writing

Contradictions in research into the experiences of learners online

Posted Mon, 01/02/2010 - 17:06 by Helen

I was intrigued to see that in Canada they are reporting that the use of social networking and other web tools such as Twitter and Facebook is damaging the quality of students' English skills. Apparently academics at Waterloo University, Ontario and Simon Fraser University, British Columbia are finding that many students (a third and a tenth, respectively) are failing at English, i.e. not up to the standard required for academic writing. And they are blaming young people's use of these social networking tools for this problem.

"Emoticons, happy faces, sad faces, cuz, are just some of the writing horrors being handed in, say professors and administrators at Simon Fraser."

At Coventry University in the UK, however, researchers have found the exact opposite, as reported by the BBC a few days ago. In their study of 8-12 year olds they found that children who regularly use the abbreviated language of text messages are actually improving their ability to spell correctly.

Merry Christmas from Reach Further

Posted Fri, 18/12/2009 - 12:40 by Helen

Liz, Helen, Mark, Maria, Lianne and Graeme at Reach Further would like to wish all our clients, partners and friends a very Happy Christmas. In the spirit of the season we are making available some seasonal Twitter backgrounds which you may like to try out on your Twitter page.

Happy Christmas

How to change your Twitter background

First save the background of your choice to somewhere on your computer’s hard disk

  1. Login to Twitter
  2. Click “Settings” towards the top right
  3. Under [Yourname] Settings click “Design”
Here you can select one of Twitter’s own themes, then add your own background image, and if you’re feeling really creative, you can choose your own background colour.

To simply change the background image:

  1. Click “Change background image” towards the bottom left
  2. Click “Browse”
  3. Browse to the background image you wish to use and click on it
  4. [In the case of the small tree image only you will need to tile it so that it repeats, so click next the box next to tile background]
  5. Click “save changes” in the Twitter window
  6. View your new Twitter page. If you don’t like it – try another background!

Click for the full sizes

The single-topic blog - favourite examples of humour

Posted Fri, 11/12/2009 - 09:52 by Helen

An interesting category of blog – usually for light relief – is the single-topic blog.  While you might think it's not easy to write constantly on one single topic, it's often the photographs that make the blog – and if you can engage your readers in submitting their own photographs then you have the makings of an almost-cult!  Tapping into a vein of inexhaustable content – especially humour - and a topic that interests nearly all of us, and you're onto a winner!

A single-topic blog is an extreme example of meme blog posts.  A meme is an idea that spreads across the Internet and engages many bloggers, on their own blogs, in collaborative blog circles or on a single multi-author or multi-contributor blog. Memes include: “4 places I have lived” or “100 books to read before you die” or even "Pictures of cats that look like Hitler"...

Here are some of my favourites, always good for cheering one up after a difficult day when the tech won't work for you...   Perhaps you have to visit them to understand..

Awkward Family Photos with a tacky design to match the content.

Cake wrecks Photos of really bad professionally made decorated cakes

Failblog Pictures of things that have gone wrong...

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