Teaching & Learning English
The Mushroom 
Apologies to any Mushroomers who have been trying to log-in but couldn’t over the past week or so. The problem was due to a known security issue with the base CMS. Likely hacked by a bot and the login system messed up. I’ve been busy on holiday so only noticed it now, and have fixed … Read more
Hello everybody! Apologies for the desperately slow speed of Mushroom over the last few days. On investigation, I discovered it was due to the new @ notifications function which was querying too inefficiently. I have therefore removed the @ notifications function until I have time to (a) fix the query (relatively easy) and (b) align … Read more
Having been teaching English literature as part of my day job for the last few years, I thought I really ought to put some of this knowledge together to create my own novel. So, for my 50th birthday treat, I set a little book-writing challenge for myself. I took some of the characters and plot … Read more
Here is the latest issue of Mushroom’s E-Magazine. A big thank you to all the students who contributed work 😀 If the E-Magazine isn’t loading properly, you can download the pdf. [dflip id=”17336″][/dflip]
This is a useful website for those of you who need to practise your grammar and vocabulary: Use of English – Test-English How to use the site Select your test (A1 is easiest, then A2, B1, B2 and C1 is the most difficult). After you select your answers, click the ‘Check Answers’ button and you’ll … Read more
Let’s dispense with my pathetic test coding projects and see if we can get wimpycat01’s awesome work to publish properly: [coding_project src=”https://mushroom-scholars.org/wp-content/coding-projects/ryanELL/Ni_n_Frenzy/index.html”] This is an old version. The latest version can currently be found at: https://wimpycat01.itch.io/nian-frenzy
This is a very feeble little html/javascript programme just to test the coder-uploader function to try to understand why @wimpycat01 can’t upload his projects directly on Mushroom… [coding_project src=”https://mushroom-scholars.org/wp-content/coding-projects/mushroom/Time_Machine/index.html”] It doesn’t do anything because I never got round to finishing this project, but if it appears, the coder-uploader function is working and Mushroomers should be … Read more
If this update is successful, you should see a Scratch project below and will be able to enjoy a game of Fat Pigeon (use the arrow keys to eat caterpillars and mushrooms and watch yourself grow or shrink). This is an example using Scratch but you can upload other coding projects too. [scratch_project src=”https://mushroom-scholars.org/scratch/projects/mushroom-Fat-Pigeon.sb3″] How … Read more
Welcome to the third issue of Mushroom’s E-Magazine. In this issue the students explore the popular festival of Halloween and consider its place in amongst the English-speaking community in China. We hope you enjoy reading their perspectives. Click on the cover below to open the pdf 😀
Hello everybody! I have been busy making a couple of useful updates so want to share this news. First, due to a recent spate of meme posts, I have created a new space for memes to avoid cluttering the blogging area too much. The memes can be found here: https://mushroom-scholars.org/topics/meme Please continue to share memes; … Read more
Many students nowadays seem to be interested in the internet phenomena Italian Brainrot and Creepypasta. Let’s start with a couple of definitions. Definitions Italian Brainrot is a viral internet phenomenon erupting from platforms like TikTok that blends AI-generated content, surreal humor, and a bizarre aesthetic. It typically features weird anthropomorphic creatures like dancing sharks, talking … Read more
Here is this year’s batch of Penny Dreadfuls. The students were writing historical fiction set in the Victorian Era. [dflip id=”15935″][/dflip] [dflip id=”15940″][/dflip] [dflip id=”16034″][/dflip] More coming soon if I ever receive the covers 😉