Blog Posts

  • Blended Learning course weeks 3 & 4

    In a follow up to my previous post, this is my reflective log on Weeks 3 and 4 of the online blended learning that I am undertaking this summer. Week 3 of my FutureLearn Blended Learning Essentials course proved much more useful in a practical way. (Again, any sections in italics are definitions provided by…

  • Blended Learning course week 5

    Here is my reflective log on the final week of my FutureLearn Blended Learning Essentials course.  It’s certainly been an interesting few weeks. The final week of the course focuses on how we can use blended learning to accommodate students whose needs are a bit different – those with learning disabilities, for example, or caring…

  • Blended Learning Course Weeks 1 & 2

    Earlier in the year, I undertook an course on teaching foreign languages to dyslexic students with FutureLearn and the University of Lancaster.  Although I don’t teach foreign languages, of course, I do teach dyslexic students and indeed one of my children is severely  dyslexic. It gave me some really useful insights into supporting all students…

  • ‘And though that shee be dead and gone’ – the VERY late Ladie Marquess

    In my final blog post on William Elderton’s A proper new balad of my ladie marques, Whose death is bewailed To the tune of new lusty gallant, I’d like to look at possible reasons why the ballad wasn’t published until well after the marchioness’s death: Although the ballad appeared in the Stationers’ Registers of 1569,…

  • Ghost Beliefs

    William Elderton’s A proper new balad of my ladie marques, Whose death is bewailed To the tune of new lusty gallant features an apparition: Elderton says ‘Me thinkes I see her walke in blacke, / In euery corner where I goe’.  But Elderton is conflicted. Visions of the deceased marchioness appear in his mind’s eye,…