I’m away from home this week doing training up in mid-Wales, and this evening following a great walk around Aberystwyth I’m eyeballs deep in various sharepoint geekery trying to answer questions that have been posed to me over the last few days.
As a result, I really wasn’t sure what I was going to write about tonight. At one point I nearly decided not to bother, but I popped open Feedly, flipped through my ‘misc feeds’ folder and found an update from Zen Pencils.
I’ve been following the site since it started. On a fairly regular basis Gavin Aung Than produces a cartoon strip based on a famous (or less famous) quote. The site is up to 177 strips now (this week’s is one I hadn’t heard before from Frida Kahlo), and it strikes me that many have the potential to be great starters for discussions with students. Not all are completely suitable, either because of the language in the quote, or perhaps in some cases the images used, but many are striking and often give me pause for thought.
You can review some of the post popular strips at this page. It’s interesting looking back through some of these, many of my favourites are quotes that I didn’t know well before. As good as this Carl Sagan one is for example, nothing for me beats hearing his voice against that original photo of the ‘pale blue dot’. Perhaps an exception to this is Gav’s take on one of my favourite poems, ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost.
Go and check out the site, and leave a comment below either if you find a quote you really like, or if you use the site with some of your students!