My ENG 1020 students at Metro had an option for earning extra credit by creating a Squidoo lens for their research topic.  Several of them took advantage of the opportunity.  Here are links to their lenses:

• Space Commercialization
• Biological and Genetic Theories of Violence
• Professional Athlete Criminals
• Government Censorship
• Technology Affecting Education
• Music Piracy on the Internet
• Deforestation
• Reproductive and Therapeutic Cloning
• Abortion
• Dam Removal
• Early Childhood Education
• Human Genetic Manipulation

• Klout
  Klout measures influence on topics across the social web to find the people the world listens to
  (tags: Twitter tools socialmedia web2.0 microblogging)
• Scribblar.com
  Multi-user whiteboard, live audio, image collaboration, text-chat and more
  (tags: collaboration whiteboard web2.0 tools free)
• tweet cloud
  Tweet Cloud is a service that lets you generate a cool looking cloud of the words your tweets mostly contain.
  (tags: Twitter tools web2.0 socialmedia wordcloud microblogging)
• Mozzler
  Mozzler is a collection of real-time news streams. You can search the internet in real-time, create your own streams and subscribe to other users streams.
  (tags: news realtime socialsearch research)
• nowGoogle.com
  Multiple Search Engine
  (tags: metacrawler research)

My ENG 1020 students at Metro had an option for earning extra credit by creating a twine for their research topic.  Several of them took advantage of the opportunity.  Here are links to their twines:

• Music: Internet Piracy & the Music Industry
• Social Networking and Teens
• Deforestation
• Cloning
• Early Childhood Education
• Performance Enhancing Drugs
• Human Genetic Manipulation
• Causes of the Real Estate Boom and Bust
• Charles Darwin
• Space Commercialization

• nowGoogle.com
  Multiple Search Engine
  (tags: metacrawler research)
• Microsoft Academic Search
  explore over 3,947,446 papers
  (tags: academic research searchengine tools articles)

Google Blogs Alert for: “4R x T”

The Doomsday Key by James Rollins « 4R x T
By Elizabeth
4RxT: Results of Google Alerts Test 11-30-09 – Google Blogs Alert for: “4R x T” The Sword of the Templars by Pa… http://ow.ly/166nrY 3 days ago; 4RxT: links for 2009-12-02 – TwHistory Here at TwHistory we feel [Twitter] can be a novel …
4R x T – http://4rxt.wordpress.com/

I didn’t like The Doomsday Key as well as some of Rollins‘ other Sigma Force books.  I don’t know if I’m getting burned out on this genre or if this book was more depressing or its plot less complex than the others.  It’s still a good read–just not as good.

Google Blogs Alert for: “4R x T”

Google Web Alert for: “4R x T”

• TwHistory
  Here at TwHistory we feel [Twitter] can be a novel way to tell the stories of our past. We pick historical figures, especially those that kept detailed journals or histories, and tweet the experiences they went through.
  (tags: Twitter history education microblogging web2.0 socialmedia)
• Kngine
  Kngine is a Web 3.0 search engine designed to provide meaningful search results.
  (tags: searchengine semantic reference web3.0 research)
• Royal Society
  Welcome to Trailblazing, an interactive timeline for everybody with an interest in science. Compiled by scientists, science communicators and historians . . . it celebrates three and a half centuries of scientific endeavour.
  (tags: science timeline reference research interactive)
• Founders Early Access
  The Rotunda Founders Early Access project makes available for the first time thousands of unpublished documents from our nation’s founders in a free online resource.
  (tags: history research documents reference)
• searchzooka
  allows users to create advanced Web searches and launch them on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, Digg, Technorati, and Delicious. It handles ORs, excludes, date ranges, site and domain search, words in title, words in url, filetype. Construct the query, save it if you wish, and then run against one of the search engines.
  (tags: searchengine metacrawler research)
• Scripting Master
  a great source for learning HTML, XHTML, ASP, and JavaScript
  (tags: HTML tutorial reference webdesign scripting tools)
• Corrections to the First Printing of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition (July 2009)
  (tags: APA writing citation documentation)
• Plagiarism 101 Presentation
  (tags: education plagiarism presentation writing)

Post two times  in your blog (research journal), using the numbers, letters, and phrases in bold as the titles of your respective posts:

RJA #15a: Word Cloud–Create a word cloud with your research paper using Wordle.  Copy and paste the text from your paper (excluding the identification information on the first page and the Works Cited list) into the top box on the Wordle Create page. Then click on “Go.”  After you create the word cloud and format the font, layout, and color to your liking, be sure you save it to the public gallery.  (The button is at the bottom right of the page.)  Copy and paste the URL (web address) of your word cloud or put the word cloud itself into a post on your blog. If you need help, watch one or more of the following YouTube videos:  “Web Site of the Week – Wordle,” “Wordle tutorial,” “Adding a Word Cloud from wordle.net to your Blog,” or another video about Wordle on YouTube.

RJA #15b: Reflection on What You Learned–Write at least one paragraph about what you learned in this class this semester and how you will be able to use it in future classes and your professional and personal life.

Use the department and course number (ENG 1020 or ENG 122) and other appropriate tags (“Labels” on Blogger) for each of the posts.

I didn’t like Paul Christopher’s The Sword of the Templars as much as I have James Rollins‘ and Steve Berry’s novels, but it was worth reading.  I’ll probably read more of his work, including the sequels to The Sword of the Templars:  The Templary Cross and The Templar Throne.  Both are scheduled to be released next year.