Well, probably a bit demanding to start the book recommendations with - but hey… 
My advanced students are just starting to make their way through “Macbeth” - which is thrilling, but also tedious at times, I know. It’s getting so much livelier if you get the chance of some very vivid insight into Shakespeare’s times and what his life might have been like.
Robert Nye, who is a renowned Shakespeare expert, ventures into such a narration. Pickleherring, one of his actors, remembers his aquaintance with W.S. - several years after Shakespeare’s death, 70 years after they first met. Pickleherring sits in his little rented room in a London brothel (yes, the book gets “deliciously obscene” at times, as the San Francisco Chronicle puts it) and remembers W.S.’s and his own life. The narration is absolutely vivid, Nye’s imagination sometimes is running wild, although nothing he writes is utterly improbable. Witty: Nye takes some of the many myths and mysteries about Shakespeare (Who’s the notorious Black Lady? What about the curse on his grave?) and gives different, alternative versions of his story.
Plus - Nye makes Pickleherring a word lover who quite often reflects on words, phrases, word origins a lot. This never becomes a lecture, it always stays within the logic of his protagonist.
Very good reading indeed!
Here’s a little appetizer 
Bookblog #1 Robert Nye The late Mr Shakespeare
Please be forgiving about the quality of the reading - I’m not a native speaker…
BTW, the music is from podsafeaudio.com. Mark Heimonen: “Innovation”.
One of the things I quite like to do: Giving reading recommendations 
to my students, inside or outside the classroom. One might be sceptical about the success - but have you ever seen a young student rooting through the English edition of the latest Harry Potter volume because he / she just couldn’t wait for the translation to be published?
For the learner of a foreign language, there’s nothing like reading a book that really grips you. Once you get immersed in it, you forget about most of the language barriers. What an experience!
So, I thought that blogging / podcasting might be a good way to promote this issue a bit further. One might as well give it a try…
So, here we go. Any comments / recommendations are most welcome, of course!
Hi -
this is the second show of Schoolmaster’s Podcast. One of the ideas I have had in the back of my mind is the use of podcasts for student-made serialized radio plays or audio books. Creating radio plays has been almost a standard in our curriculum, especially in the language classroom. My town has the privilege to have an independent radio station, the Offener Kanal Jena. It’s perhaps good to know something about the concept of those “open stations”: In Germany, you have to pay a monthly fee for every TV-set and radio you own. This fee goes to the public stations, since they do not run commercials most of the time. This money also enables them to create some programmes that might not be quite as mainstream (documentaries etc.). A part of this money goes to these “open stations” as well: small communal stations (mostly radio, but there are a few TV stations as well) that have to be open for anyone who wants to produce and broadcast a programme. They provide studios, technology, air time and help. Plus - and here we’re getting to the point - most of them offer support for schools that want to do some radio work. Our station does that, in a wonderfully supportive manner. So, some of our 10th graders (when they were still grade 9) decided to produce a radio play (as a result of an English homework ). They did most of it on their own, just very little support from some teachers and quite some help from the station. But ideas, stamina, work etc - that all came from the students themselves. Incredible, I just wish we had more kids like that. With their play “Kutikula” they earned a rather prestigious award from our federal state’s Media Board. And they certainly deserved it!
I won’t give you the story of the play, of course - just listen yourself. I’ll post the other episodes piece by piece, so stay tuned!
Here we go - “Kutikula”, chapter one.
Kutikula 1
Here’s the first show!
Just playing 
I fiddled around with Audacity - which is my favourite sound editor anyway. As background I used a nice piece of acoustic music from the Podsafe Music Network. It is from a band called Everyday Jones, the track is “Here I am”. This seemed to be a good track for a first-time podcast…
Good to listen to (the music I mean, not my babble, of course). For my liking, at least.
Hi there,
I’m really glad to have been accepted to the ELT Podcasting Course although 
(once again ) I exceeded the registration deadline. Thanks for that wonderful opportunity!
I’ve been fiddling around with podcasts for a while now: using them for my own learning and entertainment purposes (Gosh, what great stuff there is…) and tapping in on them as a marvellous source for authentic listening material in the EFL classroom. I’ll put up a list of my favourites asap. For now, this little message here must do…
I am very much looking forward to collaborating with you!
We were asked to introduce the place we live in. Here we go - with greatest pleasure )
For the past 20 something years I ‘ve been living in the town of Jena (Thuringia, Germany) - and I still like it a lot and wouldn’t move anywhere else.Why? It’s a small university town of about 100,000 inhabitants (20,000 students). Nice surroundings, small old centre. It combines the best aspects of living in a rather small place with the advantages of a university town: You know people, there’s lot of nice pubs and cafes, a fairly vibrant cultural life of all sorts… Just great to be here. Some people might find it a bit too provincial - well, I don’t.
Here’s a satellite view of the place:
And here’s a nightly view from my living room window:
If you like, you can have a look at one of Jena’s webcams. This one here is installed on top of the towerlike
high-rise building in the centre of town
(you see it in the nightly photograph).
You need to have Java installed to be able to use it! Enjoy…
And here’s a little voice message . Again, just testing…
welcome message
English