanations of SEO made me realize, however, that I’ve been making a mistake by not paying more attention to my titles and the details in my posts.
I quickly realized was that I hadn’t been thinking about audience and purpose in the right ways when I was writing titles for my blog entries. I had fallen into the habit of using either titles that would fit a scholarly article or titles that relied on a pun or clever thinking to reveal their topic. Let me show you some examples, and point out what’s wrong with them:
- Trying Out Some Tasty Blackbird Pie relies on an analogy related to the WordPress plug-in name. If you didn’t know Blackbird Pie was a plug-in, you’d have no idea what that post was about. I should have included keywords like WordPress and Twitter in that title.
- Warning: Your Usage May Vary takes its title from an image in the blog post. The post is about usage and style, in particular as it relates to dialects and regional variation. Even though the title includes the word usage, I bet no one realizes what the entry is about. I should have been more descriptive instead of hoping the play on words would draw in readers.
- No Yelling in the Food Court summarizes the underlying lesson of the classroom activity described in the post. Readers have no way of knowing, though, that the activity is a way to talk about audience and voice. Heck, they have no way of knowing the entry is about a classroom activity at all, and no teacher in the world who is looking for a fresh way to talk about audience is going to search for the phrase “no yelling in the food court.” I should have used a title that included the keywords and described the post better.
- 100 Sticky Notes, or The Simple Way to Move from Observations to Composing is more like a title for a conference presentation than a blog entry. It’s far too long and the first part (“100 Sticky Notes”) doesn’t give a reader any idea what the entry is about. Even if you read all the way to the end of the title, it’s not going to be obvious that the entry is about a reader-response strategy. Using the words “Move from Observations to Composing” was a good start, but I needed to drop the cute stuff up front and be more specific about the point of the piece.
I liked all those titles when I wrote them, but I wonder now if I would have brought in more readers if I had used better titles. The webinar made me realize that good titles applied to far more than SEO. Certainly I want people to find my posts when they search for writing activities using Google, but writing effective titles for my blog entries also matters to RSS feeds, the Tweets I send out, and other ways that I spread the word about my work.
A well-written title makes a difference everywhere. How much of a difference? How about roughly 33% more visits? In the week before I attended the session on Writing for Google, my highest days in Google Analytics showed 86 and 96 visits.
After I attended the session and applied what I heard, my two highest days were 122 and 132 visits—and that’s all in the days before Thanksgiving. Having more teachers visit my site in the days before Thanksgiving is fairly unheard of. Most people are turning their computers off and forgetting about teaching at that point.
With that response to the change I made, I’m sold. Attending Chris Pirillo University (CPU): Writing for Google helped me write more effective titles (and posts), and I learned important information that I can pass along to students I work with. Who knew that a couple of hours could make such a difference?
If you want to learn more about writing effective titles for your blog posts, take a look at How to Make Money With Google on Chris Pirillo’s blog.
[Image: Women of WiFi, after Caillebotte by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, on Flickr]
Nov 19
tengrrlclassroom activity, Education, social media, technology link bundling, link shortening, URL shortener
Bit.ly Bundles are about to simplify the way you share links with students and colleagues. Take any collection of links you want to pass along, and with Bit.ly Bundles you can share just one short web address. You’ll no longer need to pass out links individually.
I originally found link bundling in a post about LinkBun.ch from Jane’s Pick of the Day. Imagine my surprise when less than an hour later the same capability miraculously appeared on my Bit.ly Pro page. I’m a Bit.ly addict, so that’s the tool I’m reviewing here today.
Lifehacker has explained the tool and talked about how it can be handy to the general user. To demonstrate who I might use it, I created a bundle of links to the sites where I publish most of my personal work—links to Twitter, Facebook, and the blogs I work on.
Bit.ly Bundles took the collection of six different links and simplified them into a single URL that I can easily share at a conference, in email, or even Tweet out to my followers:
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/newsfromtengrrl/status/5737279511330816"]
Even better than just collecting the links on a single page, Bit.ly Bundles let you control how the links appear on the collection’s page. You can edit the titles and add descriptions or explanations to the links in your bundle. If a link in a bundle changes, or you want to add or delete it, you can edit the collection later. People who visit the bundle can add comments as well.
In educational settings, Bit.ly Bundles take care of two challenges:
- They let people see the target links before they click. The service allows for link shortening with transparency. There are no surprises behind the shortened URLs.
- They take care of the need to point to multiple texts without blasting a series of URLs or having to create an intermediary page.
It’s a smooth tool that makes sharing links much easier. Just pass out one address, and you’re done!
Not yet convinced? I brainstormed some uses to demonstrate the possibilities for using Bit.ly Bundles in the classroom. Create a Bit.ly Bundle to
- gather a collection of articles on a current event for students to read.
