Keeping tabs on my online activity

This picture has nothing to do with tabs. Zemanta suggested it. I thought it was pretty. There you go. | Coloreando en Amistad (Photo credit: PatWH)

Author Charlotte Rains Dixon recently ran a blog post in which she listed all of the tabs she had open on her internet browser. I thought it was interesting to see what all she has open for research and such, so I thought I would do a “my tabs” post of my own. So, these are the tabs I have open in my browser at this time:

• Gmail: self-explanatory, I think.
• The My Tabs blog post that inspired this post.
• Facebook: Always open. How about you?
• YakTale: A writing acquaintance mentioned it yesterday, and I’m deciding if I want to submit some of my short stories to the site since no literary journal will ever publish any of my short stories. Or would it be better to publish them myself, as eBooks?

Teaching the five-paragraph essay

Can't you just hear Hemingway mumbling about how bad first drafts suck? | Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, my Written Communication students workshopped their very first essays of the semester. I don’t like to ever ask my students to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself, so I wrote an essay along with them.

Early in the semester, I asked them to write ideas for free writing topics on little slips of paper that I placed in an envelope. We do a 10 – 15 minute free write in every class session. Sometimes I have a topic planned, and sometimes I’ll pull a couple of their ideas from the envelope and let them choose one. Usually, unless I have something I need to do to prepare for the next portion of the class, I’ll sit and free write with them. I think this is a useful activity for any w