apcampbell

Dave Warlick posts a fictitious, but certainly not unrealistic letter from a principal to the parents of his school’s students. In it, he writes:
Your child is receiving the best writing instruction in the region, but our children are not being taught to communicate. The future will demand people who can express themselves effectively with [...]

An article I wrote back in November, entitled Weblog Applications for EFL/ESL Classrooms: a Comparative Review, just came out in the latest edition of TESL-EJ. I tried to describe what I experienced accurately and fairly, but knowing how quickly these free, web-based applications evolve, some of the reported content could already be slightly outdated. Nevertheless, [...]

I just upgraded this site to Wordpress 2.0 and installed the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin. I like the new feel - even more user friendly than before - with a WYSIWYG editor and an upload form on the ‘write post’ page. The WYSIWYG editor doesn’t respond as fast as the previous version, but it certainly [...]

The recent release of Elgg 0.4 includes a WYSIWYG editor, a feed aggregator, and an embedded Mp3 player, all of which is good news for teachers wanting to use Elgg with their students. I just might install it on the friends-world.org server and encourage the students to have a go. E-portfolios are definitely [...]

What is the Houston Board of Education smoking? They just approved a merit pay program that rewards teachers based on how well their students perform on standardized tests. According to this New York Times article:
Abelardo Saavedra, the Houston superintendent of schools, praised the vote, saying that it “will ensure that the academic [...]

There’s an interesting discussion getting started over at Marco’s place.

A co-worker made a comment recently discouraging the use of Web 2.0 internet applications for our “low level” EFL students, arguing that their ability to even grasp the basics of English was too low to even bother trying. While this argument could be made for the use of weblogs, I think a photo [...]

The TESOL sponsored Electronic Village Online 2006 courses are set to begin on the 16th of January. These are free, six-week long workshops open to the public on a variety of topics related to ELT. This is an excellent opportunity to meet other practicioners, discuss the topics at hand, and learn something [...]

I’ve been advocating the use of read/write web in my EFL classrooms for three years now. Ironically, I have done little toward applying the same approach in my own language learning attempts. Although I’ve been in Japan for more than six years now, my Japanese still sucks. One of my New Years resolutions was to [...]

A nice Blog software comparison chart was published recently. Via Albert Delgado.

Techcrunch is a weblog devoted to tracking, profiling, and reviewing Web 2.0 products and companies - written by Michael Arrington.

Originally uploaded by aikitherese.

Every New Years in Japan around a dozen people or so, mostly eldery, die from choking on mochi, or sticky rice cakes, which are a part of the traditional New Year cuisine. Made from pounding cooked glutinous rice into a gooey [...]