Wikipedia Celebrates 750 years of American Independence

Do you have trouble getting your students to understand why they can't use Wikipedia as a credible source? Check out "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence" at The Onion. The article is a spoof, but it is a fun way to remind students about what is and what isn't a credible source. You could also use it to teach parody and conventions too.

HEL (History of the English Language)

I have just added a link to the HEL (History of the English Language) website under the Helpful Writing Resources section of this page. While this site might only be extremelly appealing to obsessive grammarians and history buffs, it could prove helpful when trying to contextualize standardized grammatical "rules" for students. Some learners, myself included, have a hard time retaining information when it is presented out of context. If you find that your students need a little contextual background to help your grammar lessons stick, check out HEL!

Zombie Grammar

If you are like me, teaching grammar is not one of your favorite things to do. And yet, it is necessary. In an attempt to make grammar slightly more interesting (or at least more entertaining) I've started a comic strip blog entitled Zombie Grammar. These short comic strips are only meant to reinforce standardized English grammatical "rules." If you like them, let me know. I'm going to attempt to create a strip for every common grammatical problem composition students face.

These comics were inspired by John Roach's Five Common Grammar Errors as Illustrated by Zombies. It is very funny and also very helpful - definitely worth checking out!

The Wicked Sick Project

I was looking for ways to use media in the writing classroom and I came across the Bedford/St. Martin Bits blog. One particular entry stuck out - Traci Gardner's 4.5 minutes on Audience, Purpose, and Voice. In the post, she links to a video short made as part of an advertising bid (The Wicked Sick Project)and explains how it could be used in a composition classroom to teach about audience. She does such an amazing job of laying out the video's potential that I won't attempt to summarize. Go check it out for yourself:
4.5 minutes on Audience, Purpose, and Voice

I want to add a couple of thoughts. First, if you are wary about the use of explicit language in the song, you could possibly play the video on mute. There is no dialogue anyways so it wouldn't really affect your students' ability to understand what is happening. If, however, you do choose to go ahead and show the clip as is, you may be able to talk about how the creators are advertising their advertising skills (after all, this is something like a video resume of sorts). This could be especially useful in a business class. Just something to think about.

I am also pondering an in-class activity to follow up the video. Perhaps you could bring in something ordinary like a notebook and ask students to create their own ads and let the class vote on which ones are most effective. This could lead into a more in depth discussion about what one much think about when thinking about audience.