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… 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… 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… Continue