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| Hello! I am a student at Penn State,
taking a class with Jim Albright. As you know, we have been reading The
Shipping News this semester, which encouraged our class to look at your
Shipping News webpage.
I am really impressed with the work done by the students. They made great juxtapositions against other texts. I liked how the page was informative about the content, and still included students' personal opinions about the novel. How did you come up with the criteria for the page? Did you tell the students the different categories, or the class create what they felt was appropriate? I was also wondering how you graded this webpage, or if it was graded. I will be doing my student teaching in the fall, and was considering incorporating some kind of computer project. A site like yours seems very creative and fun. The biggest difference I see between your readings of The Shipping News and ours is that many of your students concentrated on the culture of Newfoundland. Many of their arguments for or against Proulx's novel was her accuracy in depicting Newfoundland and its people. I particularly liked the site on concepts and terms. Of course, here, very few people would pick up on the "old wives tales," the omens, "mummering and jannying," and other traditions associated to Newfoundland that Proulx attempts to capture. I'm assuming these traditions are common among Newfoundlanders. If people read the different contributions to your page before reading The Shipping News, I think that they would appreciate the novel more. Melissa Wiley |
| The webmaster at the Provincial Information
and Library Resources Board in St. John's would like to hear from Margaret
Bartlett about her page and the possibility of using information from it.
Margaret, please contact:
Curtis Winter Webmaster Provincial Information and Library Resources Board Web: http://www.publib.nf.ca |