Thinking About Audience

One of the reasons I make my students keep blogs is that it forces them to consider an audience. If they write a journal on paper or in a Word file, they know that I am the only person who is going to read it; write that same document in a blog, and they [...]

November Blogging Challenge!

Help me and my students raise money for the United Way!
November is writing month, and many people around the world are taking part in challenges to write every day for thirty days. The best known of these is NaNoWriMo, but my English 152 (Creative Nonfiction) students and I have agreed to try Nablopomo: National Blog [...]

Getting the Hang of Twitter

I have to confess that I thought Twitter was a bit silly when I first signed up for it (I can’t remember exactly when that was, though it seems a while ago now). In the first year or so, I hardly used it at all. While I could see the point for people [...]

Extend the Discussion with Blogs

As I wrote in an earlier post, if I had to choose one Web 2.0 tool to use to enhance my classroom practice, it would be the Blog. Today, I’m giving a presentation on Blogging for some of my colleagues at the college, which has led me to put some of my thoughts into [...]

My Favourite EdTech

I was an early adopter of educational technology, and have tried many different platforms and tools, from Flickr to del.icio.us, from LMSs to wikis. I like wikis a lot, and want to do more to explore their educational uses. The great thing about wikis is that they allow students to collaborate and create [...]

Camosun Online Blogging Carnival

Help us celebrate our 2nd Annual Conference, Walls Optional, promoting excellence in teaching and learning through technology.
Have you ever taught or been a student in a class where technology was used in a creative way?
Tell us about it!
Write a blog post, before April 30, that describes any really effective teaching and/or learning experience you have [...]

Match It for Pratchett

Science fiction and fantasy fans were shocked by Terry Pratchett’s announcement recently that he’s suffering from a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s.
Many of us have been touched personally by this disease. As we age, more and more of us will have to face it ourselves, or watch as people we love [...]

Inspiring Course

Boy, I wish I were a student, so that I could take this course. Gardner Campbell is one of my blogging heroes, and he sounds like an inspiring instructor, too.

For Readers and Teachers of Poetry

This is one of those quote-within-a-quote-within-a-quote things that happen in blogs.
Litlove, in a post for the Sunday Salon is writing about reading Rilke’s Duino Elegies.
This post on its own is worth reading, as she captures vividly the ecstacy of reading Rilke.
But I particularly loved this quote from the critic William Gass, writing about [...]

Eco (Umberto, that is) on Mac vs Dos

This will probably sweep the internets now that Stephen Fry has posted about it on his blog, but never mind. It deserves to sweep. And my link is to a fuller version of Eco’s essay than the one referenced by Stephen Fry.
Here’s a taste:
The fact is that the world is divided between users [...]