T Blog

I’ve just learned about a handy software program called TextAloud. The program, which offers a free trial download, will read any computer text aloud, and even convert it to an MP3 so you can listed on your iPod or other MP3 player. (Okay, so the speech sounds like Stephen Hawking’s voice machine. But did I mention it’s free?) TextAloud is available at http://www.nextup.com/index.html.

Although many classic texts are available online for free, A Room of One’s Own hasn’t entered the public domain yet in the United States.  Interestingly, it is legal to distribute in Australia, and is availble on the University of Adelaide Library page at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/ or at Project Gutenberg’s Australian site at http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791h.html. The ebook can be bought legally in the US for about $7, on sites like http://www.ebooks.com/ or http://www.ebookmall.com/.

Today, HW 27 was collected, (instructor drafts of intro paragraphs of the semester-long project, with peer draft and peer review comments/highlighting attached), the directions for HW 28, 29, 30, and 31 were distributed,  we watched excerpts of the video version of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and discussed Chapters One and Two of the book. Chapter One: Framework of book–a talk about women and fiction, comparison of Oxbridge and Fernham. Chapter Two: A trip to the British Museum library, Professor von X, and a look at the newspaper.

Read Chapters Three and Four of the Woolf for our next class, and have a fun and safe spring break!

Hope you’re all having fun reading Virginia Woolf! Kudos to those who have kept up with the homework and written summaries of Chapter One for the HW 24 discussion on Keene-Ning. Individual conferences continue today instead of regular class, but tomorrow we return to our regular schedule. HW 26 and 27 are due Wednesday for 12 o’clock students and Thursday for 4 and 6 o’clock students.

For those of you wishing to get a jump start on your work for spring break, the homework due after break is also posted on the “Documents for ITW 101” page, along with the past present homework assignments.

Please go to Keene-Ning to complete HW 24–which asks you to write an explanation of Chapter One of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own as if you helping a younger family member understand it.