Blogjune again, so I am writing here again.

Con has made a signup list again if that is your sort of thing.

This is not an advertisement below, just a grateful blurble about something that makes my life easier…

If you are writing anything longer than about 500 words, spend a couple of hours getting to know Scrivener .

Well, if you think like me.

I tend to think in chunks and write in chunks… but like to have a vague structure mapped out to hang it all off from the start. Scrivener is a place to write that allows you to plan and rearrange parts of your writing using a visual metaphor of index cards.

(That’s one of about 20 different functions. It has a fabulous “timeline” function that allows fiction writers to re-order their narrative and mix different narrators beautifully. Have a look at Justine Larbalestier’s account of writing her YA novel, Liar, using Scrivener  for details of that use )

So – if you are writing a research paper, you know that you will probably have sections that are:

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Methodology
• Results
• Discussion
• References

You can create index cards for each of these sections and add a summary or write the entire final polished text that will form that section. You can then create subcards for each section, down to paragraph level. The nifty thing that floats my boat is how easy it is to re-arrange these cards into a different order, or just jot down a fragment and slip it in to where it might go – and then at the end give the command “sew it all together, slave” and have a completed, coherent-seeming piece of writing.

I used it earlier this year when I was co-authoring a paper with a student, based on her research for her Master’s thesis. She had around 15 thousand words. For an academic journal article we needed around 7 thousand or less. I cut and pasted her original work into Scrivener in sections by subject heading, each with its own index card. It was very easy to then see which index cards could be metaphorically binned, and which could be sewed together into a new order.

The only tricky bit is that Scrivener does talk to Zotero citation manager.. but only kind of. I have not written anything that requires Zotero integration yet. Scrivener exports to WORD and I tend to do my final tidying up there, once I have the intellectual content right. Catherine Pope has written two posts that gives two methods of “sort of” integrating Zotero and Scrivener – How to Use Zotero with Scrivener Part 1 and How to Use Zotero with Scrivener Part 2.

I just thought of a nifty way I could use Scriverner for blogjune… create 29 more index cards in Scrivener and brainstorm topics, shuffle them all into some kind of order and then work on each one individually as I need a new post … Hmmmmm….

What happened to today’s question ?

Will adding an instruction in my assessments to tell students that do not follow instructions that they need to follow instructions make them suddenly do so ?

The dilemma of trying to give feedback before an assessment is marked. So often we write “please check before submission that all the requested information is included and that you have met the marking criteria” in the comments that I wonder whether to make this it part of the initial question. My gut feeling is that it will not make a jot of difference, but it will allow makers to cut and paste something neatly from the unit outline …

When you see on a work colleague’s blog that the next THATcamp in Melbourne has as a theme “Pedagogy”, and then the next week your university seeks applications for funding for professional development of teaching, is it not the proper thing to do to take advantage of the synergy and apply to go to THATcamp?

Why when I push the power-on button does my Dell XPS 1530 display nothing on the screen, make a noise of the HDD going, have the caps lock and scroll lock lights on and the num lock flashing – and then not do anything but hum at me ?

(Yes, I have tried pushing F12 on startup, and power-on plus Function, and toggling the media-centre button, and asking Aunty Google)

A farmer has to cross a river. She has on her side a fox, a hen and a bucket of corn. She has a boat that will only take herself and one other item. If she leaves the fox with the hen, the fox will eat the hen. If she leaves the hen with the corn, the hen will eat the corn.

How many variations of this puzzle are circulating, with each person telling it being bewildered by the other versions ?

One of my kid’s friends told me it is a goat, a wolf and a cabbage. I always thought the hen was a goose. And the bucket of corn was a sack of wheat. Wikipedia thinks they are a fox, goose and a bag of beans . Beans????

Personally, I like Randall Monroe’s solution:

I have long contended that a room full of books is simply a closet but an empty room with a librarian in it is a library

Discuss

Given the cost of textbooks, would it be too costly or superfluous if I made students in my tech unit buy a Kano, assemble it and then do some of the coding exercises ?

(Mine ships in the first lot, leaving the warehouse on 27 June. I’m looking forward to putting it all together)