Cool resources, free learning materials, fun stuff

Laughing Squid (a blog I like) points us to a Free Music Archive. You can download music legally and, according to laughing squid, use it pretty much however you want. If you find something good here let me know and I can use it as a soundtrack on video I produce for our class.

Other blogs I like are Open Culture, which will give heads up to great cultural content on the web, like the top educational and cultural videos. Have a dry professor? You can find the best of the ivy league holding forth on biology, physics, literature, you name it. AND you can download it to your personal media device.

The Philosophy Monkey bills itself as "your source for humor, edumacation and critical thinking" (all in our objectives) though they don't publish as often as I'd like.

I like BoingBoing.net, but I stopped following, less because of the infrequent posts on drug or sex related topics (be forewarned) and more because it's so prolific. There are sometimes 40 or 50 posts a day.

Do you use and aggregator (feed catcher, feed reader)? It collects the RSS feeds from blogs (or podcasts) you want to follow and makes web research much more convenient. I use bloglines (click to view my account). It's about the most popular and the organization is intuitive for me. It also makes following my favorite comics easier (with the exceptions of Doonesbury and Baby Blues - they force you to visit their site).

Web comix, cliches and colloquialisms.

Grammar discussions demand humor.

Taylor Mali, a teacher turned Slam Poet (he's been on Def Comedy Jam and Comedy Central), has great material on YouTube. His poetry (more stand up/ spoken word with a hip hop feel) rocks. See a collection of links . His rant on “what a teacher really makes” lifted my spirits, but his video on rhetoric and the loss of voice in contemporary culture is more relevant for students.

Victor Borge’s a phonetic punctuation system can lighten up a grammar discussion and teach mechanics. And for me it's practical; living in multilingual environments, I sometimes speak out punctuation to clarify meaning.

There's an online cartoon at http://www.bitstrips.com/series/34595/ that treats grammar. Web comix work better in the wiki than in the blog. The blog cuts off much of the content, but if you click on the image itself it will open up larger and in its entirety.

Also on the issue of tired language , Oxford researchers have released a list of the top 10 most irritating words or phrases in English. Not all of them are cliches, but...

And what is the difference between a cliche and a colloquialism?

Acceptable language

From the age of 10 until I started teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) I swore like a drunken muleskinner (the coarseness of muleskinner invective can make a sailor blush). College classes in general and English classes in particular are tolerant of crude or graphic language, but some understanding and agreement early on is warranted.

I will cede to the will of the class with 2 codicils: blasphemy and hate speech/ labels - blasphemy because it is for many the ultimate show of contempt, and also because it tends to end dialogue. "But how," you might ask. "can you get away with the picture in this post?" I'll argue context. I might also admit to irony. I like irony. Sarcasm, however, bores me.

Hate speech can be tricky. Used to be being in or of a referenced group provided immunity - but Perez Hilton suffered physically and in public opinion since he called Will.I.Am a "f***** NOTE: in blogging there is a practice of disemvoweling text that often works. But sometimes, as in the n word, even that wouldn't be adequate.)

Does the law recognize "fighting words"?

My sentiment - avoid labels. To paraphrase Nietzsche, when you label someone, you negate them. Being negated bites. Labels of race, gender, and/or sexuality carry mondo baggage; however, we live in an imperfect world and this is a learning environment. Mistakes are inevitable, so be tolerant and open-minded. When someone slips up be calm in bringing it to their attention, but don't avoid helping someone learn something useful. For fun and a discussion point, go to this wiki page.

PS. Can anyone tell me where I took this picture?

Copyright issues and The "P" word

Plagiarism issues come from: not broaching the subject early, confusion, and the changing nature of the legal question. Maybe also students are lured into a false sense of unaccountability by teachers who don't call them on it. Sometimes if you ignore problems, they go away (or become someone else's problem). Students believe a blase treatment of citations is standard practice (good question). Then you get an instructor who takes citations seriously. The prof. sees violations as an insult, "What! Do you take me for a fool?" he, or possibly she, ruminates. Accusations fly....

Some English teachers downplay or ignore the issue out of fear we are abusing our authority, but schools ARE holding students accountable for downloading media - with arguably draconian punishments. How is it different? How is it the same? Or is it as they say in Tinglish, "same same, but different. " More on that in a podcast to come.

My advice: chill. With common sense (if you aren't trying to game me) there won't be problems. Just be conscientious and cover your assets.

Start with these awesome animated videos produced by Rutgers U. They are fun, short and amazingly informative.

• Video - - what is plagiarism
• video - - plagiarism real life examples
• video - - anti plagiarism gameshow