Talk to the Clouds archive (to be removed soon)
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
Got any book recommendations?