Jul

10

“Crikey”: language and cultural identity

July 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment

It’s interesting how language reflects our sense of cultural identity and this is evident in the Scottish Voice project, which makes a high-quality, synthetic Scottish voice available free to Scottish schools. The project website states that: “We believe there is a strong cultural and educational imperative for pupils in Scotland to be able to read [...]

Jul

10

Literacy resources

July 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Border Literacy Resources is a British site that “aims to help teachers by drawing together and categorising many of the free Literacy teaching and learning resources on the web.”
There is a whole range of different resources on here including: prose, reading for information, poetry, drama, creative writing, genre and grammar.

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Mar

23

“Hoax” sites and Critical Literacy

March 23, 2008 | 3 Comments

Helping students take control of their own learning is one of the most important challenges facing teachers. The (inquiry or constructivist) approach is based on providing students with opportunities to formulate their own research and create “artifacts” or “products” that demonstrate their understanding and skill development. However, it often becomes glaringly obvious that “research” [...]

Nov

18

Never use two when one will do…

November 18, 2007 | 1 Comment

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
William Strunk, Jr.
Lots of [...]

Oct

20

Going Global

October 20, 2007 | 7 Comments

I’ve written before about the possibilities and difficulties associated with global or “flat world” projects. This is an area of learning that I am really fascinated by and hope to get a feasible project off the ground next year (as we only have about five weeks of class time remaining until the summer holidays).
[slideshare id=140143&doc=global-projects-presentation-1192860619592528-3&w=425]
I [...]

Sep

1

Literacy in a digital world

September 1, 2007 | 4 Comments

Judy O’Connell’s presentation “Literacy Remixed in a Web 2.0 World” explains some of the fundamental issues surrounding the use of the read/write web and how it can empower learners to develop literacy skills. In a nutshell, Judy looks at “how the internet has opened almost limitless possibilities for contributing, collaborating and connecting”. I agree that [...]

Aug

22

Now that’s progressive

August 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment

I attended a professional development day in Sydney this week to explore the new texts on the HSC English list for 2009-2012. The texts set for study change every couple of years and I welcome the list as progressive mix of canonical prose fiction, multimedia, poetry, film and drama. The most interesting, and I think [...]

Aug

11

Literacy in global perspective

August 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment

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