I discovered this list from the Santa Cruz Public Library.  I thought it might make for some interesting discussions in conjunction with literature.  Click the link above for the source.

• Amaranth - Immortality
• Anemone - Anticipation, Frailty
• Apple Blossom - Admiration
• Aspen Leaf - Fear
• Asphodel - Death, Memorial sorrow
• Bay - The poet’s crown
• Begonia - Dark thoughts.
• Blue violet - Faithfulness
• Buttercup - Wealth
• Calla - Magnificent beauty, pride
• Camelia, White - Innate worth
• Candytuft - Indifference
• Cardinal Flower - Distinction
• Chrysanthemum - Cheerfulness and optimism.
• Cornflower - Delicacy
• Cowslip - Youthful Beauty
• Crocus - Good cheer
• Cyclamen - Diffidence
• Cypress - Mourning
• Daffodil - Unrequited love
• Daisy - Fidelity and innocence; simplicity
• Dandelion - multiple meanings: grief and bitterness; symbol of the sun; symbol of coquetry; used by Flemish and German painters to symbolize the suffering of Christ.
• Everlastings - Unfading love
• Fern - Sincerity
• Fir Tree - Time
• Forget-me-not - True love; Friendship and fidelity as well as remembrance.
• Four-leafed Clover - Good luck
• Foxglove - Insincerity
• Gentian - Virgin pride
• Geranium - Gentility
• Goldenrod - Encouragement
• Heather - Loneliness
• Heather, White - Good fortune
• Heliotrope - Devotion
• Hepatica - Anger
• Hollyhock - Ambition
• Honeysuckle - Friendship
• Hyacinth - Sorrow
• Ivy - Truthfulness, Wedded love
• Larkspur - Lightness, laughter
• Laurel - Fame
• Lavender - Purity; Silence
• Lilac - Fastidiousness
• Lily, White - Purity
• Lotus - Forgetfulness, estranged love
• Lunaria - Prosperity, honesty
• Marigolds - Happiness
• Marjoram and Lily of the valley - Love; purity;happiness
• Morning Glory - Symbol of the transience of man’s life.
• Myrtle - Beauty’s crown, wedded love
• Narcissus - Vanity
• Oak Leaf - Patriotism, Hospitality
• Olive Branch - Peace
• Orange Blossom - Marriage
• Oxalis - Pangs of regret
• Palm Leaf - Victory
• Pansy - Symbol of the loved one, memories, loving thoughts and souvenirs.
• Phlox - Symbol of sweet dreams and implies a proposal of marriage.
• Pink Carnation - I’ll never forget you.
• Poppy, White - Oblivion
• Primrose - Youth
• Red Carnation - I’m carrying a torch for you.
• Rose - Love
• Rosebuds - Pure and lovely
• Rosemary - Rememberance
• Sage - Domestic bliss
• Shamrock - Loyalty
• Snowdrop - Friend in Need
• Sting Nettle - Slander
• Sweet William - Gallantry
• Thyme - Courage, energy
• Tulip - in Persia the tulip is the symbol of love
• Violet - Modesty
• Water Lily - Purity of heart

From the Google Docs blog, I learned that the spreadsheets available on Google docs are now going to be more efficient when viewed on mobile phones. This is awesome for a number of reasons:

1. I don’t have a physical gradebook.
2. The server at my school has been known to be down from time to time, whereas Google does not have such a reputation.
3. With spreadsheets on my phone, I can keep my gradebook there. Therefore, when a student asks about a grade, I can whip out my phone (and thereby proudly revealing my nerdiness) to answer their questions.
4. Because these spreadsheets are on google’s server, I do not have to worry about losing them.

If you want to see how students are using Google Docs, check out the link and video below.
This video (from a series of videos about Google Docs on campus) features students discussing how Google docs have made them more effective.

Check out other posts dealing with Google here.

Murphy law tells us, “What can go wrong will go wrong.” I find this to be all too true when using school technology. Whether it is your computer in general or the network, this post will explore how to maintain a web presence regardless of network obstacles.

Blogspot or Bogger Accounts:

1. Sign in.
2. Go to dashboard.
3. Click the settings tab.
4. Click the email tab and create a secret word (you don’t want anyone posting to your blog, so keep this secret).
5. Write that email address down.
6. Click the option to “Publish emails immediately”
7. Click save.

