TechTALK wrap up

This post will be a place to respond to ideas from those who attended our session.

Thanks to Herschel Martin who suggested the following cartoon from Real Life adventures.

Let us know what you'd like to know about, or what applications might work best for your class. Post to the comments here and let's extend the conversation.

Writing comics and irritating usage

How many decent regularly produced comics do you know about writing and/or grammar? Here's one to check out from Karen Riddick, who does an electronic magazine (an e-zine) on writing and usage (and who just published a book). Click on the image to see a complete, full-size comic (shrinking it to fit the blog compromised legibility). This is a great source for images to embed in lessons (a la wikis, email, blogs etc.) to punch up interest and spark discussion.

The example above links mechanics and linguistic meta-language with the current election. Connecting learning to our students' lives makes it click. Also on the issue of the topic of the above comic, Oxford researchers have released a list of the top 10 most irritating words or phrases in English. Not all of them are cliches, but...

And what is the difference between a cliche and a colloquialism?