From the BBS, many with short video clips, and most short and simple enough to be used in ELT classes.
Category: digital storytelling
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Rotating Sandwiches
At least 6, and maybe 8, of these Rotating Sandwiches are not sandwiches. But controversy aside, this is a great resource for language teaching. Besides our yes/no, we can compare, we can guess the prices, we can list ingredients, we can make recipes. I’m sure there is more. Thanks to Kottke for the link.
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Seaweed for Cows
Got too much red algae? Feed it to the cows. It reduces methane by 40%.
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Repurposing
kevinryan.com blog will return to personal musings of Kevin Ryan in Tokyo (aka tokyokevin). The audience I will now aim at is more specific in one way, and more general in another.
I have a lot of students who wonder what is going on in the world. And the language learning world. And their world, but through English.
So from now on I will be posting about interesting things I find on the web, and for language learners. I will write in simpler English to make it easier for non-native speakers to understand.
My model here is either kottke.org, where Mr. Kottke has been posting interesting things for 25 years, or NextDraft, a daily newsletter of 5 interesting things in the news. Dave Pell makes it interesting by making the titles of his news with lots of puns.
I’m going to invite my students to read (not require, mind you), and comment on these posts. I hope to bring a lot of stuff I usually post in Facebook here.
I plan to follow Cory Doctorow’s practice of post once (in one place) and then add links in messages to all different social media. (What’s the term for this? I can’t find it.
Looking forward to posting more here. Also, see my other blog about technology in language teaching at EdgeOfCALL.net.
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Best movie of the decade
Roma, by Alfonso Cuaron. I just finished. A masterpiece. The best movie of the year (2018). Maybe of the decade. And in black and white, better than color. In Spanish (with a lot of Oaxacan as well). Cuaron’s story of growing up in a tony area of Mexico City, the Roma neighborhood in 1970. It follows Cleo, the maid as the family, the city, her friends and the
times swirl around her in a dizzying rhythm. The noise, the world, all impinge on her quiet soul. And the actress. The only word I can think of is beatific.I am 6 years older than Cuaron. My family traveled in Mexico the summer of 67, just 3 years before this movie was set, so I was the age of the oldest brother in this film. There were 4 kids in the family, much like mine. I remember vividly visiting my mother’s friend and her family in Cuernavaca. A similar situation. All of those details resonated with me. Cuaron, as a kid, was a superlative observer.
The detail in the movie is astounding. Watching dozens of art-house flicks when I was in Barcelona helped me understand the graphic language of black and white movies, the subtle connections beween worlds. The airplane, the dog shit, the car, the “
poza ” (pond) and the water, and a half dozen other things. It had me on the edge of my seat through all 2 and a quarter hours, even though it was a relatively normal family for that time.Roger Ebert’s website gives it 4/4 stars.
With some of the most striking imagery of the year, “Roma” often blends the surreal and the relatable into one memorable image.
Read Kristopher Tapley in Variety getting the backstory from Cuaron.
Wow. I will have to watch this one again. A work of art.
