Lackey's Class Links

AP Exam Calendar and AP First Semester Syllabus and
Second Semester Syllabus

BEDFORD READER LINKS: Authors and Literary Terms.

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad (Full Text)
Heart of Darkness Annotation
"An Image of Africa", Chinua Achebe, 1900

T.S. Eliot and commentary on "The Hollow Men"

JOYCE CAROL OATES: ON JOHN UPDIKE

AP Literary Terms

AP 1st Semester Exam Review Terms

AP Central at CollegeBoard.com

Critical Analysis Terms
Bedford Reader Literary Terms and Author Background
Critical Approaches to Literature
AP Literary Terms
Rhetorical Devices
Learning How to Write, Francine Prose
The Reader as Artist, Toni Morrison
Heuristics for the Exploration of Literary Texts
Chart - Literary Theory and Context
AP ALLUSIONS

U.Va. Office of Admission Essays

Princetons Review - An Insider's Tips on College Essays

CollegeBoard.com - College Essay Writing Tips

USNews.com - Writing a Winning Essay

TIME 100: James Joyce
The Modern Library | 100 Best | Novels

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

Fame Is No Good, Take it From Me Raymond Carver review of "The Letters of Sherwood Anderson"

Spoon River Anthology - Hypertext version

Twisted Apples by John Updike

The Grapes of Wrath - Scrapbooks and Artifacts: Ethnographic Field Studies in Fiction

My Last Duchess: Study Guide

William Blake links

Brave New World Research Paper Specifications:
1. Topic Outline with Thesis Statement
2. Research Paper with MLA Citations – 1300-1500 words
3. Annotated Bibliography of at least 10 sources – not including BNW
4. Works Cited of actual sources cited – use at least 5 from #3 above.
5. Submit to Turnitin.com by 3:00 pm Feb. 20, 2007
NOTE: Sources must include at least 5 different types of information

We Are All Immigrants
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek

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Demographics of the United States From Wikipedia

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The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chainsaws. It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
From Americans Who Tell the Truth by Robert Shetterly

Excerpts from Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Orion
July 2006

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American Phenomenon ebay Description

Progress Hits Home
Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Orion Magazine
Jan/Feb 2006

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(Answers)

Cultural Literacy PowerPoint

Heidi Cody's American Alphabet, 2000 at heidicody.com

Illegal Art Exhibit and Wired News: Artists Just Wanna Be Free

The Branding Alphabet at the Center for Media Literacy and Stay Free Magazine Media Literacy Curriculum

26 Things - The Photographic Scavenger Hunt: 26 Things I and 26 Things II

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy
Edward Hirsch, Third Edition, 2002

According to Hirsch, real literacy depends on an "acquaintance with
one's national culture" -- thus the term "cultural literacy." He likens
cultural literacy to the kind of knowledge that allows a person to pick
up a newspaper and comprehend what he or she is reading. It is that shared
body of information about mainstream culture that every American must
possess to communicate efficiently and participate effectively in society.

From Knowledge of American Culture

Wikipedia - The Hive
By Marshall Poe The Atlantic Magazine
September 2006

The Etymology of Wiki

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Lackey's Weekly Vocabulary Lists

100 Words Every High School Freshman Should Know

100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know

From 100 Words - American Heritage Dictionaries
By Houghton Mifflin Company

More Vocabulary Prep:

5000 Collegiate Words with Brief Definitions

Sparknotes 1000 Most Common SAT Words

Princeton Review Word du Jour

Dictionary.Com Word of the Day

New York Times Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

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The Big Here You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. (See the world eco-region map ). At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels interconnect. What do you know about the dynamics of this larger system around you? Most of us are ignorant of this matrix. But it is the biggest interactive game there is. Hacking it is both fun and vital. - From Kevin Kelly

Where You At? - Bioregional Quiz

Peter Berg, Director of the Plant Drum Foundation, and Raymond Dasmann, wildlife ecologist, have offered the following definition of bioregionalism:

Bioregions are geographic areas having common characteristics of soil, watershed, climate, native plants and animals that exist within the whole planetary biosphere as unique and intrinsic contributive parts. A bioregion refers both to geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness -- to a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place. A bioregion can be determined initially by use of climatology, physiography, animal and plant geography, natural history and other descriptive natural sciences. The final boundaries of a bioregion, however, are best described by the people who have lived within it, through human recognition of the realities of living-in-place. There is a distinctive resonance among living things and the factors that influence them which occurs specifically within each separate place on the planet. Discovering and describing that resonance is a way to describe a bioregion.

