Entries from August 2006 ↓

ZOHO

A company called zoho has a variety of online tools (mostly free), which could make your productive life much easier.

Ideal for teaching / general use / business applications.

http://zoho.com/ (If you are a Mac user you will need to use Firefox)

Zoho Show
Online presentation to create, edit, publish, and show presentations.

Zoho CRM
On-demand & On-premise customer relationship management solution.

Zoho Writer
Online word processor with collaboration features. No download, No install, just sign up to create documents.

Zoho Creator
Create personal and business web applications on your own and manage data collaboratively over the web.

Zoho Sheet Online alternative to traditional spreadsheet applications with powerful features like charting, collaboration & more.

Zoho Planner Online organizer to maintain your todo’s, reminders, notes, attachments etc.

Zoho Virtual Office Zoho Virtual Office is a web-based collaboration groupware
that includes Email Client, Documents, Calendar and more.

Zoho Chat Unique and intuitive way to make group decisions faster.

Here is a Word document containing the text of the main readings in chapters 10 ~ 18. It may help in the generation of other supplementary materials.

Totally True 1. Autumn. Text

Here is a zip file archive of the crossword puzzles for ch 10 ~ 18. The puzzles are in PDF format.

Totally True 1. Autumn. Crossword puzzles

On the elpweb Resources site (foundation/level 1/reading) you can find:

Crossword puzzles
For example…

Cloze quizzes
For example…

‘Learn more‘ More information about the people in the reading passages.
For example…

The second writing assignment for Level 2 this autumn semester is four paragraph essay. In this essay, students will compare and contrast high school and university, choosing one as more important to them. In the model, I compare two similar items of my own: living in California, or living in Tokyo.

This post is temporary and is just here to let anyone who is interested have a look at what I am working on so far. Suggestions are always welcome.

Draft Resources- Online below
Student and Teacher notes
True/False Survey and Mingle Activity
Example essay
Grammar worksheets (tenses, conjunctions)

Planned Resources- Available in September
Example introduction worksheet (identification of introductory material and thesis)
PowerPoint or animation to explain the simplified structure of a comparison contrast essay
Peer editing and/or self-correction checklist
Correction model for common errors and correction marks
Mind Map and/or Outline worksheet
Rubric

Instructor Notes
Student Notes
Broken Sentences Worksheet
School attitudes survey
Worksheet Answers: Used toWorksheet: Used to
Worksheet: Pros and Cons
Sample Essay

This week, I’ve been updating and changing some of the software that makes OEKS work. If anyone is curious about the guts that make this work, I’ll be happy to show you. But, I think most people just want to know what works differently.

So….

First, the site looks different. The color up at the top is to match Obirin logo colors. The fonts are a bit different. Some things are larger or smaller to try and fit a lot of information on one screen. There is a little pencil image, just like on Moodle, to click for editing. If you think the font is too small, just use the “increase font size” on your browser. In Firefox, click View — Text Size — Increase. I hope the new design is a bit less drab.

Second, The old page called Tags has been moved and is called Archives. There is still a Tag cloud with more popular Tags bigger and less commonly used Tags smaller. there is also a Search box there.

Third, when you Write a post, there is now a drop down menu to select Tags that have already been used. You can still type in Tags directly, but if you want some help, just click the menu and choose some Tags that are already on the site.

That is all for now. There will not be anymore changes during the next month or so. If you have any suggestions for things you would like to see on the site in the future, please just comment below, or send me an email message.

Thanks,

Ted

It is never a good time to make changes or updates to a website that people use. You may just feel like you are getting used to things as they are, but OEKS could be much more useful and simpler. Especially, look for easier to use Tags and Search coming soon.

Now that the term is over and nobody needs to rely on this site for daily downloads of curriculum materials, I’m going to try to spruce things up a bit. There may be a bit of Internet jiggery-pokery going on here during the next week, but I hope it won’t throw anyone for a loop.

As always, send me an email if you have trouble.

Thanks,

Ted

UPDATE: If you are looking at this, you can see that some changes are already in effect. The Tags page has now been replaced with a page called Archives. Click on any tag and you’ll see excerpts of all the posts.