- point to a reading and to related discussion and criticism.
- link to resources for a writing assignment (e.g., tip sheets, guidelines).
- make sets for students you can use in feedback or tutoring (for instance, a collection on adding descriptive details).
- share background information on an author or piece of literature.
- collect information on campus or community resources for a project (e.g., the Writing Center, the reference desk, office hours).
- distribute URLs to class projects.
And that’s just a beginning. Essentially any time you need to share more than one address, you can use Bit.ly Bundles to simplify the task.
Since you can edit the Bundles, they’re useful for collections you use in more than one class or more than one term. Collect your links in a bundle, and publish that URL in each course. The URL you share remains the same every semester. You simply return to the Bundle each term to make any updates.
To build community resources, like a student-assembled collection of links, I’d still recommend a social bookmarking tool like Delicious or Diigo, but for the collections that you create and find yourself reusing, Bit.ly Bundles are going to make sharing links a whole lot easier for teachers.
[Photo: ~dried and bundled~ by uteart, on Flickr]
Nov 07
tengrrlsocial media block quotation, twitter
I immediately liked the name of the new WordPress plug-in, Blackbird Pie. The nursery rhyme popped right into my head: Four and Twenty Black Birds, Baked in a Pie.
The plug-in makes this, essentially a jazzy block quotation:
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/tengrrl/status/1348769496965120"]
You include the URL and get a very nice looking presentation of the Tweet that you are writing about. Twitter is behind the functionality, and you can create the links the old fashioned way at Twitter Media’s Blackbird Pie. The WordPress plug-in simplifies things by making it a matter of clicking the blackbird button when you’re in the Visual editing tab for your post.
One of the coolest features of the plug-in is the Search. Know you want to refer to someone’s Tweet, but don’t have the URL handy? Use the search in the plug-in to load up that person’s recent comments and just click the one you want.
Nice and slick. Only problem is it’s not working for me if I use a new Twitter link. You have to delete the #! from the Tweet’s URL to make it work properly. It’s a minor bug though, and since I know how to fix it, I think I’ll keep the plug-in.
Oct 06
tengrrlassessment, classroom activity, Education, social media
I gathered a collection of over 50 links for the ProfHacker Teaching Carnival 4.2. You can find links to teaching in a variety of disciplines at the college and university level, plus links to some humorous articles I found.
There are details at the end of the post on how to suggest your own links (or those of your colleagues) for the November Teaching Carnival, which will be hosted by .
Oh, and the “Right This Way to the Egress” header? Yep, completely inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching.
[Image: FerrisWheel by twoblueday, on Flickr]
Aug 22
tengrrlsocial media
I posted a message to TechRhet this weekend that I thought would yield a fast result. I needed to gather a list of comp/rhet blogs for a project, and I want to make sure I didn’t leave anyone out.
I asked readers to pass along links if they had a great blogroll or knew of some wonderful blogs I should include.
The response? One message. That’s it. One message that pointed to one blog.
So I began searching for the links on my own, visiting friend’s blogs and scooping up links as I went along. I quickly observed that blogrolls are a dying breed.
- Fewer people have blogrolls. There was a time when everyone listed every blogger possible in the sidebar. Not the case any more. More than 1/2 of the blogs I visited had no blogroll at all.
- Blogrolls tend to be an unordered list, which makes their usefulness questionable. Presented with a giant list of blogs, you have nothing to go by but the blog name or the writer’s name. Sorted into categories or with tags, the list would be easier for visitors to use. As they stand on most blogs, they seem to be a simple list of friends and colleagues in most cases.
- The blogrolls I did find were not well-maintained. The lists were littered with broken links, dead blogs (i.e., the link works but there hasn’t been a new post on the blog in months), and links to old blogs, with pointers to a new home.
- Gathering a blogroll (and checking its links) is a time-consuming project. There’s a reason these things aren’t maintained. The only way to make use the blog links all work properly is to sit and click on each and every one.
- Blogrolls are suffering because blogs have more competition these days. Many colleagues are foregoing blogs for shorter status updates. On more than one blog, I found a note that indicated the person was going to update via Facebook or Twitter instead of maintaining the blog.
- Follower and Friend lists are replacing blogrolls. When you click follow or okay a friend, you create a list of colleagues that is quite similar to a blogroll—and which is infinitely easier to maintain. They take care of themselves. You never have to chase down the URLs or check for deleted accounts.
Ultimately, I collected a list of nearly 70 blogs. Feel free to copy it for your own site or send links to anything I left out. I just won’t promise you that I’ll maintain it for the long term.
[Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by stevendepolo]
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