Definr — Bookmark It!
I love little Web 2.0 tools that make my writing life easier, and discovered Definr recently. This is definitely one to bookmark if you do a lot of writing and occasionally have to look up that stray word for which you need a definition. I’d heard that Definr takes just a nanosecond to provide you with a definition, so I gave it a road test. As you can see from my screenshot, the word was “sycophant” — don’t we all know one or two? — and Definr gave me the definition in a split second.
Definr has more than 18,000 cached definitions, so you’re bound to find your word. Some of the most popular words that users have wanted definitions for? Blithesome, lithesome, frisson, chaplet, dreck, avuncular, cicatrix, reticent, sanguine.
I know it’s a small tool, but one worthy of bookmarking.
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When Math is Greek…
When my son was an eighth-grader in a NY suburban school district, we almost impoded as a family. He just didn’t get the infamous Math A or Math B, was in serious danger of failing math (or worse, of giving up entirely), and our home was littered with math guides and the remains of various tutors.
He took after his parents, who weren’t the best math students either. My only memory of math class in middle school and high school, in fact, is that of being bored nearly to tears by an endless freak show of male teachers who hated their jobs.
Both my son and I could have used someone like D.J. Duey to teach us math. Now a media celebrity, Duey was a long-term substitute teacher in Michigan when he realized that his math students just weren’t getting it. A long-time lover of rap, Duey began to write his own raps about math, consulting with other teachers to determine the best way to combine rap, music, video and math and science learning into something a bit easier to digest than a textbook full of numbers.
Since releasing his first rap, Duey has released an album, “Class Dis-Missed,” which includes 17 songs that translate, in a fun way, some of the most difficult subjects to teach and understand. The reaction to Duey, from the teaching community, students and the media, has been overwhelmingly positive and he’s branched out into making his own music videos, many of which are now available for viewing on YouTube. Check out his fractions video here, one of my personal favorites, which has been viewed more than 3,900 times.
You can order his album on his own website.
Reading, Online and With Interest
Image via WikipediaBe sure to check out The New York Times series, The Future of Reading: Digital vs. Print, which kicked off today with an examination of reading in the digital age:
As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.
But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.
So you be the judge — does reading on the Internet, or simply searching through the Internet, have a detrimental impact on our reading skills? The Times notes that traditionalists “warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories.” On the other hand, supporters of the Web as a reading and learning tool say that children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet in the same way they’re tested on their print reading comprehension.
So check it out — either in newsprint or online. I checked out both versions and found them to be equally enlightening.
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Crap is Just a Crappy Word
Since posting an item a few days ago about eSchool News’ “Tech Savvy Superintendents Award,” specifically mentioning award recipient Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jerry Weast, I’ve received some interesting comments from Weast supporters and detractors.
It seems the good Dr. Weast likes to refer to his District as “the cream of the crap.” No — that’s not a typo.
According to an Examiner.com article, the slogan was revealed at a June conference held at Harvard University. The Examiner reports that Deputy Superintendent Frieda Lacey and other District administrators were speaking at a national conference on school achievement gaps when Lacey told the crowd, ““Our superintendent likes to say we are the cream of the crap…They’re his words, not mine.”
In other words, if I can translate, Dr. Weast frequently uses the provocative statement as a reference to the dismal state of America’s public schools. It’s a play on words, people. On the other hand, as a PR professional who represents a number of school superintendents, let me interject this thought. Was the clever play on words worth the reaction?
Dr. Weast is under fire from parents, who have interpreted his words as a reference to their kids. You can’t be serious, folks. (Do we automatically lose our focus when we become parents?)
But again, I ask the question — was it worth it? Could Dr. Weast have made his point another way? Most likely.
As my high school English teacher, Miss Petrella, used to say — “With all the words in the English language, you had to choose that one?!?!”
Crap is just a crappy word.
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The Untested Task of eSchool Teaching
Image via WikipediaA good read — Today’s Washington Post article titled “The Odd World of E-School Teachers,”. Among its observations:
“Educators who supplement or replace their day jobs with online teaching for local public schools are discovering that the perks of working at home come with hurdles: grappling with awkward or confusing lines of communication with their pupils; gauging student performance without seeing facial expressions; and struggling to withstand the urge to check e-mails from students during weekends.”
The piece also notes that the number of students enrolled in distance education courses connected with public schools is up 60 percent.
Supes Who Communicate
Wandered over to eSchool News today, and noticed that they handed out their annual Tech Savvy Superintendents Awards way back in February — super-old news, I know. But I searched around to determine why these superintendents were so tech-savvy, and learned a lot. I was primarily interested in seeing whether any wrote eNewsletters or blogs, and was surprised that few did. But I’d like to share some best practices I discovered along the way.
John Barry, Superintendent of Schools for the Aurora (CO) School District, has a very specific news page devoted to his activities, appearances, letters, speeches, and background information. This is simply good PR, folks. People want to know what their Superintendent has accomplished, where and how he’s promoting the schools, and what he’s written.
