Back in 2005 I did an evil, evil thing. Discovering the proliferation of websites where student plagiarists could copy essays, I wrote a Trojan horse paper about the Magna Carta and seeded it on a few plagiarism sites. The essay is basically wrong from beginning to end. Amongst other silliness, it claims that King John's titles included Duke of ( Read more... )

It's that time of year again. Behind friends-locks, graduate student blogs are brimming over with a year's harvest of bloopers from over-caffinated, under-slept students. You can find all the old favourites: Charlemange, Martin Luther and the Prostates, various people who "serviced" other people, and several ideas that would make interesting ( Read more... )

It's almost Canada Day, and you know what that means. It means it's time for the Dominion Institute to issue its annual media release to tell us that we suck at Canadian history. This year, apparently we suck because only 8% of us can identify Sir Frederick Banting by his face. I'm trying to work up the appropriate sense of horror at this ( Read more... )

Michael Drout, a professor of Old English at Wheaton College, provides us with a selection of his quotes, as recorded by his students. I aspire to this level of lecturing awesomeness.

dolphin__girl has written an awesome essay on teaching and diversity that articulates some things that I've been rolling around in my head for awhile. It should be required reading for anyone who teaches ( Read more... )

Another little trend I noticed in this term's papers was the tendency to throw around vocabulary I'd never seen before. To balance the impression created by the post below, here are five words I learned from my students this term.

adjuvant a.: tending to help.

indelt n.: I still don't know what this is, or whether the word was a typo for ( Read more... )

The three most common punishments for crimes in the Middle Ages were hanging and mutilation ( Read more... )

I gave the hockey tickets back to my student today. He was mortified, I was mortified, it was uncomfortable all around. Argh. Thing is, I'm quite sure he wasn't looking for better grades. I think he's taking the course for fun. He's a mature student and a successful businessman, and he probably didn't even consider it a large gift ( Read more... )

Holy %3@&! I just checked my mailbox at the history department, and one of my students has given me two tickets to a hockey game. They're worth $146 apiece. If I was still working for politicians, I would have to report a gift of that size to the Integrity Commissioner's office and get their permission to accept it. However, I don't think the ( Read more... )

I finally got around to looking up that student essay's reference to medieval peasants drinking from coconuts. Here's what the source actually said.

Many other types of drinking vessels were in use, made of various materials in silver-gilt mounts. These were chiefly coconut and nautilus and other shells. Coconut was believed, towards the end of ( Read more... )