If any of you have questions, clarifications, uncertanties or doubts concerning any area of the subject, please post them as comments and I will do my best to reply to them asap.

For now!

Go here for a bookish message!

The quotes that I did not, for some reason or another, share with you last term.

My sincerest apologies.

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.
Baltasar Gracian

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All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why. James Thurber

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I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.
Marie Curie:

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The purpose of life is a life of purpose.

Robert Byrne

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Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
Vaclav Havel

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Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau

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Do something every day that you don’t want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
Mark Twain

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Strong reasons make strong actions.
William Shakespeare

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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

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A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

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Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein

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The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
Ben Stein

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Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain

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We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
Abigail Adams

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To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Joseph Chilton Pearce

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We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451, 1953

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Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.
Joseph Conrad

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When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Anais Nin

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All things are difficult before they are easy.
Dr. Thomas Fuller

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If you believe everything you read, better not read.
Japanese Proverb

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We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.
Blaise Pascal

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Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.
Buckminister Fuller

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Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
Carl Jung

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It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
Epictetus

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Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.
(adapted)
Bertrand Russell

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My friend, if I could give you one thing, I would give you the ability to see yourself as others see you… then you would realize what a truly special person you are.
Barbara A. Billings

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Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.

~ Albert Einstein

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Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
- James Joyce

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One who has health has hope, and one who has hope has everything.

~ Arabic proverb

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Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson.
- Vernon Law

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We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.
Lynn Hall,

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If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein

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I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby

This is research reading/writing activity. By the end I hope you will locate inaccuracies about living conditions on Venus in the story “All Summer in a Day.”

More specifically, I hope you will work independently to locate 5 inaccuracies within the short story, “All Summer in a Day.” You will also give a brief explanation as to why the information is inaccurate.

Finally, you will think about what would be needed to build a colony on Venus.

1. You will create original settings for a colony on Venus.
2. You will explain how your settings are more realistic than the setting in “All Summer in a Day.”

Each of you should type at least one paragraph describing the proposed colony, as well as one to two paragraphs explaining why/how your setting is more realistic than the setting in “All Summer in a Day.”
Below are links to help you in your research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus

http://www.space.com/venus/

http://www.aerospaceguide.net/planet/planetvenus.html

http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Venus/VenusWater.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4335628.stm
Lastly, answer these questions below. All writing should be done in the comments section.

Which link was most helpful? Why?

Which offered the most interesting points for you? Why?

Did you find any contradictory information ? Why?

Why do you think Ray Bradbury used so much ‘poetic license’ in writing the story? Why did he not abide by the ‘scientific’ facts?

What do you think is the most important plot or story element? Which canot be changed, modified or taken out without changing or affecting the original story?

INTRO

An Idiom is an expression (i.e. term or phrase) whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal definitions and the arrangement of its parts, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through conventional use.

Or more simply …

An idiom is a group of words which, when used together, has a different meaning from the one which the individual words have. For example:

- How do you know about John’s illness?

- Oh, I heard it on the grapevine.

Of course, the second speaker does not mean he heard the news about John by putting his ear to a grapevine! He is conveying the idea of information spreading around a widespread network, visually similar to a grapevine.
The English language is full of idioms (over 15,000). Native speakers of English use idioms all the time, often without realising that they are doing so. This means that communication with native speakers of English can be quite a confusing experience.

We use idioms to express something that other words do not express as clearly or as cleverly. We often use an image or symbol to describe something as clearly as possible and thus make our point as effectively as possible. For example, “in a nutshell” suggests the idea of having all the information contained within very few words. Idioms tend to be informal and are best used in spoken rather than written English.
Idioms: the good news

Sometimes idioms are very easy for learners to understand because there are similar expressions in the speakers’ mother tongue. For example:

He always goes at things like a bull in a china shop!

Sometimes you can guess the meaning of new idioms from context. For example, what do you think these idioms mean?
1. He was on the carpet last week for being late for work three times.
2. She made a marvellous speech to the conference. She took the delegates by storm.
3. It was an extremely long report. It took me three hours to wade through.
4. I believe we should talk openly and frankly about the project – warts and all.
5. Let’s call it a day. I am very tired and we have covered the main points of the meeting I think.
Idioms: the bad news

However, idioms can often be very difficult to understand. You may be able to guess the meaning from context but if not, it is not easy to know the meaning. Many idioms, for instance, come from favourite traditional British activities such as fighting, sailing, hunting and playing games. As well as being quite specialist in meaning, some of the words in idioms were used two or three hundred years ago, or longer, and can be a little obscure. Here are some examples:
1. Now that the Prime Minister has been elected there will be a lot of jockeying for position to get the key posts in his administration.
2. I finally ran the book to earth in a second-hand bookshop in Wales. I had been searching for it for three years.
3. They took her ideas on board and decided to increase the budget.
4. You should fall in with our arrangements; we can’t make alternative plans for you.
5. We saw the boss at the bar but we gave him a wide berth. We did not want to talk to him then.
Read the following passage entitled “Step right up!”. What do you think the underlines words/phrases mean?

