The Polliwog Journal

I had a great day today. A somewhat foggy morning did not mar my appreciation for seeing Green Bay (the water, not the town) from Hwy 57 on my way to Sturgeon Bay in Door County, Wisconsin.  The fall colors were still vibrant, perhaps even more so as they had to fight for their dominance [...]

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For awhile I thought that FrontPage would kill CyberEnglish in the same way that video killed the radio star.
We’d been using FrontPage as the web editor for our students to create their websites since 2001, but FP is no longer supported by Microsoft. Also, our server was a Microsoft system set up to do live [...]

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When I began teaching in 1990, I got no tour of the school, no handbook of helpful tips, and no mentor to guide me. I got shown my room that was barely ready for school. Undaunted, I plunged into the deep end and did not drown. To be fair, I didn’t know one should expect [...]

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The main idea presented in this video is not new. For me, Miles Maguire, associate journalism professor at UW-Oshkosh, first made the connection between blogging and the first American journalists. But this video says it very well. I am a journalist at heart (though never actually), and the fact that newspapers (metropolitan dailies) as we [...]

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If the terms “Blog,” “Ning,” and “Social Networking” are still nebulous to you, but you’re intrigued all the same about how you can engage both yourself and your students in these Web 2.0 tools, you may be interested in joining a new ning (online community of like-minded people, in this case, teachers or other affiliated [...]

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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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