Hi World,

I made a presentation to a graduate course here at the U of C last night about blogs. It was really fun. My audience were students in the M.Ed. TESL program here at the University of Calgary, and asked a lot of great questions after my presentation. I think I learned something last night too. The best part of last night though was that I was able to show off my students' blogs. Everyone I meet always tells me how great my students' blogs are. Keep up the good work you guys! The whole world is admiring you!

Get rid of the annoying spam!

Hey guys, a reader of Allen's blog just told us how to get rid of all the annoying spam that we have been getting in our comments. Here is how you can do it:

Sign in and go to "Settings"
Then click on "comments"
Then scroll down to "Show word verification for comments?" and click "YES"

That way we can stop all this spam in our comment boxes.

Let me know if this was useful!

Cheers,

Scott

Such a Beautiful Day!

It's such a beautiful day today, I can't believe it. It doesn't feel like winter at all. This morning, it was so nice out that I decided to go for a walk and have breakfast at "Nellies in Kensington". It's a really great breakfast restaurant close to my house. I had sausages, hashbrowns, brown toast and poached eggs. The perfect start to my day. Yeah, I really can't believe how nice it is. I wish I had gone skiing today. I went skiing last weekend, and it was really fun, but it was absolutely freezing at the top of the mountain. I went to Sunshine Village. It was the first weekend of the ski season, and I just had to get to the mountains as soon as possible. This weekend, I really wanted to go, but I had too much work to do. However, as soon as this semester is over I hope I can go skiing every weekend!

I can't believe it is almost the end of the semester. There are just three weeks left. It seems like this semester has been flying by. Right now, we are studying business in class. It's been fun so far!

hoo whee, I'm tired. I'm still recovering from my presentations last weekend! It was nice going to the Devonian Gardens yesterday. It was a good change from staying inside the classroom all the time. I put up all the pictures that the students sent me. It was cool seeing them inside one of the largest indoor gardens in the world!

This is a tough week this week. We have three exams tomorrow. I'm sure all my students are studying hard right now. Good luck guys! You can do it!

Happy Birthday

Here is a silly version of the Happy Birthday song:

Happy Birthday to you
You smell like a shoe
You look like a monkey
And you act like one too!

This song is dedicated to Yusuke and Mayuka, my students from Japan last year. It's their birthday's this coming weekend!

P.S. Just kidding about the song, you guys don't really smell like shoes!

My Presentations are Over!

It's Sunday, and I have finished the two presentations I had to make for the Alberta Teachers of English as a Second Language Conference. It's so great to be done. I can sympathize a lot more with my students now, because I really remembered this weekend how hard it is to prepare a presentation. I had two presentation topics. My first presentation was on Friday, and it was all about using blogs to help students learn English. I did my second presentation with Vicky. It was about using theme units to teach English at the University level. Almost 50 people came to hear the presentation I did with Vicky. I was so glad that so many people came to see us!

Anyway, after all those presentations, I really just wanted to relax today, so I drove out to Banff with a friend. The first thing we did was go to the hotspring in Banff. It was just what I needed after all the stress and tension from doing the presentations. I soaked in the hot water for almost an hour. At first, it was almost painful because the water was really hot - 40 degrees, but then I got used to it, and it felt great. It was cool, soaking in the hot water with the steam rising up into the air. It was the perfect day for a hotspring. It was bright and sunny, but cold. The hotspring in Banff is outside, and my hair was getting icy as I was sitting in the water. It was awesome!

After the hotspring, I ate lunch at Earle's, and then bought a new jacket at Roots. It's a nice warm fall jacket - I'll wear it to school to show everyone this week.

Anyway, I feel a lot better after my day in Banff :-)

I was just preparing for today's class, when I found this great webpage about grasslands in Alberta. I hope you like it:

http://www.raysweb.net/specialplaces/pages/grassland.html