This is the start to this week’s critique group submission as well as an example how three simple words can become a story. I started with the words, bus, tailpipe and smoke.

Graphics purchased from:  clipart4resale.com

Putt! Putt! The bus’ tailpipe spat out a dark blackish grey smoke. 

“I’ll never get home for Thanksgiving,” Cameron complained, “not in this old bucket of rust school.”

“Who you calling a bucket of rust?” said a voice that Cameron didn’t know. “Show some respect.”

“What?” began Cameron, looking all around to se if Nick was acting funny. Where did that come from? It sounded like it was coming from the bus.

Creating a memorable pb:  The author needs a hook at the beginning, lots of action in the middle and a conflict solved and wrapped up at the end.

Trying out a new action pack

Here are 8 guessing cards that you can print (PDF) or use as models for making your own. What are guessing cards? Well, each card has a topic on the top. These topics happen to come from Action Pack 10. One student is the DESCRIBER and the others (say, 3 or 4 to a group) are the GUESSERS. The Describer reads the topic aloud. Then he/she begins to describe the first of the 5 words on the card until group mates guess them.

Then another student in the group picks up a card and does the same. This will reinforce the vocabulary of Action Pack, but more importantly students have a chance to speak and have fun doing so. And they have a chance to really succeed.

Think about it. Usually teachers judge students successes on correctness. Did the student get the right answer? Did the student speak correctly or make mistakes? This is a little unfair, since in communications between native speakers information is what’s important, not correctness.

In this game, if a student describes the 5 items on the card, that’s 5 successes! He or she has communicated a message 5 times! And it doesn’t even matter if the language used was correct/grammatical.

You’ll also see that the 5 words have their Arabic equivalents. Remember, the goal of the game is describing, using language. So if someone in the group is not yet familiar with one of the words, that’s okay. The Arabic translation insures that the meaning of the word is clear and that the game will continue.

The cards available here are just a model. If you would like to create more and put them on this website, please do.

Many teachers tell me that they have to cover their textbook (whether Action Pack or Jordan Opportunities) so thoroughly and rigorously that there is no time for anything else. Students want to know all the words on every page. I’m not sure that makes students learn better, or score higher on tests. Can we assign students some responsibility in learning? Like, for instance, tell them to read/learn a page of textbook at home? Take the poll below. Then post your comments on how teachers can make more room in the syllabus.

You can use this to supplement Action Pack 10, Unit 1, page 10. Or you could use it with other food-related units. Play the audio and see if students can write down all 11 different toppings.

To download right click here.

This 18-second chant will give you a pattern for practicing country names, and the adjectives for that country. Students can make lists of more countries and continue the chant. Try it as a listening task first, and ask students to identify the countries or places mentioned. (The last one is a little silly). Countries and nationalities appear in Action Pack 4.

I’m from Jordan – He’s Jordanian
I’m from Ukraine – She’s Ukrainian
I’m from America – He’s American
I’m from Iraq – He’s Iraqi
I’m from Japan – He’s Japanese
I’m from Syria – He’s Syrian
I’m from Antarctica – He’s a penguin

Howdy everyone out in Googleland! I am Harry Brelsford, the publisher of the Microsoft Small Business Specialist Primer title for the SBSC community. Each day I enjoy holding a virtual book reading – so here it is! Today we discuss the financial commitment you make to become a Small Business Specialist. Above and beyond the exam fee ($125), there is the need to purchase Action Pack.

cheers…harrybbbb

Harry Brelsford, CEO at smb nation www.smbnation.com

Microsoft Small Business Specialist SBSC, MBA, MCSE, MCT, MCP, CNE, CLSE, CNP

PS – did u know I host an annual conference in Seattle each october for SBSers and SMB consultants? This year we help launch SBS 2008 and Essential Business Server (EBS) between October 4-6!

Chapter 2  Small Business Specialist Community

ago, when delivering my worldwide SMB Nation Summit one-day workshops in over 40 cities and 25 countries annually, I surveyed attendees about Action Pack and also gave away Action Pack as a door prize. Needless to say, this workshop format provided impressive data about Action Pack.

·          High positive affinity . Worldwide Action Pack subscribers who attended my workshop LOVE ACTION PACK. It’s all about value. For example, in the USA, Microsoft delivers the SMB application space library as the Action Pack subscription, valued in excess of $25,000 USD, for just under $300 USD annually (you must renew annually to continue to use that software library and this price is subject to change). What’s not to love about that! Try this analogy on for size. In the U.S. Congress, an elected member who easily wins reelection is said to have a safe seat. The same could be said about Action Pack in the SMB consulting community—it has a safe seat.

