Clockwords is a hectic word game set in Victorian London. You are a genius inventor who discovers plans for a mysterious machine that runs on the power of language. Then your lab is infiltrated by mechanical insects that have come to steal your secrets! Clockwords is a word game like no other. Mix of a word game with speed, strategy, … Read More
Text based adventures in the classroom
There’s a wonderful idea over at Ed Stuck in the Cloud: why not use the Inform platform to create text based adventures a la Zork to enthuse students? “While the idea of asking students to create video games could be daunting to a teacher with core curriculum concerns, it becomes quickly evident with use that Inform is crazy easy to … Read More
Lord of the Flies: How Adults Create Bullying
When Lord of the Flies is taught this way, it encourages the adults in school to continue to behave as they do, and blames children, and their inherently evil nature, for all that is wrong in society. This lies at the heart of how bullying is usually combatted in our schools. Source: here
A-level computerised exam markers give Churchill a fail – Times Online
hey are some of the most memorable and stirring words of the 20th century, but Churchill’s speech exhorting the British to “fight on the beaches” would fail if submitted as a school essay and subjected to a proposed computerised marking system. The wartime leader had a style that was too repetitive, according to the computer being tested for the online … Read More
Split infinitives, again …
Lynch would like us all to calm down, please, and recognize that "proper" English is a recent and changeable institution. "The Lexicographer's Dilemma" recapitulates the long argument between two schools of thought: the prescriptive — which holds that the job of language experts is to lay down the law by telling us how to speak and write — and the … Read More
How To Write Badly Well
Source: here
Swear words in the dictionary
"When I uttered the words there was a shuffling of feet, and a wave of embarrassment went through the room," he said. "That convinced me the words did not belong in the dictionary, though I'm sure I'll be attacked as a prude for the decision." Source: here
Is the Internet melting our brains? | Salon Books
A professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Baron seeks to provide the historical context that is often missing from debates about the way technology is transforming our lives in his new book, "A Better Pencil." His thesis is clear: Every communication advancement throughout human history, from the pencil to the typewriter to writing itself, … Read More
Letters of Note, Darwin & The Tendency to Generalize
On the wonderful Letters of Note blog, this caught my fancy. It is an excerpt from a letter from Charles Darwin. It was not approach to collecting and generalisation especially. How many smatterers and wandering collectors are there online who make the loose speculations Mr D abhors? Well, one here … I must be allowed to put my own interpretation … Read More
Letters of Note, Darwin & The Tendency to Generalize
On the wonderful Letters of Note blog, this caught my fancy. It is an excerpt from a letter from Charles Darwin. It was not approach to collecting and generalisation especially. How many smatterers and wandering collectors are there online who make the loose speculations Mr D abhors? Well, one here … I must be allowed to put my own interpretation … Read More