Using Draftin.com for Education. Nathan Kontny is the founder and creator of Draft.
You may also know him from Inkling, and I hope you will check out his blog at NinjasandRobots.com. Nate Kontny wants us all to be better writers. As a former HS English teacher I can completely support his mission. Nate’s latest venture is Draft, an online app that provides distraction free writing, and very cool features to support feedback and copy editing. As a teacher I always wanted to give feedback on my students work. One of the issues I always have as a writer is staying on track and being focused throughout the writing process.
Version Control When you share a Word document it has to be emailed back and forth, and you can’t send it multiple people and see their revisions next to each other. Copy Editing. 7 Questions to Ask Before You Start to Write. Ask yourself the following questions before you start to write your next article, blog post, or book to build your personal brand.
The questions may appear to be simple, but always pausing to answer them can help you save time by focusing your attention on the key issues that determine the success of your writing projects. 1. Who are your intended readers? Start each writing project by reviewing what you know about your intended readers. Don’t try to write for “everyone,” but narrow your focus to the specific types of readers you want to cultivate as potential prospects and clients. When You Don’t Understand Your Assignment. A colleague of mine directs a writing center offering tutorial help to students of a large university.
One year, he surveyed his clientele to find out how soon before a paper was due they had sought the center’s help. Did students most frequently come in two weeks before a paper was due? One week? Four days? In fact, the most frequent answer was none of the above. Fifty Writing Tools: Quick List. Use this quick list of Writing Tools as a handy reference.
Copy it and keep it in your wallet or journal, or near your desk or keyboard. Share it and add to it. I. Nuts and Bolts 1. Strong verbs create action, save words, and reveal the players.4. Welcome - Ommwriter. First Year Comp. If you’re new to college writing, you may be concerned about whether or not your paper “flows.”
“Tell me if it flows” is what I most often hear students say as they pass their drafts around for peer review. If “flow” is on your mind, take another look at the assignment your instructor gave you. Look at what your instructor has asked you to do, and what they have said they expect from your writing. I would bet my Iphone that nowhere in that grading rubric does it say, “Flow: 30%.” I have never had an experienced writer hand me a piece of their writing and ask me if it flows. When I’ve asked my students to tell me what flow is, the definitions they come up with suggest smooth, unbroken writing that emanates like a stream. Certainly this is an experience we would all like readers of our work to have—that they become so absorbed in our prose that they don’t put it down, skip ahead, or spend their time considering what they’d rather be reading. Tools for creating ideas. Five Best Distraction-Free Writing Tools.
Seems like all five choices are basically the same app with different names.
Kind of a disappointing hive five, not that that's Lifehacker's fault. It just means there isn't much variety in this category, I guess. My vote was for LyX, and I'll re-post what I wrote in the original vote: "Fullscreen mode is extremely minimal, and even the normal view keeps things out of the way.
I like it because I don't have to make a compromise between features and focus: formatting is separated from content creation, so you can still make presentable documents without having to use a separate app or deal with niggling formatting problems as you write. " Free online mind mapping software. Brainstorming - Brainstorming Methods - How to Brainstorm. Brainstorming is a method students can use to generate ideas for writing a paper.
In the process of brainstorming you should suspend any concerns about staying organized. The goal is to pour your thoughts onto paper without worrying about whether they make sense or how they fit together. Because students have different learning styles, some students will be uncomfortable with the disorganized frenzy of spilling thoughts onto paper. For instance, left brain dominant students and sequential thinking students may not benefit from the process if it becomes too cluttered. There are more organized ways to brainstorm, however. Brainstorming for Right Brains Right brained thinkers are typically comfortable with a variety of shapes, ideas, and patterns. Chaîne de peakdavid. Argument - definitions and examples of arguments - development of paragraphs and essays. Argumentative Essay - How to Write an Argument Essay. Planning Stage For an argument essay to be effective, it must contain certain elements that will persuade the audience to see things from your perspective.
For this reason, you must take a few minutes to plan and prepare before you jump into writing an argument essay. Find a Good Topic. Eight Tools for effective explanation. Explainers often have lofty goals in their subject matter, but we know that different people have different styles of learning. Explainers utilize many tools to break down complicated subjects beyond just a block of text, and we’ve collected eight of the best. Some of them are visual, interactive, or entertaining, but all of them help users easily digest intricate topics. Infographics Infographics are visual representations of data.
They can be as simple as a bar graph, or may contain complex interactive elements. Animation Whether you use After Effects, Flash, or good old paper and pencil, animation can be one of the most successful tools for visual explanation. Mapping As Google Maps and its competitors continue to evolve, and location-specific data becomes more readily available, the applications for mapping are growing. Timelines.