You should able to email the address you created in step 5. Remember, most phones have the option to send emails, so you should consider that as a way to send website updates as well. While you cannot post files, you will be able to post new information in the event of an emergency.

Edublogs or Wordpress:

1. Looking at your dashboard, click options.
2. Click writing
3. Scroll down to the email section.
4. When you create this email address, make sure whatever you type in place of the word “example” is the same under the mail server option and the login name.
5. Don’t forget to write this down and keep it safe.

A few posts back I referenced posterous.com. I this post I detailed how to create a posterous account and alluded to methods of posting via email.

Here is how it works for Posterous:

1. Sign in.
2. Go to Manage my emails and phone (on the right side of the page).
3. Add the email address you want to allow to publish to this site. (You will get a verification email at that address.)

That should do it.

If you want a chat option for your website tinychat.com, which is featured on lifehacker today, looks like an awesome option.

I demonstrate this site in the following video. (My next post will show you how I made the screencast)

HOW TO USE TINYCHAT

1. Go to TINYCHAT.COM
2. Click Click to create your chat room.
3. Copy the url for your disposable chat room.
4. Click Enter chat room.
5. Create a username.
6. Send the url you copied to others OR just post it to your website so others will know where to go.

So there you have it. An easy way to carry on group discussions, study sessions, or last-minute-paper meetings without having to repeat yourself. Students can search the previous conversations by hitting CTRL+F and typing in key words to see if certain conversations have already occurred.

Here are my worksheets for quote IDs on The Great Gatsby. I hope find them useful. I used the same method as described in THIS post.

Below you will find instructions for creating a posterous.com blog. This is by far the easiest blog site online. After you set it up all you have to do is email whatever you want to post to your blog.

This week they even added the ability to make your blog private.

Get your own - Open publication

I do a lot of “writing into the day” with my sixth graders. They keep a notebook full of writing that either begin with a prompt I give them, or freewriting, or something connected to the lesson plan of the day. I want them to explore their inner worlds with this kind of writing that won’t get graded for grammar or punctuation — they can follow their thoughts and focus in on content, not mechanics (in their notebooks).

I often have them writing short stories and to help, I have them generate class lists of possible story titles. What they come up with is always amusing to all of us, and many can’t wait to get started telling a story from one of the titles.

Here is a list from a recent brainstorming session:

Adventures of Billy Bob and Joey Jane

Attack of the French Toast

The Story of the Chocolately Chocolate Bar

The One-armed Lunatic

Homework Trouble

The Thing Outside My House

Mr. Coyote Doesn’t Have a Home

Don’t Go By the Apple Tree

Moose

Homerun Kid

The Day I Rode My Bike to School

Purple

Rabbits Versus Hares

Fire-breathing Butterflies and Acid-spitting Unicorns

Popcorn Fight

Shattered

Don’t Sniff Dirty Socks
Lonely Souls

The Talking Book

Mrs. Mallory

Room 319

The Hole

The Day of Bad Luck

Pencil Sharpener Horror

Slimy Soup

A Night in the Light

The Polar Bear That Lived in the Rain Forest

The Hybrid of Doom

The Weird Man

The Freaky Robot

The Story of the Lost Abutment

The Virus

Alien Potatoes

Evil Lunch Room Food

The Blue Pool

A Hole in the Moon

OMG

The Day My Eyes Popped Out of My Head

Reading People’s Minds

The Day My Cat Turned Purple

Anti-Mad-Eye

My Mom Kidnapped My Math Teacher

Who Says Pigs Can’t Fly?

The Striped Pig Who Walked Down My Street

Goodbye, McFartalot

Miranda’s Birthday

Space Invasion
Don’t Look in your Sandwich

Cheese Gone Bad

The Dairy Section

Unread

The Red Ruby

The Day Polar Bears Took Over the World

It Came … From Day Care

Beneath the Church

The Road to Nowhere

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for I-scream

Independent Forever

Dark Swamp

Camp Hornhock

The Day My Spit Turned Purple

The Boy Who Ate His Mom

When Computers Go Mad

Ripples in the Water

Gnomes in the Shower

LOL

Which story would you write?

