You’re Not Allowed to Read That Text!

The Ideas section for this week’s Inbox ties to several censorship stories in the news. A little quote from the intro to the section:

Censorship is in the news this week — from the accusation of “absolute vile and gratuitous sexual premises” in the books targeted in the Fayetteville, Arkansas, high school library to a profane word in the title of a poem in a Seattle, Washington, high school literary magazine. In situations like these, the true issue is the power of language and the control over who is allowed to use it.


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Today’s Inbox with the Ideas section on Harry Potter is live now. I’m sure there will be excitement. I know that people were queuing up at midnight last night to read it, but they just had to wait.

I spent much of today talking about the ReadWriteThink calendar. We have to figure out our plans for 2005-2006, which means attempting to figure out every entry that we want to add. It would be more thoughtful of authors to spread their birthdays around a bit. If you are pregnant or considering becoming pregnant, please see to it that your little author is born on a day that is open on the calendar to ensure that the little genius gets covered.

I haven’t had a chance to touch my writing since Sunday. Haven’t even opened a file. Maybe by the time that I get back to it I’ll finally know what’s going on. It’s too late tonight to bother with it. If I’m late to work again, I’m going to be in much trouble. Though probably not as much trouble as poor Mel Fuller in the book I finished last night, The Boy Next Door. It’s a cute romance sort of book, for high-school/adult readers, written entirely in e-mail messages. I need to write up a review for the reviews site, but that’s not happening tonight either. Actually I have a pile of at least a dozen books that I’ve read and need to write about for the review site. Heh. I know. Since the server-side includes aren’t working anyway, you can’t get there; so you’ll not notice that I haven’t written any of these things. Nothing like making technology failure work to your advantage.


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Placing a Premium on Writing Skills

This week’s Ideas section in NCTE’s Inbox connects to the latest report from the National Commission on Writing. The Ideas focus on “Placing a Premium on Writing Skills” and discuss writer’s workshop as authentic writing instruction. It includes links to a couple of articles on technology in writer’s workshop.


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Stories behind Historical Documents

This week’s Ideas section in NCTE’s Inbox takes advantage of Independence Day (because that was the easiest thing to do). It focuses on “Looking for the Stories behind Historical Documents.”

I’m still not sure what is causing the blogger template to do such odd things, but I went in for the quick fix and just put everything into a more cooperative, large table. I’d rather have it work properly, but this will do for now.

I’m sure it’s a perverse statement on my morals, but I love this Wonkette blogging of the president’s speech tonight. Okay, what I really like is 8:05. It’s so deliciously evil.


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Composing with Words and Images

This week’s Ideas section from NCTE’s Inbox focuses on “Composing with Words and Images” and connects to a couple of news articles on electronic texts.

The section includes two ReadWriteThink, Diane George’s CCC article on visual communication, and Mary Hock’s CCC article on visual rhetoric in online environments.


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Audiobooks Are Reading

This week, I took my inspiration for this week’s Ideas section of the Inbox from a NY Times article on audiobooks. I managed to work in some links to articles on using video, audio, and other media with students toward the end.


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Spelling Inbox

Wrote the Ideas section for this week’s Inbox on spelling, to take advantage of the National Spelling Bee, which will begin next week.


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Encouraging Guys to Read

Wrote the Ideas section for this week’s Inbox on encouraging guys to read, which ties to Jon Scieszka’s “Guys Read” interview on NPR.


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Shakespeare Resources

This week’s Inbox is live, in which the Ideas section (which I write) points to K–college resources for teaching drama/Shakespeare, in celebration of the bard’s birthday this coming Saturday.