Weakly Post #14

A collection of things I have read this week, and some tools for tech and/or learning new stuff, especially languages. Your first comment is checked, after that you are free to comment.

I posted this week about a course in Democratic Erosion. The course is taught over 25 universities, with students sharing blog posts about specific cases. This is something I want to do too. For my English and content classes.

Media: One for biting criticism, this guy can’t stand cable news. Of any kind.

Conference: This is one I really want to go to. Designing playful courses. Wow. What an idea. And the two main speakers are people I have been reading for a long time. Stuart Malthrop (author of Victory Garden, my first hypertext novel) and Kris Klimas (creator of Twine).

Music: With Spotify and Shazam, who can both show lyrics line by line, doing music in the classroom has become easy again. So this semester I am going to do a song a week, selected (and researched, and explained, and presented) by my students. Here are 10 new artists to look out for. There is a lot of buzz around Billie Eilish. Her music is depressing but interesting. A sign of the times?

TESOL famous people sniping at each other is a great way to learn where the field is heading these days.

Teaching. Opinion. This is how you kill a profession. Actions, even unintended, have consequences. These seem to be intended. My generation is certainly screwing up the world for the next one.