I’m cleaning off some shelf space to make room for the grade nine text books. I ran across this collection of the 2008-09 Mark Twain Conference Communication Arts Fair Winning Entries. I thought I’d post a digital copy before giving away the original.
The file contains winning entries from a variety of categories for both junior and high school entries from all the MTC schools. Authors are not listed, but if you wrote one of the works and want to claim it, feel free to do so in the comments. 
Ah, the costly typo! This is a good illustration of how something as minute as a spelling error can cost thousands of dollars. My alma mater recently handed out thousands of bags with its own name misspelled:
The Missouri State University bookstore…suffered the embarrassment of handing out 6,000 free book bags with the word “university” misspelled.
…MSU spent $70,844 for 17,800 book bags, at a cost of $3.98 per bag. About 6,000 were handed out last month, with an additional 2,500 destroyed.
…The university has no recourse to recoup any part of the cost because, first, the original artwork for the bag, submitted by MSU, had the word misspelled and, second, MSU later approved a proof of the artwork sent by the vendor, which contained the misspelling.
via ksdk.com.
Storytelling is not just for fiction writers; writers of all types can benefit from incorporating narrative into their work because it activates parts of the brain that help us to engage with and retain information:
We all enjoy a good story, whether it’s a novel, a movie, or simply something one of our friends is explaining to us. But why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative about events?It’s in fact quite simple. If we listen to a powerpoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part in the brain gets activated. Scientists call this Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area.
Overall, it hits our language processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning. And that’s it, nothing else happens.When we are being told a story, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.
Read the full article here.
And here’s a bonus:
This may be an effective incentive to read, but it is certain to lead you on the path to the freshman fifteen. I’m pretty sure using this in class violates our health and wellness plan.
Canadian Dave Meslin says that apathy as we think we know it, doesn’t exist. “People are amazing and smart and they do care,” he explains, but there are many obstacles in our way. Some of the obstacles are constructed–intentionally or unintentionally–by media or government. But one of the most powerful obstacles may be our own mindset, for as long as we believe everyone else is stupid and lazy, we excuse ourselves from taking the initiative to act.
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For the last couple weeks, my wife and I have been in the process of re-watching the entire first season of the ABC hit-comedy Modern Family. Then last night, we finally got around to viewing The Incredible Hulk (2008). Imagine my surprise when I found that Phil Dumphey–err, I mean Ty Burrell’s character, Doc Sampson–was dating the Hulk’s girl. Here’s the resulting mashup:
