Held annually during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of intellectual freedom and draws attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States, including books commonly taught in secondary schools. Here are ideas for celebrating Banned Books Week -- with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having "the freedom to read."

St. Columba's College English department's transition year extended essay assignment is a great project.

The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself.

Orwell's advice to writers.

BookLamp.org matches readers to books through an analysis of writing styles, similar to the way that Pandora.com matches music lovers to new music.

Grand Theft Auto: The Emily Dickinson Edition. This cartoon from xkcd made me laugh. Enjoy!

Fun for students learning about Anglo-Saxons, Old English, or the history of English.

Our definition of literacy is changing. Are we ready? Are our students?

Meredith Stewart pulls together some TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference) that might provoke good discussion in the English classroom.

Jeff Utecht describes how you can use Goodreads to track students' independent reading.

The Big Read/NEA's Reader's and Teacher's Guide for Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Excellent radio show.

Mike LoMonico shared this excerpt from "Old School" by Tobias Wolff which explains why English teachers are awesome.

This article would be great for teaching the importance of proofreading.

A quick-start guide for teachers who want to try something new in the 2010-2011 school year.

Paste compiles a list of some of literature's biggest jerks. You know you love to hate them.

Ryan Goble, who often coaches teachers in what he calls the "mindful" use of technology, has written today's guest post on user-friendly tools that enable the creation of student projects.

Finished a book you really liked? Try YourNextRead to discover a book like it.

Kathleen Nichols has one of the best websites I've seen. I have used it a lot over the years.

A collection of links to free stock image sites.

Jane Austen's fiction manuscripts are the first significant body of holograph evidence surviving for any British novelist. They represent every stage of her writing career and a variety of physical states: working drafts, fair copies, and handwritten publications for private circulation. Digitization enables their virtual reunification and will provides scholars with the first opportunity to make simultaneous ocular comparison of their different physical and conceptual states; it will facilitate intimate and systematic study of Austen's working practices across her career, a remarkably neglected area of scholarship within the huge, world-wide Austen critical industry. Many of the Austen manuscripts are frail; open and sustained access has long been impossible for conservation and location reasons. Digitization at this stage in their lives not only offers the opportunity for the virtual reunification of a key manuscript resource, it will also be accompanied by a record in as complete a form as possible of the conservation history and current material state of these manuscripts to assist their future conservation.