pedablogical

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Hampshire | Pupils warned over web bullying—though positioned as “a very unusual case” this situation seems just like any other school cases of bullying. A new medium may be involved, but this kind of attack is hardly new. Besides, didn’t these people see Cruel Intentions? Geesh. Online attack pages are hardly new stuff.

I wrote Exploring Audience and Purpose with a Single Issue as a spin-off of the Communicating on Local Issues lesson published yesterday. We needed a lesson that worked through some of the ideas that yesterday’s lesson was based on. Basically this lesson does some of the audience analysis that would be necessary for students to understand before writing letters.

In the lesson, students explore the rhetorical concept of audience and purpose by focusing on the evolution-creationism debate raised by the Scopes Monkey Trial (which will tie to a July calendar entry). Students analyze the audience and purpose of at least one resource on the debate and then consider how audience and purpose might shape other communication on the issue.

Easy DIY online database – Lifehacker—one day I’ll join the present and get a database set up, but there’s no sign when or where. This might help.

10 rules to manage your boss—Not quite sure why Lifehacker didn’t share this piece from the August Money till March, but here it is nonetheless. Given the shakeup at work this week, we can all use some tips :)

And today we begin hell. A “life coach” is coming in to help our team be more, well, I don’t know what. These psychosocial analytical things make me sick, and by that, I mean physically sick. I do not want analyzed. I do not want my psychological tendencies probed. I would rather go to the dentist. Because I am insane, the result of the related stress and anxiety of this nonsense makes me physically sick with varying gastrointestinal nonsense. Now, of course, I am procrastinating. The longer I can put off going to work, the longer I may be able to ignore the hell.

Communicating on Local Issues: Exploring Audience in Persuasive Letter Writing asks students to identify and research a local issue that concerns them, using Internet and print sources. They then argue a position on the issue in letters to two different audiences, addressing their own purpose and considering the needs of the audience in each letter.