Challenging the beast: Writing a Beowulf boast announcing your awesomness

Is this the most difficult assignment I give out? Most students struggle to write their Beowulf Boasts, poems where we narcissistically brag about just how epic we are. In 15-20 lines, students write alliteration-filled psalms to their own greatness. As I explained it a number of times, this is essentially a Hakka, like the video above, aimed at a student's greatest enemy.

Below is a list of all the students in my British Lit classes. The assignment is for every BritLit student to go to 5 other blogs and comment on them. In class, we talked about using the Sandwich Principle (positive-negative-positive) to comment on someone's post; in the past, I've written about good commenting techniques. For this assignment, I'd like to debut the second part of TOAST—JAM (logically).

When commenting on blog posts, you MUST use do at least one of the following:

• Join the conversation by adding new information, opinions, or perspectives.
• Ask a question related to the post.
• Make a specific compliment about the post.

For this assignment, make sure that you're comment by using at least one of the above techniques. For A-day classes, have this done by Monday the 27th; for B-day classes, by Thursday the 30th.

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A-day	B-day
Aleena Annika Belle Brian Chanda Christine L. Emily Joyce Kevin M. Mandy Patrick W. Robert Sally Samuel Sian	Amy #1 Anderson Grace C. Grace Y. Janelle Kathrina Kelly Krikki Minnie Takako Vivian

For formal docs (like the Beowulf essay), use Scribd.

When you're writing an analysis about your personality, composing kenning-filled poems about your epicness, or showing video of the important elements of your life, a blog post is a great format for sharing your work. However, if you're doing something a bit more formal, a blog post just isn't the right format. This is where Scribd comes in. It's a website that allows you to display PDFs, Word docs, Powerpoint presentations, and a variety of other documents with a more professional feel to it. For these Beowulf essays, Scribd is a great place to store these papers. There are three parts to this process: the initial signup, an on-iPad part and an on-a-real-computer part:

1. Sign up for Scribd. You can sign up by connecting to your Facebook account, if you want, or you can just sign up separately without Facebook. However, if you sign up with Facebook, I've found that your password acts a bit funny, so you'll have to add in a separate one. To do this, at the top of the page, click, underneath your name, on Settings.
   
   
   
   
   A bit below on that page, you'll have the option to add or change a password. Click on that and change the password to whatever you want. Even if you just change it to what your Facebook password is, that's ok—you just have to change/add/re-add the password to the account.
   
2. Write the essay. Obviously. Hopefully, you've already connected your Quickoffice App to your Dropbox account. Either way, make sure you, somehow, add your completed, finalized essay to your Quickoffice app.
3. Upload to Scribd. Drag your essay to the Document icon (to the right of the Trashcan and the Email icons) the bottom of the page.
   
   
   
   
   Once you do that, it'll pop up an option to upload it to Slideshare, Scribd, and .docstoc. Obviously, you'll go for the middle option.
   
   
   
   
   Add in a description of what you're uploading to Comments and then click  Upload . It'll then tell you once it has it uploaded. From here, you'll need to go to a real computer.
4. Get that Scribd document.  Now that you're logged into Scribd on your computer, go to your document Shelf. Your recently-uploaded document should now appear on the screen. Click on that document.
   
   
   
   
   Your document will show up now in the middle of the screen, but at the bottom of the screen, there will be a black bar. To the right of the bar will be an icon that looks like < / >, for Share and Embed. Click on that, and then, on the popup, press Embed >>.
   
   
   
   
   The screen above will pop up. Make sure, under Embed this document (in the middle) that Auto is checked for Width. Then, where it says Copy, click that to automatically copy down the HTML code for your document into your computer's clipboard.
5. Add it into your blog post. Now, create a New Post in your Blogger. I'd write a short introduction to what the paper is supposed to be about, etc, and then click on Edit HTML. Then, towards the bottom, paste in your code. It'll be awfully long and will look like this:
   

   <a title="View Test Document on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/63726099/Test-Document" style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">Test Document</a><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/63726099/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-qvz5w4c4vy6yvv6c7tk" data-auto-height="true" data-aspect-ratio="0.772727272727273" scrolling="no" id="doc_44069" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">(function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = "http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();</script>

   Finally, publish your post. 

