Oct

25

Lit2Go - free audio books

October 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Via Teen Literacy Tips is Lit2Go, which is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. You can

Download the files to your Mp3 player and listen on the go,
Listen to the Mp3 files on your computer,
View the text on a webpage and read along as you listen,
Print out the stories and [...]

Oct

25

Shakespeare - with a twist

October 25, 2007 | 1 Comment

Clay Burrell has an energy for teaching that is infectious - better still he’s full of good ideas.
His new Wordpress powered blog has a growing number of teaching resources that use read/write web technologies and collaborative learning strategies in engaging and purposeful ways. Among them is a link to his AP Literature class project, King [...]

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

Lifting the fog

August 11, 2007 | 2 Comments

As an English teacher, I spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be literate. It seems obvious to me that “literacy” has connotations that extend beyond the ability to read and write. This is tied to a consideration of the “21st century” skills students need to be successful lifelong learners. These [...]

Jul

22

Burning Books

July 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Via Hey Jude, is this visual list of the Top 10 Banned Books of the 20th Century. It’s fascinating that these books, banned for either their political heterodoxy or moral ambiguity, are now considered classics and form the basis of many school and university reading lists.
They are:
1984 by George Orwell
The Catcher in the Rye by [...]

Jul

15

Society from scratch

July 15, 2007 | 11 Comments

The following is attributed to Warren Buffet, who when prompted by a question regarding the obligations of the wealthy to society, posed the following scenario: “Let’s say that it was 24 hours before you were born, and a genie appeared and said, ‘What I’m going to do is let you set the rules of the [...]