E N G L I s H @ T U A K A U

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Are you in the 21st century?

Check out this thought provoking article from last year's Time magazine -

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1568480,00.html

What do you think?

The latest copy of NetGuide has a special feature on education - I have a copy in the office if you'd like a read.......

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Just what you needed to know....

How many of these facts did you already know?

The English word with the most consonants in a row is latchstring
Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning “containing arsenic.”
The only word that consists of two letters, each used three times, is deeded.
Rhythm and syzygy are the longest English words without vowels.
The longest one-syllable words in the English language are screeched and strengths.
The longest words that can be typed using only the left hand are stewardesses and reverberated. The longest word that can be typed using only the right hand is lollipop.
No words in the English language rhyme with orange, silver , month, or purple.
Indivisibility is the only word in English with only one vowel which occurs six times.
Bookkeeper and bookkeeping are the only words in English with three consecutive double letters.
Only four English words end in -ous: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

(from the English teacher's blog - http://blogs.enotes.com/english-teacher-blog/)

Wearable Arts


If you didn't get to the Wearable Arts Awards you missed a great night!!

Here's the English Department entry - Sage did a great job modelling it.

Next year we might think about having a display of BOOK DAY costumes as well.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Managing the information...

If any of you are like me and have a large number of sites you look at to find information, maybe you would benefit from using a RSS aggregator.

What is this? In simply terms its a site that tracks and updates you of any new info posted to any of the sites that you have linked to it.

I use http://www.bloglines.com. Whenever I find a new site that I think looks worthwhile I add it to my bloglines list. Any new postings are linked directly to my site. It can be set up to be updated hourly, daily, weekly...... I have NZ Herald, Reuters, TKI, the Ministry of Ed and a number of educational blogs linked to mine.

If anyone wants help or me info just let me know....