Over at the Montgomery County Public Schools in Rockville, MD, another Tech Savvy Superintendent, Jerry Weast, has his own web page that features his biography, news items, and something called the “Superintendent’s Bookshelf,” where he lists eight of his favorite books. You can also find a link on the superintendent’s page to a program called the Superintendent’s Leadership Program. The program selects a group of students each year who learn leadership skills and serve as interns. And get this — you can watch a video about the program, one in a series of videos produced in the District called “Cover to Cover.” A nice example of best practices in communication by a superintendent.
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Tom Gould Says, “Tame the Beast”
More from NSPRA, where I attended a workshop by Tom Gould, Public Information Officer for the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Schools on Long Island. Tom’s workshop about self-publishing online showed school PR professionals and school leaders how they can manage their own messages by using Microsoft Word or Publisher to design their own online news pages. Tom starts several stories about his District on the front page of his online District newsletter, the Observer, then uses hyperlinks to take readers to the full stories inside.
Tom also showed us videos he produces and which appear on the District website and then are loaded onto YouTube. His superintendent of schools appears in the videos, which are useful ways to discuss ongoing issues or simply to let the public know what’s coming up in the District.
I have a screenshot of Tom’s enewsletter here or you can find it online here.
I am also embedding an example of one of his District videos, in case you’d like to see how he does it.
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One More Thing I Love — Grammar Girl
If you’re not sure of the difference between “than” and “then,” if you’re always stumped by “its” and “it’s,” you might want to bookmark Grammar Girl – one of my favorite places to visit on the Web. Mignon Fogarty keeps the website upbeat and user-friendly, and crams it with handy grammar podcasts. For example, today I listened to her podcast explaining the difference between “biweekly” and “semiweekly”. Do you know the difference? You can also download the Grammar Girl quiz widget and place it on your blog, as I’ve done here.
BTW – don’t forget to check out my grammar articles on eHow – “How to Correctly Use Its and It’s” (a pet peeve) and “How to Correctly Use Their, They’re and There.”
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Help a Reporter — If He Helps You First
OK, so Peter Shankman is a handsome New Yorker with a pretty interesting blog. He writes a lot about keeping in shape, so that’s cool.
But wait — Shankman has a website, helpareporter.com. Not helpareportergethisfactsstraight.com, not helpareporterwriteasentence.com, not helpareporterwithgrammar.com, and not helpareporterfindajob.com. Now there’s an idea.
No, Shankman’s site permits PR folks (and the general public, I guess) to sign up as potential “sources” reporters can query. If you sign up, you get daily emails from Shankman, who does you the big favor of sending reporter queries your way, in case you can provide sources, names, phone numbers, ideas. I guess Shankman’s playing the buff middle man between the Great Fourth Estate and the unwashed masses of PR people. His website also warns us (because God knows we’re so out of control) not to spam reporters with unrelated, baseless attempts to get our “clients” some air time or two inches in the Business section.
Here’s my question — where’s helpaPRperson.com? I dunno, but it seems to me (I “represent” public school districts in New York) that PR people need a lot more help than journalists. I’m always wondering what’s happened to the press and where they’re all hiding. I’m always searching for a warm body with the least bit of interest in education stories. As a former journalist, I know a decent story idea when I see one or pitch one. But there’s never a reporter in sight, at least not in my neck of the woods. What’s a PR person to do? Start a blog? An ENewsletter? Use the Web to manage his own message? Now there’s an idea.
BTW — if you want to helpaPRperson, you know where to find me.
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Google Analytics Makes Me Happy
OK, so I’m a newbie, a Web adolescent. A rookie. A mere child of the blogosphere. But hey — since I hooked my blog up with Google Analytics, I’m as inspired as ever to continue blogging for school PR professionals and school leaders who want to learn more about Web 2.0.
Here’s why: I thought no one was reading my blog because very few people have commented on my posts. Yes, here and there I’ll hear from complete strangers who like my suggestions or who write that they’ll try something I’ve mentioned on the blog. Not one of my friends, colleagues or family members have commented and I’m shy about bothering people with spam emails.
Still, I was curious about whether anyone in the world reads my blog or even opens my blog. So I signed up for Google Analytics to get reports about its use. Egomaniac that I am, I now find myself opening my reports daily. Here’s what I learned just two days after signing up: 93 unique visitors (meaning not me) had taken a peek at my blog, with the vast majority of them being directed by bookmarking sites or by links elsewhere on the Web. Cool. Of those people, 83% were first-time visitors, which for little old me is awesome.
The best feature of Analytics is the “map overlay”:
This map shows where all my U.S. visitors hail from, with the dark green states representing the largest number of visitors and the lighter green states representing smaller numbers. So naturally, in the U.S., most of my hits came from New York (upper right corner, folks). But I still had a handful of hits from California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and so on. And this is just the U.S. map. I also had folks visiting from nine other countries, including the U.K., India, Slovenia, Singapore, the Netherlands and Canada.
Now, I know that the world’s most popular bloggers and Technorati wunderkinds are chuckling at my measly 93 visits. But that’s OK. Because I’m pleased with my vain, Newbie self.