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English 11 Course Objectives

AP Course Objectives

First Day Survey

Mrs. Lackey's First Day poem - First Reader by Billy Collins

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A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

Rabbit, Run, John Updike
John Updike on the end of authorship

King Dork, Frank Portman

Londonstani, Gautam Malkani

JPod, Douglas Coupland
See also Insert: headline/jpod-coupland.rvw
Why I Write Modern Fiction

The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
Excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver's SMALL WONDER
Contemporary Writers - Barbara Kingsolver video

A Changed Man, Francine Prose

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Reading and Writing
Novelist and critic Francine Prose talks about creativity, literary craftsmanship, and her new book, Reading Like a Writer.
PDF file

Learning How to Write
Atlantic Magazine Summer 2006

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
By Francine Prose
Reviewed by EMILY BARTON
NYTimes August 27, 2006

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NPR : My Home Is New Orleans
I believe in attachment to place. I believe that watermarks fade, tears dry and lives mend . . . I'm just 26, my clothes can all fit in a backpack; I've got a graduate degree and a 65-pound bulldog. I could move anywhere at all, but I believe in this place. I believe I belong here.

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Insight vs. V-10 and the 8-Cylinder Teenage Mating Dance

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A Family Named Spot from American Idyll
By Peter Howe at The Digital Journalist

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Funtwo playing a cover of JerryC's "Canon". Johann Pachelbel wrote the original "Canon", and JerryC wrote the rock version.

Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
NYTimes August 27, 2006

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Saving the Whales, Again
Japan recently managed to loosen international rules that have long governed the hunting of whales. Do the largest animals on earth face a renewed threat?8/18/2006
Archived Briefings from The Week Magazine

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Walker Evans. Or is it?
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
NYTimes August 25, 2006

UBS Gallery Exhibit - Walker Evans: Carbon and Silver

The reproductions of Walker Evans photographs that you see here on newsprint were made from digital scans, in TIFF format, e-mailed to The New York Times by the UBS Art Gallery, of enlarged ink-jet prints made recently from digital scans of gelatin silver prints produced from the artist’s original negatives preserved in the Library of Congress.

Walker Evans' work is collected with the FSA/OWI B&W Photographs at the U.S. Library of Congress

See also: Walker Evans at the Museum of Contemporary Photography

Evans' Images for "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men"

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Reading books chronically understimulates the senses
From Everthing Bad is Good for You
Steven Johnson

Brain Candy
By Malcolm Gladwell
Atlantic Magazine

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Ox Cart Man
By Donald Hall

In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,
counting the seed, counting
the cellar’s portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather
tanned from deerhide,
and vinegar in a barrel
hooped by hand at the forge’s fire.

He walks by his ox’s head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,
and the bag that carried potatoes,
flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose
feathers, yarn.

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,

and at home by fire’s light in November cold
stitches new harness
for next year’s ox in the barn,
and carves the yoke, and saws planks
building the cart again.

From Old and New Poems at Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Project

Outspoken Poet Is Named Laureate
By DINITIA SMITH
NYTimes June 14, 2006

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From School is Hell by Matt Groening

The Simpsons Archive

Guggenheim Study Suggests Arts Education Benefits Literacy Skills
July 27, 2006
NYTimes
PDF file

10 Classroom Approaches to Media Literacy

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ZipUSA: Athens, Ohio @ National Geographic Magazine

Ohio University VisCom - Dawn to Dusk

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Top Stories of The Century at the Newseum - The Interactive Museum of News
In an exclusive, yearlong survey of national sentiment, Americans have by a provocatively close margin picked the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima as the top news story of the 20th century.

