Twitterbag 4

Every now and then we rescue some fish from the Twitter stream. Here are a few more from recent tweets ...

• A very good blog post by Anthony Wilson on the nature of 'failure' in writing, and here's another with particular interest to teachers, especially English teachers: Teaching Paying Attention, with a link to an excellent piece by Anne McCrary Sullivan.
• Our own report on Claire Keegan's thoughts about her superb story 'Foster'.
• An online magnetic poetry kit (of course, you could just use your fridge door).
• Thoughts by Seth Godin on privacy (or, rather, its lack) in our world.
• Find the cliche.
• Handy: characters who die in Shakespeare's plays.
• Danah Boyd's book It's Complicated: the social lives of networked teens is a free PDF.
• Our list of 18 excellent iOS apps for English teaching and learning has been updated with 'The Dead' - including a full audio version by Barry McGovern. 
• Wes Anderson's film The Grand Budapest Hotel is great fun. It (its milieu at least) was inspired by the work of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. A fine novel on Zweig's end in Brazil is published by the excellent Pushkin Press: The Last Days by Laurent Seksik.
• And while we're on Pushkin Press - Maxim Leo's Red Love is a fascinating read about the GDR (read it in conjunction with Anna Funder's superb Stasiland).
• Willy Vlautin is a terrific writer. His new novel The Free has just been published.
• House of Cards (starring Kevin Spacey) and its relationship to Shakespeare's dramas.
• One for teachers: How to use Google as a countdown timer. 
• Jo Baker's novel Longbourn (Pride and Prejudice from the servants' perspective) is recommended.
• 200 prompts for argumentative writing.
• A fine Transition Year essay comparing books by Mark Haddon, Lionel Shriver and Andrew Motion.

Twitterbag 3

Another in the irregular series of round-ups of interesting English links from our recent Twitter stream :-

• Lesser-known podcasts, from the Guardian and its readers.
• Emily Dickinson: a fabulous web resource, and a beautiful new book.
• An important post for teachers by John Tomsett on 'This much I know about ... why putting your family first matters.' It's struck a lot of chords. 
• Join our Department (temporarily).
• We are currently studying Pride and Prejudice with both VI and V forms: Jo Baker's take, Longbourn, looks promising.
• Our updated list of Articles of the Week, a la Kelly Gallagher.
• How to learn lines for a play.
• An interesting take on W.G.Sebald: "it appears as if he needed to write in the foreign language to be able to openly talk about the very origin of his life-long sadness."
• Donal Ryan, author of the excellent The Spinning Heart, in conversation beside Eimear McBride on The Book Show.
• Enda Donlon's list of 77 tweeting English teachers in Ireland.
• How to write: Miriam Lord's merciless Irish Times filleting of 'macho management guff.' And here's more on 'corporate guff'.
• A good revision exercise from Evelyn O'Connor: a Lady Macbeth jigsaw.
• Reading a novel changes your brain. At least, Robert Harris's Pompeii does.
• Eoghan Evesson's survey of second-level English teachers in Ireland on resource-sharing.
• Transition Year extended literary essays from our pupils on: Rosemary Sutcliff, Khaled Hosseini and John Steinbeck; Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque and Sebastian Faulks; J.D.Salinger, Bill Bryson and Kazuo Ishiguro.
• Sinead Morrissey on winning T.S.Eliot poetry prize.
• Actors, including Simon Russell Beale, on playing King Lear.
• Teju Cole's Twitter patchwork story.
• Using Google Earth in composing poetry, by RAMS English.
• Via Geoff Barton: Top 10 tautologies.
• On reading Robert Caro's LBJ masterpiece straight through (so far).
• James Joyce's 'The Dead' as an iPad app. What's not to like about Barry McGovern being your personal reader for an hour and a half?
• And finally, our most-ever retweeted moment: a Christmas grammar joke.

English Twitterbag 2

 
Another in the irregular series of round-ups of interesting English links from our recent Twitter stream :-

• Storytelling about different cultures, in cartoon form: Somalis in Norway.
• Updated list of our Articles of the Week - lots of interesting discussion for class.
• And plenty more in the Guardian's look at what teenagers are up to online.
• The wonderful new Emily Dickinson manuscript archive.
• An entertaining look back at the origins of Twitter. How wrong could he have been ...
• Draftin.com - worth trying out for collaborative writing.
• An entertaining article on English words in German, such as 'Handy', and how they aren't 'really' English.
• A starter for class: the new Lego ad (above). Bless.
• Writers and their advice: great for classroom posters.
• Books: two which sound particularly interesting a) John Self on Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing ('this writing becomes a way of thinking'), b) For fans of Vienna, I was Jack Mortimer by Alexander Lernet-Holenia as reviewed by Eileen Battersby in the Irish Times.
• Enda Donlon's list of English teachers in Ireland who are on Twitter.
• The always readable John Tomsett on 'truly great teaching'.
• Vivid NYC photographs by Brandon Stanton: lots of writing prompts.
• An impressive post by Alex Quigley of Hunting English on 'Teacher Coaching and Improving CPD'
• A Storify selection of tweets and resources from the INOTE English teachers' conference in Kilkenny.

English Twitterbag 1

A new series fishing a few interesting English links out of our recent Twitter stream, expanding on them and throwing in a few comments...

All teachers and students of poetry should be interested in the Emily Dickinson Archive, which "will make high-resolution images of manuscripts of Dickinson’s poetry and letters available in open access, along with transcriptions and annotations from historical and scholarly editions." You can sign up to get an email alert when the Archive opens this autumn.

The Great Language Game [audio] is fun: the first few languages are easy enough, but then things get harder, especially when the choices multiply.

For any teacher of English in Ireland, the main issue at the moment is the impending change to the Junior Cycle. Evelyn O'Connor of LeavingCert.net has a meaty and characteristically passionate response here. As she suggests, get a cup of coffee ready for the long but worthwhile read.

The biggest and saddest recent event in literature was Seamus Heaney's premature passing from us: our own response is here, followed by a Storify of reactions from around the world. 

One of the most inventive and interesting users of Twitter is the novelist Teju Cole. He recently tweeted a series of modern 'received ideas' ("ARTISAN. A carpenter, in Brooklyn.") and wrote about them in the New Yorker here. Enjoy.

Finally, there are some excellent poetry posters for self-printing from the Scottish Poetry Library here - lots for classroom display.