What effect/impact do you, the reader feel when reading the text?

What words/phrased can you replace the underlined words/phrases to make the passage more interesting or better/more effectively written. (Post under the comments section)

It was Sunday night and Allison was going to bed to take the load off her feet when she stopped dead in her tracks. She remembered that her project was due the very next day. Since this project was a major part of her grade, she knew that it was going to have to sweep her teacher off her feet.

Allison’s feet flew as she raced to her mom’s room. She threw herself at her mother’s feet begging for help. Her mother replied that sooner or later she would have to learn to stand on her own two feet. Allison knew that she had gotten off on the wrong foot starting so late and that she would have to step on the gas if she wanted to finish this paper. Then she knew that next time a paper was assigned she would have to get her foot in the door and take steps to prevent this from happening again.
Go to the following website which is a ‘dictionary’ of idioms. Use at least 5 of the idioms in a paragraph (not less than 75 words) based on the picture composition you all recently completed (the angry goat). (Post under the comments section)
Then rewrite the story (Post under the comments section) making as effective use of the same idioms as possible.

Think how they can be effectively used, and whether extensive use has compromised the quality of your story. (Post under the comments section)

Lastly, in groups of 4, choose an idiom to write a short script about. The idiom’s figurative meaning should be communicated by the narrative. The idiom’s literal meaning should be part of the dialogue or acted out.

E.g. ‘bury the hatchet’

A short skit could be written about two friends who argue and make up (bury the hatchet) but they show they are friends again through a ritual of burying an axe/hatchet as a good luck symbol! (To be presented on Monday 16/4/07)

Get cracking! Hoist your sails! Start your engines!

I hope the session you had on evaluating the web sites was a real “eye opener”; hope it was a “brain opener” too!

I hope all of you will take the time and effort to respond thoughfully and reflectively to the prompts I came up with in my last posting.

Remember, the point is not the DESTINATION(How did I do for the challenges/quizzes) but the JOURNEY (what did I learn and come to understand?)

Here is a list of micromodules (notes and more) on the criteria (what to look out for when evaluating a website) that you explored in the last posting. There are additional criteria to look at or take into consideration.

Please go through them on your own and post your comments, questions etc.

Who is the Publisher?

Is there Bias?

Who is the Author?

Is it current or up to date?

Which are the sites Linked To it?

Which are the sites Linked From it?

Expertise

Evidence

Accuracy

Here are some questions/prompts to help you along:

1) If you could rank the criteria, which would be your top two and bottom two criteria for evaluating a website? Why?

2) Which is the easiest and hardest criteria to apply to a website? Why?

3) Which criteria do you need help in to understand?

4) How do you feel about the internet or web sites after going through the ‘notes’?

Only after you have gone through, thought through, asked questions and made comments for all the micro-modules above, do you attempt the module below.

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Digital Investigator Training

In this module you will learn to:

• evaluate the honesty of webpages
• evaluate the fairness of webpages
• discover the linkto trustworthiness of a website.

Understanding these ideas builds a foundation for thoughtful evaluation of webpages.Objectives:Expect to spend about 9 hours doing these assignments. By the end of this module you will be able to:

• Detect the honesty of an author
  • Pass a quiz on author honesty
• Explain clues about fairness
  • Recognize an author’s point of view
  • Pass a quiz on website fairness
• Perform a links to search
  • Find and evaluate pages linked to a webpage
  • Pass a quiz on using the link: tool

This module is for you to complete at your own time and pace. Remember, as always , to post your comments on what you are thinking, reflecting upon, pondering or questioning as you go through the site!

Whenever we visit a website to look for information, these are the questions we need to consider:

How objective (unbiased) is the author’s work?

What are the author’s qualifications to write on this topic?

How accurate is the author’s work?

What web pages link to this author’s work?

Can you contact someone with expertise in the area to validate the opinions or conclusions expressed in the document?

What is the publisher’s reputation for printing resources on this topic?

How recent is the author’s work?

Does external evidence support the author’s work?

What web sites does the author link to from this page?

What information on the topic is available from traditional sources such as newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias or library resources on the web?

I have included 2 online exercises to give you practice and hopefully develop your understanding and skill in evaluating websites and the information they contain.

Exercise 1

Go here to find out how to evaluate web sites.

You can choose either the site on William Shakespeare or the Air Cars.

Comment on what you found out. For example:

a) your thoughts on the criteria to evaluate the sites – what did it make you think or feel about the information you were reading?;

b) you could write about what you know now that you did not know before; how you can use this knowledge to help you in future research;

c) the most helpful thing you found out, the most interesting etc.

Exeecise 2 (Pair work)

Now that you have gained some understanding on evaluating digital or web based information, its time to put it to use.

Find or get a partner. (when you make comments, please list both your names!)

Test your evaluation skills here and either try the sites on the stick insects or the tree octopus.

Commment on what you found out about evaluating websites based on the criteria given.

What have you learned or gained?

How will it change the way you search for and treat information or web sites on the internet?

Which is the most difficult criterion to work with? Why?

Which is the easiest? Why?

What would you like to learn more about? Why?