Friday 29 June 2012

Miss Hasler's English Class


I’ve been toying with the idea of hosting virtual ‘lessons’ in English for a while now: using blog posts as the basis for a very 21st century kind of teaching environment – and an opportunity for kinky school roleplay – for interested blog visitors.

I figured I could write a bit each time about an English topic (very much my strong suit; don’t ask me a maths question) and set homework tasks based upon it. Readers who wanted to could complete the exercises and email me their work, or post it in the comments to the ‘lesson’ post in question, and I could mark and grade it. People could be as public or as private as they each preferred: I wouldn’t reveal somebody’s work if they didn’t want me to. But if someone wanted their grade to be made public, I could happily do that too!

The comments would also be ideal for classroom roleplay: after all, they’re an open exchange between you, I and the rest of the blog’s readers. (Or, in the case of lesson posts, those readers who wished to participate). And participants would automatically be ‘in’ the classroom by virtue of reading the comment thread. A bit like a roleplay chatroom, I suppose.

And, because this is the internet, time and space don’t really matter: anyone, anywhere could respond to a post/lesson any time they liked, regardless of when the post was originally written.

Sound like fun? I hope so. I figure it’s worth a try, anyway!

The sexy picture above comes, of course, from the wonderful School Mistress Fantasy.

N.B. A thought on the comment threads to lessons. You are of course all free to contribute as you please: write or ‘speak’ in character or out of it; use comments to show me your jotter work; think or act as you might if you really were in a (kinky adult) classroom. Be as naughty or well-behaved as you feel.

It just occurs to suggest a couple of common ways of representing actions in text, as I imagine we will want to ‘act’ as well as ‘speak’.

One is to enclose the action between asterisks, like this: *grabs hair of girl in the front row* or *Penny looked up at the teacher nervously*

Another is to italicise the action text. You do this in comments by enclosing the relevant text in <i> tags, like this: <i>laughs</i> or <i>Penny grinned at the doodle in her jotter.</i> These will appear as laughs and Penny grinned at the doodle in her jotter.

5 comments:

  1. May I please sign up, Miss Hassler?

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  2. You may, Julie! I will add you to the register along with young Harry.

    I'm writing the first lesson now, so make sure your uniform is crisp and your pencils are nice and sharp.

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  3. Let's see. It's educational. It's kinky. It's free. My teacher would be the one all the students have a crush on.* Okay, what's the catch, Miss Hasler? ;)

    *Or should that be, on whom all students have a crush? I could use some schooling on the language.

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  4. The only catch is the scolding pupils will receive for misbehaviour. And that includes gazing longingly at their teacher when they should be concentrating!

    And both of your sentences are acceptable, though I personally prefer the first. But then I don't think we're going to worry about prepositions or formal vs informal English for a while!

    To be honest, it's hard to know where to pitch the difficulty level for the classes. I figure I'll just play it by ear, try to cover lots of bases, and clear up a few common errors. And I guess people can always make requests.

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