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According to Wikipedia, "The term 'Suspension of Disbelief' was coined by the romanticist Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria (1817): "(...) it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

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Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn’t a random process; it’s the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It’s a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis. And it’s a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, read-the-manual-first approach of their parents. In an era of structured education and standardized testing, this generational difference might not yet be evident. But the gamers’ mindset - the fact that they are learning in a totally new way - means they’ll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption. This is the true impact videogames will have on our culture.

- Will Wright, the inventor of The SIMS, in Dream Machines
Wired 14.04

High Score Education - Games, not school, are teaching kids to think
By James Paul Gee
Wired 11.05

Can Grand Theft Auto Inspire Professors?
The Chronicle of Higher Education
August 15, 2003

The Video Game Revolution: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked
By Henry Jenkins - PBS.org

Never Let Schooling Get in the Way of Your Education
PBS/MediaShift

A Dictionary of Video Game Theory

A Three-factor Model of Motivation and Game Design

See also: 2 Cents Worth - Video Games' Impact
By David Warlick

Because schools haven't adapted to the world their students know and live in, they simply get bored in the classroom. They tune out. You can get engagement, even among apathetic students, simply because games are constructed in a way so players want to finish the level. Games offer players the chance to make decisions, get feedback, level up and become heroes. That's how education should be organized. You learn more and more, you apply that knowledge, and you'll get a great job.
From What video games can teach educators about improving our schools
By Marc Prensky, Ode Magazine

As video gaming spreads, the debate about its social impact is intensifying.
From Chasing the Dream PDF version
There's no solid evidence that video games are bad for people, and they may be positively good.
From Defending Video Games PDF version
The Economist
August 2005

Grand Theft Education
Harper's
September 2006

Born With the Chip
Nine behaviors that differentiate today's students from their predecessors - fundamental differences in the use of information, personal interactions, and social values.
By Stephen Abram & Judy Luther
Library Journal, May 1, 2004

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"Show truth with a camera. Ideally truth is a matter of personal integrity. In no circumstances will a posed or fake photograph be tolerated."

Missouri Photo Workshop

Walker Evans at the Museum of Contemporary Photography

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The Bikeriders
By Danny Lyon
In 1965, 23-year-old photographer Danny Lyon, a veteran of the civil rights movement, returned to his hometown, Chicago, and joined the Outlaw Motorcycle Club. Riding with camera in tow, he produced these raw and dramatic photos, which were released in 1968, a year before Easy Rider, and again in 2003. The Bikeriders imprinted on the public a vision of the heyday of life in a motorcycle gang.
From Magnum Photos at Slate Magazine

Magnum Photos - Tour de France - a photo essay
The legends, the landscape, the stars, the coveted yellow jersey. These are the ingredients that make the Tour de France the biggest event in cycling. Magnum Photos has followed the race, the riders and the spectators for more than 60 years, providing a unique portrait of the Tour.
From Magnum Photo Essays

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Dick Faegler closed his column Sunday, August 6, 2006 with the following:
"But unless we form a conspiracy of sanity, as a great Irish poet once said, the center cannot hold . . . " - an allusion to:

The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming" - an analysis

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His words and deeds helped inspire President Theodore Roosevelt's innovative conservation programs, including establishing the first National Monuments by Presidential Proclamation, and Yosemite National Park by congressional action. In 1892, John Muir and other supporters formed the Sierra Club "to make the mountains glad." John Muir was the Club's first president, an office he held until his death in 1914. Muir's Sierra Club has gone on to help establish a series of new National Parks and a National Wilderness Preservation System.
From The Sierra Club's John Muir Exhibit

Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, California
From The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920

My first summer in the Sierra
By John Muir

John Muir Quotes

Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Maps of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Half Dome, Yosemite by Gigapxl

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