A Troll Poll

Here are the characteristics of an internet troll.

To take the Troll Poll, you do not have to leave your personal info or email. I am relying on the honour system and the assumption that teachers are far too busy to go around sitting at multiple computers just to skew results.

Multiple times over the past two years or more,  I have wanted to set a rule for this forum so that only those whose opinions could get them fired or reprimanded are to use cover of anonymity.

sniper

The only reason I ever allowed for anonymity in commenting is that this blog is the only forum in Canada where teachers are free to express their opinions of PBLA without fear of reprisal. I never intended the anonymous commenting feature to enable PBLA defenders to snipe without revealing who they are, which in turn  would reveal any conflicts of interest or ulterior motives for coming here. There are plenty of other venues where we can go if we feel like being attacked on an uneven playing field. If it's up to me to make the decision, I will not publish comments from PBLA proponents who do not identify themselves.

But it's not just my blog, it's your forum. So I'm leaving this decision to you all. I hope you'll take the one-question survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VNBS6MC

Joy of ESL's 2nd (not quite annual) Prize Draw!

Hey, everyone!

If you look at the area just under my blog banner, you can see that after four years of blogging, I'm just now branching out onto a few more social media platforms. I don't really know what I'm doing, but discovering together is fun, isn't it?

I now have a YouTube channel and a Facebook page in addition to the website, blog, Twitter account and Instagram account I already had. Oh, and there's the monthly newsletter round-up of what I wrote about, linked to, or gave away on the blog or on Twitter during the month prior.

The picture below is from the new FB page.

This is my YouTube channel. Some of the videos there simply fulfil homework assignments for my Classy Videos online course.

In order to encourage folks to subscribe or follow, I'm holding a draw for a $100 CAD gift card to Chapters Indigo or Amazon, winner's choice. For each of the following actions that you carry out and report back here in the comments during March, I will put your name one time in the hat.

• subscribe to my newsletter (for those who are already subscribed, get a friend to subscribe)
• start following me on Instagram
• subscribe to my YouTube channel
• like my Facebook page and leave a comment that responds to the top post (a question)
• find and report a broken link, typo, spelling error or grammatical error on my blog or website

So if you do three of these things and report back, that's three chances to win. I'll use an online tool such as WheelDecide to choose the winner at the end of March. I might even figure out how to spin the wheel on Facebook live!

Good luck and thanks for playing along. Happy spring (soon, very soon)!