Del.icio.us links added
We are finding more possibilities than we can feature with a certain measure of reflection, so you will find a new “Recent Del.icio.us Links” section on our sidebar. We’ll include a line or two regarding where our thoughts were going when we encountered the link. The rest is up to you. As always, we hope this helps.
Related posts
New Exhibit API Out
The wizards at MIT have released Exhibit 2.0 and it’s amazing. It’s so cool that I’m not even bitter that I’ll have to fix a few web sites and completely re-make my tutorial. That’s pretty amazing. Swing by and check out the new examples. It’s very nice stuff.
Conan the Barbarian Has the Answer
You probably don’t remember the scene. It’s below. Very short. It came to me this morning. “What is best in life?” Such a perfect question with which to plumb the depths of historical or literary figuresImagine it’d work for scientists or mathematicians. English and History uses aboundIt also gives me a chance to do my Arnold impersonation. Don’t play it seriously. There’s a reason to use a cheesy Conan quote to introduce this. It ought to have some humor. As always, your example will be key. Make it good and then break down with the students why it is good. The simplest thing is to play the clip. Discuss it. Now the students assume whatever persona and write the threeNumber of your choosing. 3 is a good number but make sure you keep it limited. things that person would say are best life. The things that are best have to be concise and quick. I’d probably have them write explanations for their choices for proof of processing/show your work purposes. More – Students work together in groups to write the “best in lifes” for a number of figures with another figure as final judge of what is right. Even more – The class votes on the best answer and mash it into the original video. I’d probably do this with […]
Looking at Poetry Through Wordle
I know, late to the party, but I wanted to do a little more than say “Hey, wordle is pretty cool and stuff. You should use it.” So here’s how I’d use Wordle to attack poetry. Take a few poems from the poets you cover, mash a few of the poems together, and create a wordle for each poet. Then have the students match them to the author. The Stevens one is pretty obvious with blackbird standing out that way but the other two will require a little more attention. The key is to make them identifiable but difficult. Too easy and it’s useless. If you presented these as problems to be solved at the beginning of the unit then you’d be able to get some interesting conversation goingEspecially if you were say looking at poets from the same genre as opposed to my odd personal selections.. I’d post them on the wall as big posters and maybe let people put their votes as to the author under each. Then they move their vote each day as students find out more about the poet and their works. So for Wallace Stevens I picked the poems available in Wikipedia – “Anecdote of the Jar,” “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “Sunday Morning,” and “Thirteen Ways […]