TERMIUM is now free!

"Until now, TERMIUM Plus®, one of the largest terminology and linguistic data banks in the world, was available only to employees of the Government of Canada and to subscribers. Those days are over! All Canadians-and all Web surfers, wherever they are-can now consult the Translation Bureau's flagship product free of charge."

EtherPad: Realtime Collaborative Text Editing

Used Etherpad http://bit.ly/xOXdr today in class with 50+ students for classwide brainstorming - worked brilliantly


ETUG member, Grant Potter, tweets some success with EtherPad today. It looks like a very useful and robust tool for the classroom or any type of group collaboration.

EtherPad is the only web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time.

When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate on text documents, useful for meeting notes, drafting sessions, education, team programming, and more.

SAVE THE WORDS!

A site chock full of neglected or abandoned words. Click to see definition; sign up to adopt a word or more. This would be a great site for people studying for a spelling bee contest. For anybody who just loves to see WORDS, words, words.

Twitter for Academia

Dave Parry explains:

"I must admit that when I first heard about Twitter I thought it represented the apex of what concerns me about internet technology: solipsism and sound-bite communication. ...Although I am still beginning to wrap my head around all of its varied uses—I think for the most part Twitter users themselves are still figuring this out—I have been using it for over six months now and come up with some academic uses. ...Some of these ideas are general, and some are specifically from a Twittering assignment I did for a class last semester. When I first added it to the syllabus I had no idea what to expect. It was just sort of an experiment that I had planned for the end of the semester (all of the students signed up for twitter and followed each other). After using it I have to say it was one of the better things I did with that class, for reasons I will explain below."

21 Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom - Google Docs

A slideshow; each slide has an excellent, fun, educational suggestion. I'm impressed by the creativity of the educators who contributed these ideas!

I tried embedding the video here, but it was too big for my column and the right half of it disappeared.

Ideas to Inspire (Teacher Resources)

Out of the UK, this is "...a collection of Google Docs presentations, which offer a large number of ideas for engaging lesson activities in a range of curriculum areas.The presentations are a collaboration between lots of fantastic teachers around the world." Resources under headings like Interactive Maths, Incredible Science, Inspired Writing, and many more.

West Coast Screenwriting - Learn to Write For The Movies

"From Blank Page to Big Screen - Learn to Write For The Movies"

Vancouver Island screenwriters Keith Digby and Brian Paisley offer regular, personalized workshops in screenwriting. Link above is to their main website. Also check out their new BLOG here. A recent post: "Ten things to do… or not to do with dialogue." I'd say they are just as applicable to storywriting as they are to screenwriting.

Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do)

An excellent article containing at least one tip for each of us who do any writing at all. "...most of the time the author...is too close to the manuscript to make corrections. ...the 10 ouchies listed here crop up everywhere. They’re so pernicious that even respected Internet columnists are not immune."

Abbreviations and acronyms dictionary

"With more than 600,000 human-edited definitions, Acronym Finder is the world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms. New! You can also search for more than 850,000 US and Canadian postal codes."

They also have a handy button you can add to your Google searchbar so that looking up an acronym is just one click from your search box.

NinjaWords - a really fast dictionary

In a forest of online dictionaries, here's a stand-out tree.

I quote them:

Why is this called Ninjawords?
Ninjas are three things:
>They're smart
>They're accurate
>They're really fast
Ninjawords is based on these principles. Plus everyone likes ninjas.

Look at their "Find Out More" page to see what you can do with your own dictionary searches.

Tip of My Tongue: Dictionary

A unique dictionary that helps you "find that word that you've been thinking about all day but just can't seem to remember." Various ways to find the word: partial word (starts with, contains, ends with), letters (unscramble, must have, can't have), look up by synonyms you know, length of word, or sounds-like.

Websites for word lovers & writers

Wordsmith.org...A.Word.A.Day: "Wordsmith is a worldwide online community of some half-million readers who share a love for words, wordplay, language, and literature." Visit their Scheduled Chats page, where word lovers from all over the world meet to chat with others about words, languages, literature, and ideas.

