Author, Scott Nailor
Category Archives: Poetry
The Internet Archive: One Very Big Collection of Multimedia
The Internet Archive is a huge, well…archive. Basically, it’s a collection of images, video, music, audio recordings, and texts. Once you explore this massive digital library though, you’ll see that it’s hard to get your head around just how much is collected here. For example, the audio section includes an archive of millions of recordings of everything from an audio version of The Quran to radio talk show recordings. The music section includes live music recordings from the Grateful Dead and millions of others. The text section, called the “Open Library,” includes millions of documents from textbooks to novels and poetry collections. The Internet Archive‘s creators call it “a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.” And best of all…it’s free. One of my favorite features at the Internet Archive is the “Way Back Machine” where you can plug in a web address and see … Continue reading
Add Some Spirit to your “Boorish” Shakespeare Plans
If you are looking for engaging, easy-to-adopt (or adapt) Shakespeare lesson plans, one of the best resources online for anything Shakespeare is the Folger library. I’m deep in the first act of Romeo and Juliet with my students right now, so I’ve been spending a lot of time browsing the net for new stuff. One of the problems with Shakespeare online is that there is just so much out there. I recently searched “Shakespeare Lesson Plans” on Google and got 693,000 results. And so much of it is the same old material. Where do you start? I get a headache thinking about it. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel after ten years that some of my Shakespeare stuff is getting, well, “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable” (sorry, couldn’t help quoting Hamlet there). If you haven’t bookmarked the Folger Library site yet, you should. Liven up your … Continue reading
LitTunes Blends Pop Music and the Classics
One of my favorite lessons as a freshman in high school was when my English teacher sent us home to find music to accompany the oral reading of the mythological story of Orpheus. She sent us home to search for the perfect song to play during his decent into the Underworld in search of his wife. We brought in our cassette tapes the next day and were very excited to share AC/DC, Ozzie Osborne, and Motley Crue with Mrs. Rentz (I’m sure she was thrilled). She let each of us in turn play a song selection on an old tape player and the class read the scene repeatedly until we all came to a consensus on whose selection most suited the scene’s mood. I don’t remember many things about 9th grade English, but this I recall clearly—I thought it was so cool that my “old” teacher showed an interest in … Continue reading
Posted in Audio, Drama, Poetry, Reading, Writing
Tagged classroom technology, engage students, high school english, High School Lesson Plans, interactive lesson, Language Arts Lesson Plans, language arts websites, online english, online literature activities, poetry, technology integration
Leave a comment
Free E-Books at Read Print
Today I was searching for electronic texts that I could use for my classes’ midterm exams (I’m going to give a completely online exam this year), and I stumbled across a substantial, well-organized collection of literature at Read Print. Read Print offers thousands of electronic texts available in the public domain (free of copyright)—more than 8,000 books and about 3,500 authors. In addition to hundreds of fiction titles, they also have essays, poetry, short stories, and plays. The site is both well-organized and searchable which makes finding the right text easy and fast. Many of the authors’ sections contain a short biography, and the site also includes a large selection of quotes from authors that might be useful in Power Points and other publications. Read Print was rated one of Time Magazine’s top 50 websites in 2010, and they have been featured on BBC World, CNN, and in USA Today. … Continue reading
Posted in Drama, Poetry, Reading
Leave a comment
Poetry through the Ages
From Coca-Cola ads to Beat Poetry and Haiku, the “Poetry through the Ages” website offers a remarkable depth of information as well as fun, engaging ways to explore those depths. The site is produced by a group of talented poets, researchers, curators, and web developers and it is loaded with dynamic content to introduce students to the history of poetry from the earliest writings to “visual poetry” and even the use of poetry in mass media and advertising. Like so many gems on the web, this one looks deceptively simple at a glance. However, after you spend a few minutes clicking around, you’ll see this site has more useful and accessible information about poetry than most printed textbooks. The feature that I found most noteworthy for our blog is the “Node View” feature which offers an interactive and visually engaging way to introduce poetry to your students. This section invites … Continue reading