·          USA traction, global need for action . Over 80 percent of USA SMB Nation Summit attendees happily subscribe to Action Pack. However, in the worldwide community, I found that, at best, only 20 percent of attendees subscribe to Action Pack. This is ironic because Microsoft’s SMB product stack, including Windows Small Business Server 2003, does so well worldwide and lags in the domestic USA market. Life sometimes delivers cruel punishment and unusual fates, and clearly this inverse performance relationship between Action Pack and the Microsoft SMB product stack is one of the paranormal phenomena I can’t explain.

IMPORTANT: Bottom line? An Action Pack subscription is a prereq­uisite for membership in the Small Business Specialist Community. Learn more about the Microsoft Action Pack at https:/ /partner. microsoft.com/global/40009735.

(Este post es una continuación del Curso de Ruby).
<< Para ver el Post Anterior

Ya vimos en un post anterior como Rails traza la ruta a los métodos de un controlador.

Básicamente, y sin liarnos mucho, decir que el comienzo del trabajo lo realiza el Servidor Web (WebRick, Mongrel …) enrutando las solicitudes entrantes a un script Ruby perteneciente al marco de trabajo Rails llamado “dispatcher” (algo así como despachador ???). La función de este despachador es la de analizar el URL que recibe para invocar la acción adecuada dentro del controlador adecuado. A su vez esta acción puede, entre otras cosas, invocar a un modelo y/o a una vista.

Como ya vimos en un POST anterior, la primera parte de la URL identifica un equipo y la segunda identifica un recurso Web. En Action Pack (recordad que es el marco de trabajo que utiliza Rails para administrar los controladores), el recurso tiene al menos dos partes: Un controlador y una accción.

Retomando un ejemplo anterior:

localhost: Es el equipo
acciones: es el controlador
hablar: es una acción o un método de este controlador.

Puede incluir una tercera parte en la cual serán enviados los distintos parámetros o valores a procesar dentro de las acciones.

Por ejemplo:

“Hola_Mundo” es el parámetro enviado a la accion “diEsto” del controlador acciones.

Como en toda aplicación Web, los distintos parámetros pueden ser enviados mediante uno de esto dos métodos: GET o POST. A rails no hace falta especificarle porque método le están siendo enviados los parámetros. Éstos, independientemente de si proceden de un formulario con el método POST o forman parte de un enlace Web (GET), son almacenados en un array de tipo Hash llamado params.

Pero el mejor modo de ver todo esto es poniéndolo en práctica.

Volvamos a nuestro archivo acciones_controller.rb para añadirle una acción mas a nuestro controlador “acciones”. Recordad que se encuentra en app > controllers dentro del árbol de directorio de nuestra aplicación test.

¿Que hemos hecho?. Bueno, hemos añadido una nueva acción a nuestro controlador, llamada diEsto. ¿Que hace esta acción?. Comprobar la existencia del parámetro id para mostrarlo en pantalla o, en su defecto, la frase “Me he quedado sin palabras !!”.

En Rails, se considera que el valor del primer parámetro recibido pertenece a la posición “id” del array params[] (todo irá cobrando su sentido mas adelante), de modo que, como vemos en el ejemplo, la forma de acceder al contenido de esa posición del array params es por medio de params[:id].

Vale vamos a probarlo. Lanzad vuestro servidor Web abriendo la consola de comandos (Simbolo del Sistema del Windows o Termina de MacOs X) y escribiendo:

>ruby script/sever

Una vez puesto en marcha nuestro servidor, abrid vuestro navegador favorito y comprobad el resultado de la URL:

http://localhost:3000/acciones/diEsto/

El resultado debe de ser algo parecido, (mas bien igual) al que se muestra en la imagen de arriba. En este caso, no le hemos pasado ningún parámetro a la accion “diEsto” del controlador “acciones” , de modo que nos muestra el mensaje indicado para los casos en los que el parámetro id no ha sido enviado.

Probad ahora con esta otra URL: http://localhost:3000/acciones/diEsto/Hola Mundo

El resultado de enviarle como valor del parámetro “id” el string “Hola Mundo” es mostrarnos en pantalla el valor del parámetro enviado.

El siguiente paso sería el envio de los parámetros mediante POST. Para ello sería necesario introducir nuevos conceptos: Plantillas, creación de formularios con Rails … y es algo que creo será mejor desarrollar en otro POST. Os espero.

My RoR efforts have culminated in JiggyMe, check it out!

The default Rails application setup only provides for a static home page via index.html on the root directory. However, I would like to have it routed to a controller to do some dynamic processing. The trick to get this done is to uncomment the following line in the config/routes.rb file

Remember to replace “welcome” with the name of the controller you wish to call and don’t forget to delete public/index.html.