Talk to the Clouds

Talk to the Clouds archive (to be removed soon)

  • Oxford/Tumblr

    By coincidence, the Oxford Dictionaries blog just added a post about Tumblr English. It’s useful if you’ve just gotten started and feel confused by the jargon. I take issue with one premise of the post: Before you start your own blog, review some important features you need to know I believe that most people learn…

  • Tumblr

    First, do you teach college-age students? Check out Tumblr. You may have heard of it because of its purchase by Yahoo!. It’s a simple blogging/sharing site primarily aimed at images. Text and sound can also be shared, but its focus is on one piece (or highly related set) of content per post. It’s a little…

  • Babel

    Check out the promising new magazine, Babel, written by linguists for non-specialists. I’ve read a bit of the first issue and I thought it was at a fairly nice level–new ideas if you haven’t had any linguistics classes at all; not too challenging if you have, but still plenty of interest. There are some great…

  • Oh Dear…

    It looks like the post-hacking cleanup is ongoing. The site has been reset to its defaults as I’ve installed a fresh version of the theme I was using, so bear with me if things look odd or difficult to use. If you are an edu-blogger or any other kind of blogger, be sure to keep…

  • ACE FELI

    I was at an ACE FELI all last week. It was pretty amazing. If you get a chance to go to one, or if you can request one for your community college, absolutely go! I’ll write more later if I have a chance. Read more about the Academy for College Excellence Faculty Experiential Learning Institute…

  • Found Resources

    What’s the oddest place you’ve found a lesson or lesson resource? I just ran across an old Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer. Trader Joe’s is a specialty grocery chain where I do a lot of my shopping, and they send out a newsprint newsletter/magazine/ad every few months, with four or so products per page, illustrated using…

  • Spotlight: (Thriving and) Surviving in Japan

    I’d like to spotlight a new addition to the recommended blogs here, Surviving in Japan (without much Japanese). This blog/how-to-directory is an ever-growing guide to how to improve your life in Japan if you are not perfectly fluent in Japanese, but are in English. The author, Ashley, is a writer (and part-time teacher) with a…

  • No.

    I do not accept guest posts or link exchanges with “online degree” sites or “online TESOL certificate” sites. Of course, people contacting me to offer such undoubtedly have never actually read my blog. They’re just hunting (or using a program to hunt for) keywords. But just for the record: The answer is “No.” (Genuine offers…

  • Twitter As a Lifeline

    I wrote before that Twitter was like a magic cafe or an eternal, really good TESOL conference, but it can actually be a lifeline in times of disaster. When the Tohoku Earthquake hit Japan, I was in California, but I was using Twitter at the time, on my @readable account with a lot of Japanese…

  • Please take a moment ….

    Please consider donating to ongoing relief efforts in Japan. Many people in the northeastern areas still do not have access to sufficient food and other supplies, and those coastal villages were not wealthy to start out with (fishing and farming villages disproportionately inhabited by the elderly). I donated to Second Harvest Japan (also accepting volunteers…

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