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Summer Learning
A gold mine for teachers, Quia offers 600,000 learning games, and the list
grows daily -- as visitors create the activities and quizzes themselves. The
categories range from Accounting to Zulu and cover such diverse topics as a
Hangman-style game of basic food vocabulary in French, to a matching game of
homonyms.
To invent Quia activities, visitors create a free account and then select
among templates for 13 different types of games and quizzes, like jumbled
words and flash cards. Once logged-in as a user, you can view and rate other
activities, set up a class page and hold sessions that let you give online
quizzes and track and analyze students' scores.
quia.com
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Vanity Plates
With only six to eight characters and a small metal plate at their disposal,
people can be very creative. Discover the meaning of common abbreviations
used in vanity license plates, read an Oedipal epic told entirely with vanity
plates and learn whose car carries the tag 88 KEYS.
www-chaos.umd.edu
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The World in 2001
What do some of the world's most astute and opinionated writers believe will
happen in politics, economics, finance, science and business this year? This
is the online version of The Economist's annual flagship publication
predicting the twists and turns of major issues in the coming year, forecast
by Economist editors, journalists with the world's top newspapers and such
guest writers as Bill Gates and John Chambers.
The site is Pundit Central, with sections including a Diary, listing
month-by-month key events that will affect the world; Britain, Europe, North
America and Asia Pacific; the World in Figures, with forecasts for 63
countries and 20 industries; Business and Management, Finance and Science.
theworldin.com
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Zoetrope: All-Story
This web version of the magazine of the same name is a writer's panacea: a
place where the short story is celebrated and nurtured for the quality of its
writing, characters and story --- not its car chases and special effects.
Inspired by the "Coppola heritage," as in Francis Ford, the site presents
contemporary short stories that may or may not evolve into film.
Visitors can read current and back issues, listen to readings of original
stories or sign up for Zoetrope's short story contests and writers'
workshops. Free membership in a Virtual Studio has you collaborating with
writers, filmmakers and other artists in an online community where you may
submit your own work for feedback and possibly for publication in the
magazine. The site is not for wannabe writers: the print version of Zoetrope
recently won the prestigious 2001 National Magazine Award for fiction,
beating out such fiction maestros as Esquire and The New Yorker.
all-story.com
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AskOxford.com
Launched in July, AskOxford appears as the revised edition of the Concise
Oxford Dictionary hits bookstores, both from Oxford University Press. Not
just for grammar wonks, the web site is a vast resource for the English
language, as the dictionary is, but it's a lot more fun.
In addition to news about the latest words and phrases to gain dictionary
status, the site has word quizzes, puzzles and crosswords; a jargon buster to
help average Joes understand what's so bad about errors like dangling
participles; a searchable database of FAQs on such topics as word origins,
spelling and dictionaries; articles and interviews about English usage; and a
chance to ask the Oxford experts anything to do with the English language.
askoxford.com
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Source: tricksandtrinkets.com |
