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Why Do Men Keep Putting Me in the Girlfriend-Zone?

Great example of satire. Blogging this so I can find it the next time I need a contemporary example (and when I want to start a class discussion about gender).

You know how it is, right, ladies? You know a guy for a while. You hang out with him. You do fun things with him—play [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Education | Media | Social_Software | Technology

The new marshmallow test: Resisting the temptations of the web

The Stanford marshmallow experiment is a famous study that linked the willingness to delay gratification (children were told they could have one treat now, or two if they waited about 15 min) to a range of positive life outcomes. Many of my students who can’t resist checking their phone in class or during one-on-one office [...]

Academia | Amusing | Education | Rhetoric

PHD Comics: It’s in the syllabus

 

PHD Comics: It’s in the syllabus.

Academia | Culture | Health | Psychology | Science | Social_Software | Technology

Brain, Interrupted

In most situations, the person juggling e-mail, text messaging, Facebook and a meeting is [not multitasking, but] really doing something called “rapid toggling between tasks,” and is engaged in constant context switching.

As economics students know, switching involves costs. But how much? When a consumer switches banks, or a company switches suppliers, it’s relatively easy [...]

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Seton Hill Chemistry Club Hosts 30 Homeschool Students for Chemistry Day

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Academia | Culture | Education | Essays | Humanities | Personal | Psychology

On Office Hours and Student Contact at the Small Liberal Arts College

I don’t expect students to be constantly after me—and I wouldn’t want them to be. I also know that what looms large for them are their friends, families, and personal lives. But I’m beginning to learn that if students at large universities are starved for personal attention and connection, students at small colleges have so [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Design | Games | Technology | Writing

Teaching Composition with Interactive Fiction

I’m on a committee that is exploring a multimodal a revision to my school’s freshman writing program. So far I have never seriously tried introducing new media content into a freshman writing course, but this may do the trick. After two semesters of teaching students to read, play, and write IF games, I can say [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Education | Media | Social_Software | Technology

Multitasking while studying: Divided attention and technological gadgets impair learning and memory.

Fairly early in the semester, I can spot the students who will struggle to complete big assignments, because they are often the same ones who can’t resist the urge to check up on their Facebook friends. Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their [...]

Academia | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Education | Humanities | Technology | Writing

Grading writing: The art and science — and why computers can’t do it

Tech companies and university administrators get excited from time to time about the value of software that purports to evaluate student writing. This article does a great job explaining exactly what it is that writing teachers do when they respond to student writing. (We’re doing a lot more than looking for misplaced commas.)

The past [...]

Academia | Amusing | Culture | Drama | Literature | Personal

Oh the Overthinks You Can Overthink: Horton the Elephant, the Wickersham Brothers, and Masculinity in Seussical

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Yesterday, I performed in a school matinee for Suessical, dashed back to campus to advise with students working on their 20-page term papers for Literary Criticism, served on oral exam panels for four graduating seniors, then went back to the theater for an evening performance.

Somewhere along the way, I found myself chatting in [...]