Wednesday, October 21, 2009

How cool is the library of congress website?

So just recently I learned about the library of congress website (http://www.loc.gov/teachers/tps/). Maybe our government is struggling with our economy, health care system, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and climate change, but they definitely offer a great resource for teachers on their library of congress website.
While I played around with the website, I ended up spending a lot of time on the Hispanic Americans primary sources sets, specifically the "Hispanic Exploration in America" section. This part of the website offered so many cool sources. It has all kinds of resources about the conquest of the new world, and the conquistadores themselves. Some of the sources themselves are the following, Hernando Cortes, the first voyage, the world map in 1507, Fransisco Pizarro, Ferdinand de Soto, etc... For each of these sources one has a whole PDF as a description. As a Spanish teacher, I found this really helpful since it deals with a very important part of Hispanic culture in the U.S. Many of my students are unaware of the influence that Hispanic culture has had on the U.S. Resources like this one on the library of congress website help me show and explain to my students this influence. I recommend this website to all teachers, maybe our government can't fix everything, so let's take advantage of the things they've done right.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Eliot-The Waste Land

Alliteration Examples:
roots rain
Summer surprised
little life, winter kept us warm, forgetful snow feeding


The final part of this poem is very CONFUSING!!! As a person who is solely bilingual I am confused by the various languages he uses at the end. He does start the poem in a foreign language, so what better way than ending it in even more languages. It is possible that Eliot was trying to continue causing confusion because I am very confused right now. The ending of it is simply CHAOTIC!