My class was doing small group work, focusing on a challenging passage in Emerson’s Nature, when a student called my attention to a fiery red sunset outside the tall 19thC windows. I turned out the lights, and in the glow of their iPads, I could see the looks on the students’ faces as they took…
Emerson burst onto the American intellectual scene by more or less inventing that American intellectual scene. Emerson collected around him a group of like-minded intellectuals who played out, in their own careers, this same search for American identity. His first publication, Nature, calls for a distinctly American way of looking at the enduring questions of human existence. You…
Like Caryn Thurman, I came to Cats (the musical) late, after studying and teaching the more “serious” works of T.S. Eliot. While Thurman’s interpretation is not necessary for us to understand and appreciate Cats, it’s still an appealing thought. It’s also worth noting that Grizabella is one of the only characters in Cats that does…
Google News made its debut on September 22, 2002, after several months of experiments with ranking and organizing technology by Krishna Bharat, who was working on Google Product Search at the time of the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. A self-described “news junkie,” Bharat found it difficult in the…
There’s already plenty of redirect overhead in places where you don’t really think about it. For example: Every time you click on a search result in Google or Bing there’s an intermediate step via Google’s servers (or Bing’s) before you’re redirected to the real target site. Every time you click on a Feedburner RSS headline…
Faculty members at Seton Hill University, which gave iPads to all full-time students, are working with the developers of an e-book app called Inkling to come up with new ways to integrate the iPad into classroom instruction. The textbook software–one of many in development–allows students to access interactive graphics and add notes as they read…
Part of the take-home message, that applies equally to my own children and the college students I’m teaching right now. Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it. Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix…
The first volume edited by Mrs. Todd and Colonel Higginson sold extremely well, with multiple runs selling out and more books being printed out several times in a few months. Within a few years, a second volume of poems, two-volume collection of Emily’s letters (presumably the ones Emily had sent to other people, who dug…
Hawthorne takes a moment to explain that the Puritans in New England weren’t all drab and bitter; most were native Englishmen, who back in the old country were merry and joyful, and today’s holiday brings back the merriment they must have remembered, even though we don’t see it otherwise. “Their immediate posterity,” Hawthorne tells us,…
Hosni Mubarak left red faced over doctored red carpet photo Embarrassment as Egyptian paper alters image to put president at head of procession Al-Ahram’s Photoshopped image of President Hosni Mubarak and other leaders at the Middle East peace talks. Photograph: Al-Ahram There are those who lead and those who follow, and the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram…
Still, the provost says that even if only a slim percentage of students actually renounce Facebook and Twitter for the week, the project will have been a success, if only because of the conversations it has started. The university never expected full abstinence from students, Darr says, nor was it trying to conduct a scientific…
What if we blurred the lines between academic subjects and reimagined the typical American classroom so that, at least in theory, it came to resemble a typical American living room or a child’s bedroom or even a child’s pocket, circa 2010 — if, in other words, the slipstream of broadband and always-on technology that fuels…
Literary questions aren’t really worth exploring if there’s an obviously “right” answer, so let’s explore a thorny question. Near the end of Chapter 13, in the third paragraph from the end. Hawthorne tells us of Hester, “At times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl…
In short, instead of replacing traditional news platforms, Americans are increasingly integrating new technologies into their news consumption habits. More than a third (36%) of Americans say they got news from both digital and traditional sources yesterday, just shy of the number who relied solely on traditional sources (39%). Only 9% of Americans got news…
I trimmed out some stale examples and added these examples to my handout on showing and telling. What if your goal were to write about your favorite sport. Telling (No Details) I like many different sports, from skiing to rock-climbing, but when it comes right down to it, I would have to say that ping-pong is my favorite…
The findings can help anyone, from a fourth grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on. For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person…
Dr. Mary Crone Odekon In today’s Academic Minute, Dr. Mary Crone Odekon of Skidmore College’s physics department discusses how studying fractals can help our understanding of structures in space. WAMC
This is the section of the book where the relationships between the characters start to take solid shape, and Hawthorne makes these points numerous times. When we aim to interpret a literary work, our task has to go beyond listing our emotional reactions, our gut reactions, to the events of the plot or the setting.…
I have seen a lot of very talented people fail because they couldn’t, or didn’t, write. And some much less talented people (I see one in the mirror every morning) have done OK because they learned how to write. —Michael C. Munger, Chronicle Here’s a tip that does a good job explaining a concept I’m…
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