Laura Gibbs's Page

I'd been hoping the ning magic would make it possible to post in both of the education nings that I follow, classroom2.0 here and fireside learning - I've been spending more time participating in discussions over at the fireside, so that's where I'll be blogging about the semester. So, no more crossposting here - but you can find me over at the fireside ning! :-)

Today I finished reading and responding to the last of the Storybook brainstorming assignments that students turned in for my three classes this week. In all three classes, the students do a Storybook project, and this first brainstorming assignment is basically the same for all three classes, with slight variations - the students propose four possible Storybook topics, and I give them feedback on each one (if you are curious the specific assignments are here:… Continue

Fat Thursday 2008. Today, January 31, marks the holiday of "Fat Thursday" in 2008. You have probably heard of "Mardi Gras" ("Fat Tuesday") which is a holiday celebrated the day before Ash Wednesday (that will be next week). Well, "Fat Thursday" is a similar holiday, marking the last Thursday before Lent; you can read more at wikipedia. The Fat Thursday holiday is especially celebrated in Germany (where it is called Fettdonn… Continue

Tomorrow, January 30, is the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. I wanted to share here the announcement I am sharing with my class (see below). There was a discussion at the Fireside Learning ning about cultural literacy and I was discouraged about the notion that there was nothing in Hindu culture that belongs to the "basics of basics," the essentials of cultural literacy. Now, I don't want to be in the business of drawing up any "basics of basics" (I think that's a ve… Continue

Today was a watershed day in my classes this semester: tonight, at midnight, the first web publishing assignment was due. And it's gone quite well - more or less 91 students (my current roster) have published their first webpages. Simple simple simple: just two pages, linked to each other, with some link to another website. We'll add images next week.

As usual, most of the students had never published a webpage before.

Even better: most students were surprised at how easy it w… Continue