The Polliwog Journal

If you read The Polliwog Journal, you know I am a huge fan of blogs in the classroom, but especially for teachers as a means to reflect, share, and communicate with the broader teaching community. Not only that, but teachers who blog are more likely to engage their students in the interactive realm that blogs [...]

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AP students are often asked to analyze the diction of a passage. Diction means to some degree the author’s style, such as formal diction, but more technically diction means the author’s choice of words. I sometimes have students highlight words and phrases that have a similar tone or meaning. They may use more than one [...]

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Yesterday, I was at Bay Port High School (btw, what a beautiful school!!!) to teach a session called “Using Blogs and Wikis in the Classroom” for the Summer Instructional Technology Academy. There were about 20 teachers who were all great–all self starters and really excited to learn something new about blogs and wikis and how [...]

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A wordle is clever in a number of ways. The word “wordle” is just funny; it kind of tickles the tongue, makes the tongue vibrate just a bit.
Ms K has some ideas about how to use Wordle in the classroom. I may have to try some of them, IF we aren’t blocked!
What I like best [...]

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Pam sent me this question and I thought it was worthy of public discussion:
I read your blog frequently for inspiration to share with our English teachers. Today I went to it to mine for free advice. Since I didn’t see any posts alluding to this question, I thought I would ask you directly.
What qualities do [...]

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Kate Says has posted the results of a survey on blocking of educational Web applications, like blogs, YouTube, social networking sites, etc. In a very impromptu survey of one class today, I asked, “how many of you were using the Internet for a legitimate school assignment this year and got blocked.” I was not surprised [...]

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