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Best. Podcasts. Ever.

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

With apologies to the exceptional students in previous sections of my Teaching Literature course, I would say that the most recent batch of podcasts are the best to date. When I began the YA! Cast project in 2006, my students and I had roughly the same expertise with Audacity and other recording software. Not much. [...]

Summon Makes the Deep Web Available For GVSU Students

Monday, September 14th, 2009

I probably should have noticed this when it was rolled out recently, but the GVSU library now has a fantastic new database search engine called Summon, which searches several databases (more to come?) to which GVSU subscribes. The best part about it is that you can get an RSS feed from Summon. So far, it [...]

Here Come the Blogroll and the Bundle

Friday, September 4th, 2009

My English 384 class (Literary Responses to War and Peace) is keeping blogs this semester. Their blogs will connect course materials to current events, chiefly by linking course readings to articles they find using Google Reader. Here is the blogroll thus far: Brennden Brian Chelsea Christopher B Chris V Chris W Drew Haley Jennifer Joe [...]

Twitter Widget Adds Real-Time to Class Ning

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Here is an interesting addition to any Ning being used for academic purposes: add a Twitter widget so students can tweet about the course. How does it work? First, just pick an appropriate hashtag to use for your course. Mine is #vamplit. Anytime anyone (including non-students) tweets using #vamplit, the tweet will show up twitter [...]

Book Glutton Worth Talking About

Monday, July 6th, 2009

Just heard an interesting NPR review of the site Book Glutton. The idea here is pretty cool: you can chat with other readers as you read texts (all public domain), or leave a short comment on a select passage. Think social networking meets Kindle. This might have some pretty interesting applications in my literature and [...]

Twitter: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

I have been thinking a lot about Twitter recently: it is hardly possible to avoid all of the media hype on the microblogging service these days. I particularly enjoy it when otherwise fusty mainstream newscasters mention their twitter handle in a routine broadcast (ooh, yes, I do want to follow Dan Rather!). Still, with all [...]

Neil Gaiman on Colbert Report

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

If you missed it last night, Young Adult author Neil Gaimon was a guest on the Colbert Report. Colbert must have a taste for young adult literature, since Sherman Alexie was also a recent guest on the show. The interview (Gaimon begins at about the 15 minute mark) is typical Colbert, but it does get [...]

Small Glitch in NetLibrary

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

I am all for electronic texts, use them heavily in my courses, and even promote NetLibrary, one of the electronic text databases to which GVSU subscribes. I was pretty surprised, however, when I learned last semester that NetLibrary only allows one user at a time to check out an electronic book. What’s the use of [...]

War Bloggies: Round One

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

I just finished grading the first round of war blogs from my 384 class. Some common themes emerged from the blogs: the impact of war on family life; the mental anguish of the soldier; the biased perspective of western media; and the passing of the torch from one generation of warriors to the next. I’m [...]

Bright Ideas Registration Now Open

Monday, February 16th, 2009

I am pleased to announce that online registration for the 2009 Bright Ideas Conference is now open. This year’s conference features award-winning young adult author Donna Jo Napoli and a huge selection of breakout sessions on everything from hip-hop to grammar to Shakespeare. Lunch is included in the registration fee. Registering for the conference is [...]

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