Welcome to Grade 10 English

What story is this?

We will be using some online resources in this course. If you live in the country and your internet is slow, that's alright because you will have time at school to access these resources.


The internet and Web 2.0 (beginning about 5 years ago) gives students some very special learning abilities never before experienced in history. 


Students can access the accumulated knowledge of humankind over the last few thousand years. Soon, the Library of Congress will be completely online and accessible (books about everything).


The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, housing millions of books, recordings, photos, maps, manuscripts. They just scanned their 25,000th book recently. They are free and available to anyone.


But it's not just about books. Social media has allowed students to interact with famous scientists, writers, politicians through Skype, Facebook, Twitter, etc.


We can also upload our own videos to Youtube etc. and become teachers ourselves. Offer walkthroughs of video games, or tell stories from your life and offer them to the world.


Not only could we read the novel, Crabbe,  but we could Skype the author, William Bell, and ask him a few questions. Or, we could follow an author on Twitter to see what he/she is writing or doing today.


After reading "Crabbe" we could research survival skills in the wilderness, which leads to my next point.


Another use of social media is gathering, organizing and presenting information that you are fascinated in. You will be doing this using some online tools:
(Again, if there are any circumstances that prevent you from doing this, see me.)


http://evernote.com/ A free online notebook for gathering info.


http://delicious.com/ For organizing your links to your information

http://prezi.com/ For presenting your information

Another great online resource is Dropbox. Save your documents in Dropbox and it becomes available everywhere you go- no need for memory stick of failed printer at home.


http://www.dropbox.com/

We will also use Google (Docs). Here is my Google Docs Presentation on Celebrating the Story

Celebrate the Story (Google Presentations)

Also, here is the PLOT GRAPH explaining the structure of a short story that I have on the board in class.
PLOT GRAPH