Lessons From a Teacher of the Year
TeachersFamilyTeacher CafeWritingLGBTQIAWritingAs 2018 Georgia Teacher of the Year, John Tibbetts explains sometimes teachers learn from students in unexpected ways and amazing ways. He tells the story of a struggling students who confesses that she was the first person in her family to graduate from high school.
The Big List Of Class Discussions
TeachersTeacher CafeListeningSpeakingWritingLGBTQIAWriting15 formats of structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you have struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.
Optimizing Google Classroom For The Way You Work
TeachersEducationTeacher CafeTechnologyWritingLGBTQIAWritingAs education evolves, so do the needs of students and teachers. Google Classroom has updated Classroom to give teachers more control over how they organize everything.
5 Myths About Teaching in a Virtual Classroom
TeachersEducationTeacher CafeTechnologyWritingLGBTQIAWritingWith every new method of teaching comes new issues and in turn solutions to those issues. Here are five myths of teaching in a virtual classroom all of which bring new ideas and approaches to learning.
How BYOD Programs Can Fuel Inquiry Learning
TeachersTeacher CafeTechnologyWritingLGBTQIAWriting"Instead of this just being a technology initiative, it really is an instructional initiative, so all of us from different departments can get on the same page." (Tim Clark, coordinator of instructional technology of Forsyth County Schools in Georgia).
Using Reflective Mapping To Help Grad Students Understand Their Transferable Skills
TeachersEducationTeacher CafeWritingLGBTQIAWritingA walk-through of a workshop designed to assist grad students with understanding their own transferable skillsets. This reflective mapping tool will help students gain and recognize confidence in their skills and experiences.
Three anti-social skills to improve your writing - Nadia Kalman
AdultsArtBooksCreativityWritingEducationYou need social skills to have a conversation in real life -- but they're quite different from the skills you need to write good dialogue. Educator Nadia Kalman suggests a few "anti-social skills," like eavesdropping and muttering to yourself, that can help you write an effective dialogue for your next story.
In on a secret? That's dramatic irony - Christopher Warner
AdultsCreativityFilmMediaWritingYou're in a movie theater, watching the new horror flick. The audience knows something that the main character does not. The audience sees the character's actions are not in his best interest. What's that feeling -- the one that makes you want to shout at the screen? Christopher Warner identifies this storytelling device as dramatic irony.
Situational irony: The opposite of what you think - Christopher Warner
AdultsCreativityHumorMediaWritingLeaps and bounds separate that which is ironic and that which many people simply say is ironic. Christopher Warner wants to set the record straight: Something is ironic if and only if it is the exact opposite of what you would expect.
How misused modifiers can hurt your writing - Emma Bryce
AdultsEducationLanguageWritingModifiers are words, phrases, and clauses that add information about other parts of a sentence-which is usually helpful. But when modifiers aren't linked clearly enough to the words they're actually referring to, they can create unintentional ambiguity. Emma Bryce navigates the sticky world of misplaced, dangling and squinting modifiers.
How to build a fictional world
AdultsCreativityPhilosophyBooksWritingWhy is J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy so compelling? How about The Matrix or Harry Potter? What makes these disparate worlds come alive are clear, consistent rules for how people, societies -- and even the laws of physics -- function in these fictional universes. Author Kate Messner offers a few tricks for you, too, to create a world worth exploring in your own words.
Comma story - Terisa Folaron
AdultsHistoryLanguageGrammarEducationWritingIt isn't easy holding complex sentences together (just ask a conjunction or a subordinate), but the clever little comma can help lighten the load. But how to tell when help is really needed? Terisa Folaron offers some tricks of the comma trade.
Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages?
AdultsBooksFilmLanguageCultureWritingEntertainmentWhat do Game of Thrones' Dothraki, Avatar's Na'vi, Star Trek's Klingon and LOTR's Elvish have in common? They are all fantasy constructed languages, or conlangs. Conlangs have all the delicious complexities of real languages: a high volume of words, grammar rules, and room for messiness and evolution. John McWhorter explains why these invented languages captivate fans long past the rolling credits.