– Kevin

If your school’s computers have the unfortunate habit of not recognizing flash drives, you might consider having your students manage projects using KADOO.COM.

I tried it out today.  The 10 GB of space the site allows you will be more than enough for all of the powerpoints, papers, pictures, and emails your students will have to manage for your class.

I really liked how you can decide how you want to share each individual file.  You can share it to everyone on kadoo, specific friends on kadoo, or you can create a link to specific content that you can simply email.

I had a packet for a presentation I conducted at NCTE that will not email because it is too large.  A colleague wanted a copy, so I just told kadoo to make me a link for that document.  I emailed the link to that person (and myself as a test) and I was amazed at how fast it downloaded.

If the site featured a word processing program like google docs or zoho, I might even consider depending on Kadoo for everything.

This is a great way to create a database for all of your lesson plans, worksheets, and tests.

Good stuff!

This thing can read what you are looking at and give a description of it. Check out the video.

This information was found at Wired Magazine’s blog.

This sample of my handout for The Great Gatsby was designed for students at level 5, so they no longer need the scaffolding that is described below. To view the handout, just CLICK the picture.

I have been working on responding to quote IDs. Initially I found that they were leaving out important aspects of the selected passages, like the speaker or literary devices. So I decided to try to come up with an acronym to help them remember what all then needed in their responses.

Then, I found that, though the acronym was helping them to remember to touch on more of the aspects of the quotes, over 50% of them were overlooking the more inferential aspects of the passages. THEREFORE, I had to backtrack. Now I have learned that the following steps must be followed in order to make sure students are writing at the optimal level:

1. Teach them the following acronym to help them to learn what is involved in a complete quote ID.

Speaker- tell the speaker of the quote or passage
Event- tell what is going on where that quote occurs in the literature
Language & literary devices
Explain your examples from the text
Context- relate this passage to other parts of the piece or other pieces of literature.
Themes- relate this passage to the themes within the novel.

2. I do, we do, you do.

Show them how one is written. Allow them to construct a few with you. Then, let them try it on their own.

3. Then have the students respond to a list of passages in which you underline the parts you expect them to include in the responses.

4. Now, instead of underlining all of the important parts, put a number next to each passage showing how many important aspects they need to discuss.

Instead of writing a single number, you might want to write two numbers, such as 4 to 5. This will cut down on the number of students who approach you saying, “I cannot find five of them. Could you tell the last one?” It is one of those little psychological tricks that saves you time because they will try to find five, but they will settle for four if the bell rings.

5. The last step will have no training wheels. They will just get the passages along with your high standards. Because they have had a lot of practice, they will be well prepared.

As you progress through these steps, may also want to consider either raising the point value of the assignment or count off more for information that is left out of the students’ responses.

If you have not used Google Maps to enhance your students’ understanding of the settings of the literature you are reading, you really should go and check it out.

Below I have some screen shots of my visit to West Egg from The Great Gatsby.

FIRST you have to do is type in where you want to go. You do not need an address. I just typed in New York and dragged the map until I saw the less fashionable West Egg glittering on my screen. (If Nick can describe it that way, so can I.)

SECOND, I zoomed in until I was able to see the names of the streets.

THIRD, (notice the red arrow on the second picture to your right) drag that little yellow man under the compass on the left side of the map to the street you want to visit. **Street view will only work for streets that turn BLUE when you drag that little yellow man. The green circle is where you will start.

FOURTH, use your arrow keys to move. Left and right turn you around. Up and down move you up or down the street. Double-click to zoom.

They actually have a street named Gatsby Ln. that winds its way to the point where Gatsby would have lived.

I have also done this with the book Copper Sun, by Sharon Draper, Of Mice and Men, by Steinbeck, and for William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheel Barrow.” (I happened upon a bookstore in Paris called The Red Wheel Barrow using street view while wasting time with this rather addictive technology. We happened to be studying it the poem the next day.)

I hope you’ll make use of this technology. I know here in Birmingham, Alabama we have had our streets photographed by the Google van, so we now have street view. You should check it out for your own city.

HERE is a link to other posts dealing with The Great Gatsby.