Embedded into your blog will be a little something like this:

Test Document

Pretty cool, right? And so much more professional. Now, when you're trying to share formal documents or Powerpoint presentations, use this little trick, and it'll be perfect!

Beowulf enhanced.

I've referenced Better Book Titles once before, in regards to one of our selections from English II. Now, with the completion of Beowulf, it's probably time for us to take a peek at the better book title for our Geatish hero.

Who am I? Beowulf takes the Myers-Briggs Personality Test.

A few days ago, I had students in British Literature take a Myers-Briggs personality test to get a good idea of what kind of Jungian personality type they have. Now, a few days later, we've started to get results to what British Literature class looks like.

A few pertinent facts:

• 4 personality types had no students, in two classes, out of nearly 30: ISFP, INFP, ESTP, and ENTJ.
• The most popular personality type in both British Literature sections was ESFP, the Performers. Strangely, they are said to make up 4-9% of the population. 
• Just an opinion, but you can pretty much have guessed perfect who would be an I (introvert) and who would be an E (extrovert) before the test was ever given.

Here are the results:

ISTJ	ISFJ	INFJ	INTJ
Kotomi	Emily Kevin Y. Ivy	Vivien Sky	Mr. Webb Angel Michael Yalisa
ISTP	ISFP	INFP	INTP
Florence			Emmanuel
ESTP	ESFP	ENFP	ENTP
	Jane Esther Jonathan Nadia Tim	Mrs. Webb Enoch Cynthia Angela WinWin	Tristan
ESTJ	ESFJ	ENFJ	ENTJ
Sean	Linda Justin	Jason Andrew Timmy Beverly	Elaine

Thoughts on this chart? Any surprises? Any obvious ones?

How similar are you to Beowulf?

Today in class, we'll be talking about the personality of Beowulf, the eponymous character of our first work in British Literature. As a method of comparing the kind of guy Beowulf is to a real-life person, you'll be taking a Myers-Briggs personality test. Through this test, you'll be able to easily identify what kind of person you are compared to many others.

Your assignment will be to take the personality test and find out what your personality type is. The answer will be a 4 letter code (see the image to the right). Google your personality type, read up on the typical characteristics of someone with that personality type, and write a one-paragraph essay describing how you might be like that personality type.

Some killer kennings!

In studying Beowulf, we've come across a literary trope called kennings, and my British Literature students have investigated what these are and how they work. According to Angel,

A kenning is the use of describing things as you rephrase them in an obvious way by using another noun and pointing out the actual objects without naming the actual names of the object. It's similar to a metaphor which we implicate what we want to say.

I think this is pretty much right-on. Here are some great examples of kennings from our class:

A teacher:

• Knowledge consultant (Angela)
• Origin of insomnia (Esther)
• School-parent (Elaine)
• Oppressor of students (Emmanuel)
• Tree killer* (Tim)
• King of boredom (Sean)
• Boss of students (Kotomi)

A bus driver:

• Transporter of the public (Jonathan)
• Postman of people (Enoch)
• Citizen's slave (Timmy)
• Foreman of a tube (Elaine)
• Master of transportation (Justin)
• Monster controller (Cynthia)

A computer:

• Brainchild of technology (Angela)
• Brain wannabees (Andrew)
• Pygmy secretary (Esther)
• Brain of autism (Emily)
• Homework answerer (Tristan)

Love:

• Sweet poison (Linda)
• Pain in the heart (Win Win)
• Person warmth (Florence)
• Jar of tears (Jane)
• Invisible treasure (Kevin)
• Bridge of hearts (Yalisa)

Bombs:

• Gifts of killers (Beverly)
• Master of massacre (Angel)
• Portable volcano (Andrew)
• China weapons (Timmy)
• Life destroyer (Sky)
• Exploding rain (Florence)

*Think "homework".

Beowulf too hard? Don't fear—Sparknotes is here!

Some of my British Literature students on Thursday (B Class) were complaining about the difficulty of reading Beowulf, and I agree. The poetic value is fantastic, and there's no substitution for reading the original work. However, if you're looking for a way to make the information a bit more clear, I'll allow you to use Sparknotes' No Fear Beowulf instead of reading the original via the Free Books app.

Just point your Safari browser to this link or hit up the following QR code, and you'll magically be transported to infinitely easier-to-comprehend literature.