This vocabulary trainer will be especially interesting for you if:

• you’re teaching an EAPP class or
• if you’re a MIIS student and are trying to build up your academic lexicon.

My students have tried out three different online vocab trainers, and this vocabulary trainer has emerged as the winner in terms of usefulness and user-friendliness. The Academic Word List (AWL) is a list of words that appear with high frequency in academic texts. The website contains 150 interactive gap-fill exercises to review and recycle the general word families contained in the AWL.

PDF-to-WORD is a free converter that lets you create editable DOC and RTF files. If you have PDF content that you’d like to use in WORD, EXCEL or in a POWERPOINT, you can upload the PDF file at www.pdftoword.com, and the converted WORD/RTF file will be sent to your email address (if it’s not in your inbox, check your spam filter).

So, let’s say you find an interesting journal article that’s only available as a PDF. You want to use it in class, but the font size is way too small, it’s single-spaced, and you only need part of the article. Upload the PDF to the PDF-to-WORD converter. Download the converted WORD file from your email, enlarge the font size, double-space the text and delete the passages you don’t want – your students will be grateful (and their eyesight too).

Okay, so in writing this post I feel a little bit like a school nerd but I thought this was a really cool website to use for study aids or teaching.
Basically, clicking on the Quizlet link here will take you to a site where you can choose from any number of flashcard sets or make your own. When I checked it out for the first time the featured flashcard set was State Capitols and since my students wanted to practice those for another class they’re in I decided I would check it out so I could help them.  I clicked on one of the games first thinking I knew what I was doing. Boy was I wrong! I definitely didn’t know as much as I thought I did. It took me quite a few tries to finally start getting the capitols right and finally stop getting the “Uhh, you’ve done better…” comment at the end of the game but it was definitely a fun way to review (or learn) something new.
After I finally gave up on the game, I decided to explore a bit more. Quizlet really has flashcard sets for just about any topic you can think of. Of course there are the traditional subjects of Math, Science, History, Civics and so on, but there are also cards for Music, theater, poetry, even some for professionals such as nursing, or business and so on. There’s even sections for many standardized exams such as the TOEFL and GRE!
Quizlet also lets you connect with your Facebook account so you don’t have to create any new user names and passwords to remember, plus you can share sets with friends in your classes or just for fun.

So, what are the Pedagogical implications of Quizlet?
Students: Got a big test coming up in your language class? Check out all the flashcards for one of 33 (or more) different languages, even characters for Kanji, Chinese, or Arabic writing to name a few.
Trying to review for a policy studies course? There just might be a set of flashcards about the politics of the country you’re studying. Or even about wider topics in the field such as interest groups and media.
Want to know more about theater or music to prepare for the MIIS Follies? Check out the corresponding sections here.

Teachers: This could be a great place to send your students of any course to encourage further self study or to present the terms you feel they need in order to pass your class. There is also a way to leave feedback on sets your students created or start a discussion group around a set.

Both: If you can’t find a set of flashcards for your specific terms, make your own. All you need are a title for your set, a brief description and the terms and definitions and then the website magically makes the familiarize, learn, test, and two game sections for your terms. Then, have fun studying!  Be careful though, you might spend more time than you expect.

It was December 17, 1996 and crowds huddled outside the Mercer Arena in Seattle, WA, waiting to enter what turned out to be the last grunge concert I’d ever see. Soundgarden was finishing up the U.S. leg of their Down On The Upside tour, with local favorites The Presidents of the United States of America doing the opening act in their mutual hometown. I was wearing ripped jeans, heavy black boots, a flannel shirt and a beanie. I was soaking wet, and avoiding eye contact with the many hawkers of jewelry, tickets, t-shirts and zines…. wait. What was a zine? The first glance indicated that they were small, homemade magazines about tatoos and the grunge-rock drug scene. I averted my eyes and hid behind my two companions- incidentially, they were brothers of viking descent, both about 6 foot 5, one with a long braided beard.

Since then, I’ve braved a glance at zines in funky coffeeshops, independent bookstores, and folklife festivals. I’ve pondered the importance of them in a free speech community. I’ve questioned the degree of “hipness” one must have to publish, create, buy or even read a zine. I’ve compared cover artwork and copy editing. I’ve never actually read one cover to cover. I’ve certainly never considered making my own, led by the assumption that I lack the creative talent and that I’m a veritable black hole of “with-it-ness.”

So it’s 2009 and there are crowds of people fighting over seats in the Sampson Center here at MIIS, for it seems as though there are never enough tables near power outlets. I’m wearing ripped jeans, rubber rain boots (yellow and green plaid!), a henley shirt of the type I like to call waffle, and a bike helmet. I’m soaking wet and avoiding eye contact with anyone or thing that might distract me from my mission-finishing my homework. Yet my eye is drawn to a edublog post about…. zines.

So check it out: www.openzine.com

What it does: user friendly tool for creating online zines to share

Cool tricks: variable layout, easy to edit, accommodates text and pictures, lets you share images

Possible uses: student club newsletters, class project zines, language zines for learners or by learners, conference or subject specific zines for networking, idea sharing, FUN!

I haven’t fully explored this site, but it looked interesting and possibly pedagogically pertinent.