Thanks to an anonymous visitor from my 280 class, who left this link to the blog of a child named Gawain. His parents have posted the adventures of Gawain, the Knight, and obviously know their stuff. I note that he's home-schooled - hope they don't use the Beowulf site that we looked at in class! (though, to be honest, his parents seem very well

(are you reading this, students??) Note to self: make a deadline for the individual blog entries. Only about half the class have posted in their blogs. I foresee having a zillion blogs to read at the end of term, and want to say "NO - this shall not be!" Except the more little deadlines you have in online courses, the more chances you have for ( Read more... )

David Mitchell: Black Swan GreenJason Taylor is thirteen years old, it's the Eighties, and he lives in a small village in Worcestershire in central England. He also has a stammer, which makes life terrifying for him in ways that life can only be in the savage world of thirteen year olds. He has an older sister, who calls him The Thing and treats ( Read more... )

WikiHow is a rather nice little service, purporting to build the "world's largest how-to manual." Look for "How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger"! :)

I just wanted to show off this grammar/spelling icon, that I nicked from purple_geek, who nicked it from somewhere else... It's very cool. Such small things amuse English teachers no end. Students: watch it and learn.

I'm not a huge fan of contemporary methods of literary theory or criticism, but one aspect of deconstruction theory - looking at binaries, the way they appear and are "deconstructed" in a text - I have found to be a useful and interesting way of finding a "way in" to a text and I often use it in my literature classes. I owe this approach to my ( Read more... )

Glad to have the chaos of the first week over, but first impressions are good. It was nice to meet colleagues again and have that sense of a fresh start and new energy for the project. All classes are full - 280 is overloaded (don't tell the Union). I have trouble turning people away, although it does ostensibly add to my workload. But 282 is ( Read more... )

I'm doing a little happy dance today, as I'm clutching a key that will enable me to open the computers in my brand new multi-media classrooms. Caloo Calay! BOTH my classrooms are equipped with data projectors and computers. Last year I had to struggle with C.O.W.s (computers on wheels) and it was not pretty - so much time was wasted, and the ( Read more... )

As I plan for the coming term, I'm debating about whether or not to implement the wiki again as I did for my English 280 class the last time I taught it, and I was inspired to revisit the concept by purple_geek, who is doing some work with one now. I used mine as a collaborative learning tool for a literature class. Basically, students were required to sign ( Read more... )