The best of both worlds: an anecdote
I have been asked to ‘lecture’ at the University of Wollongong this year. This position gives me the privilege of working with tertiary students preparing to become English teachers. This is an exciting opportunity and while preparing, thinking about the idealistic and the pragmatic, it became evident to me that the experience of organising to teach at the university might make for a useful introductory anecdote about the mixture of traditional... Read More
The hashtag and the citizen
The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. Twitter Help Centre Following the #LondonRiots or #UKRiots hashtag on twitter has made me think again about how to explore the important and relatively new concepts (in classrooms anyway) of tag, metadata, metalanguage and folksonomy. It is has also made me reflect about inclusivity... Read More
Life in 100 Words
Life in 100 Words is an idea gleaned from Solid Gold Creativity: The magazine, Marie Claire, recently featured a series to mark the centenary of International Women’s Day. It asked “10 women, 10 years apart, to offer their life story in 100 words.” I will try this idea with students in the future but would really love you to respond with your own blog post or take the time to comment, telling us about your good self in exactly 100 words.... Read More
Hung Parliaments and the Importance of Literature, Philosophy and History
The political uncertainty of the election ‘result’ that Australians watched unfold last night will lead to concerned discussion about what a hung parliament will mean for our democracy. There will be many at the moment worrying, including myself, about the NBN plan and what will happen to the Digital Education Revolution, if Mr Abbott is annointed. However, another interesting question is, obviously, how did a recently popular,... Read More
David Crystal – texts and tweets: myths and realities
Thanks to Ben Jones for alerting me to David Crystal’s recent talk. Like you, I have many of his books on my shelf and find his insights into language, especially the English language, sage. Read More
Readability
Readability is a simple tool that ‘makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around’ what you’re reading. Check out how it works: Read More
Since Mark Pesce spoke about Twitter at an education.au conference earlier in the year, I have been embarrassingly evangelical about this microblogging service. Quite simply, Twitter lets you microblog pithy 140 characters posts, known as ‘tweets’, to your friends or followers. This often seems inane to the uninitiated but the growing number of influential educators and teacher leaders, as evidenced in this Directory of Learning Professionals... Read More
National English Curriculum: Initial Advice
The nation’s newspapers reported on the release of the National English Curriculum: Initial Advice paper with the following opening lines: ‘GRAMMAR will return to the classroom‘ ‘CHILDREN will be taught grammar for the first time in more than 30 years’ ‘ENGLISH will be stripped back to basics under a draft national curriculum so students learn more about grammar’ ‘Old-school grammar lessons, the phonics... Read More
'How English Is Evolving…'
My travels in India gave me an appreciation of ‘Hinglish’ and I wasn’t in Singapore long enough to experience much ‘Singlish’ but hopefully, with Chinglish on the rise, opportunities will present themselves to enjoy the richness of this derivation in the not too distant future. How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand is a recent WIRED article that explores the notion that English is “happily... Read More
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