The advent of “the book itself [being] in the throes of a technological transformation, and book readers undergoing a major demographic shift” is often exalted as a revolution leaving no nostalgia for the dying bastions of literature and print that our local newspaper and independent booksellers represent. And while I most often share this excitement […]
Read more "Vancouver Loses its Last Duthie Books"We began sentence diagramming today (truly, that is; we have been studying grammar in the TALONS class now for almost two weeks, but that was all groundwork for today). Hopefully this driest of units (grammar) will eventually become a competitive and illuminating investigation of language that will help frame our spring-push through the English 9, […]
Read more "Sentence Diagramming & Grammar Resources"I tend to side with bloggers like Dave Truss and Shelly Blake Plock, who see the advent of social media as a revolution in authorship that is transforming the way the world exchanges information. Whether politically, academically, or economically, information and access to it, and the ability to process it meaningfully – never mind the […]
Read more "Is Social Media a Fad?"Our students are faced with planning cultural outings over the course of the year that occasionally turn into full-fledged field trips. While other events are attended by handfuls of students – it is expected that each TALONS class member attends three cultural events – others take on such a pertinent range of learning opportunities, as […]
Read more "Field Trip: Urban Geography & the Canadian Identity"Yesterday I gave my class a brief quiz to assess their knowledge of the parts of speech, as well as sentence parts. Twenty questions, multiple choice, during the grammar unit. This is not, they tell me, fun stuff. And I’ll admit that putting together their quiz the night before, trying to come up with examples […]
Read more "My students giggle during quizzes"This post marks the fiftieth such publication on this blog, a milestone I couldn’t conceive of almost ten months ago when I awkwardly began this endeavor by compiling a (far-too) exhaustive best-of-web installment and publishing it against an all-black backdrop that infuriated many of my early readers. Since then my posts have ranged from the […]
Read more "Blogosphere turns Fifty (posts)!"With a handful of our grade tens offering thoughtful reflective posts on the turning of a new year, I have been thinking the last few days about the dawn of 2010. It seems as though I have been headed here in my mind for some time. I can remember standing on the pool deck at […]
Read more "A New Year (…and my love of teaching grammar)"Today is the first true day of my holiday, as I lay in bed until ten before slowly preparing coffee and a light breakfast before settling down to lazily catch up with my digital goings on. There are still presents to make, or piece together from stops at the mall or other local shops, and […]
Read more "Holiday Reflections"A huge thanks to Jeff Utecht, Dave Truss, Dean Shareski and Yoon Soo Lim for helping at various times to help crystalize this process. We’re getting there! The following was much simplified and stated in this form by Jeff Utecht, who also supplied the mp3 below. The Mission: Here’s an idea for a wave: In […]
Read more "Don’t Stop Believing (in Santa Claus): Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it"Edit: Wesley Fryer has a great post this week with a variety of digital means of delving into President Obama’s recent speech at West Point (among them Wordle). This past week our socials class made use of its Wikispace’s discussion boards to conduct ranging conversations around major themes in their respective chapters. For the grade […]
Read more "Wordle as Discussion Synthesis"