World Wide Words: An etymologist's delight! "...a fascinating website ... All word buffs should pay the website a visit. They will be well rewarded." [Quote from University of the Third Age (March 2004)] Categories are numerous; to name a few: Articles, Q&As, Reviews, Topical Words, Turns of Phrase, Weird Words, Pronunciation Guide. Weekly newsletter by email subscription or feed.

Please visit the Writers' Resources tab on my WORDS website for a huge, categorized list of resources.

Affixes: the Building Blocks of English

The Dictionary of Affixes: "It is based on Michael Quinion’s book Ologies and Isms: Word Beginnings and Endings, published by Oxford University Press in 2002. This work is now out of print and has been edited and presented here as a free service. These pages contain examples of all four of the types of affixes that appear in English: prefixes, suffixes, combining forms and infixes."

Phrases: a reference/resource site

The meanings and origins of sayings and phrases
Phrase thesaurus
List of sayings
Idioms: definitions, examples, origins, dictionary, meanings

As well as an alphabetized index and a search engine, they're categorized under headings like Shakespeare's sayings, biblical, nautical, proverbs, euphemisms, the body, nonsense/fallacies, etc. There's also a discussion forum, a Phrases Thesaurus (kewl idea!), phrase quizzes, most-popular phrase links, 'a phrase a week'. If you're into words and phrases, this is a fun site!

IEEE Professional Communication Society

For Engineering & other technical professionals & students: the IEEE Professional Communications Society.

"The PCS field of interest includes the study, development, improvement, and promotion of effective techniques for preparing, organizing, processing, editing, collecting, conserving, teaching, and disseminating any form of technical information by and to individuals and groups by any method of communication. It also includes technical, scientific, industrial, and other activities that contribute to the techniques and products used in this field."

Online Etymology Dictionary

"This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago."

Google Book Search

I know, everybody knows everything about Google. But just in case you haven't seen this service (still in beta)....

"Finding books is as easy as finding websites with Google Web Search."

Use keywords, phrases, quotations; you get all the books whose contents match your search terms. You might also see a few snippets - sentences of your search term in context.

Click on a book title and you'll see basic info like in a card catalog.

If a publisher or author has given permission, you'll see a full page and be able to browse within the book to see more pages.

If the book is out of copyright, you'll see a full page and you can page forward or back to see the full book.

Clicking on "Search within this book," allows you to perform more searches within the book you've selected.

You can click on any of the "Buy this Book" links to go straight to an online bookstore where you can buy the book. In many cases, you can also click "Find this book in a library" to find a local library where you can borrow it.

Suite101 Courses: FREE

"Suite101.com offers free, fun, and accessible online learning for a wide variety of general interest courses designed with you in mind. All you have to do is pick a course or a particular lesson and simply click and learn…it's that easy!"

Here are just 3 examples of the MANY they offer.

For teachers:
"Teacher's Net has you covered. Even if you currently have nothing but the knowledge of how to open programs and type a few sentences, you're going to end this course with the knowledge of how to create an entire technology base for your classroom, including integrated technology lesson plan creation, web quest creation, and even a classroom website. These are specific projects that you will have completed and entirely ready-to-use in your classroom - in one month's time." The course lessons are entitled Communications, Instructional Design, and The Virtual Classroom.

For students:
College Strategies: "The course is jam-packed with info that can save you time, money, and frustration. Many drop out of first year unnecessarily due to being unprepared. If you are already a freshman and feel you are overwhelmed, this course can help you too! ...There are no courses offered in college on “what to do once being accepted to college”, while it is such a big transition in life it should be mandatory. That is where this course comes in; after completion you will have more knowledge than most students in their senior years do and the ability to jumpstart your academic and social life so you get the most out of it. Right away!"

For writers:
Professional Writing: "By taking this two-week course, you will be. This course will provide you with enough resources and contacts to keep your career as a professional writer going long after you've stopped reading." The lessons: Basics of Writing Professionally; Hone Those Skills!; Market (and Market); Manage to Write!"

Quotation Sources & Resources

Check out this new page on my website, where I gathered these links for quotations research, rather than having them scattered throughout the various other pages.

Wiktionary

A multilingual wiki-style dictionary. "...includes a thesaurus, a rhyme guide, phrase books, language statistics, extensive appendices. ...not only the definition of a word, but also enough information to really understand it. ...etymologies, pronunciations, quotations, synonyms, antonyms, translations..."