My AP Lit students have a Chaucer unit coming up, so I thought this week I could use the Creative Commons search opportunity to gather some resources. I was honestly pretty unfocused about it so I’m not sure it will all be helpful, but the process of gathering data was super easy and I think I found some things I can actually use.
The Creative Commons search tool was great because of the quick access to different types of media. I found a few classic images of Chaucer/depictions of the travelers on Flickr. There were also a lot of photos of a boxer and a chameleon, ostensibly named Chaucer. Cute, but not exactly what I was looking for. I found more useful images on Google images. The Internet Archive was the most useful resource for this dusty old topic. I found PDF versions of the Middle English and translated versions of the text, which is really useful because we have less than a classroom set of books. I also found an audiobook version, which, while terribly voiced, could be really helpful for struggling readers and my busy seniors in general who are traveling to work etc. I wish I could have found better video sources, but I see how it would have been easy to do so if my topic was something else. Overall, it’s nice to use things that I know I have permission to use.
I chose OneNote to store these resources. I found the program perfectly serviceable and easy to navigate, but not particularly exciting. I like that organization was really clear with the different sections, and that you could add different file types etc, but it would take some getting used to for me to curate things this way. I get the point of having everything in one place and accessible from any device, but in my world my devices are more reliable than my internet connectivity, so I need to change my living situation and my mindset before something like this would be fully useful to me.
Here’s a link to what I came up with.
Image Credit: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer edited by FS Ellis, Kelmscott Press, 1896 by Kotumi_ on Flickr