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Academia | Culture | Education | Humanities

Don’t Be Afraid of Going to Graduate School in the Humanities

Over 50 percent of humanities Ph.D.s who start out working in non-tenure-track positions make the jump to full-time, tenure-track employment in less than three years. Those who don’t make that jump, again, do what Ph.D.s have always done: Some choose interesting work in the business, governmental, or non-profit sectors, others in university administration. A few [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Education | Literacy | Media | Technology

Technology’s Impact on Education

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Technology’s Impact on Education | Visual.ly.

Academia | Cyberculture | Education | Media | Rhetoric | Social_Software | Technology | Weblogs

Positive Feedback on a Blogging Assignment

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A former student who is now excelling in grad school took a moment to share her thoughts about my blogging portfolio assignment, which is usually 25-40% of a student’s grade.

In April, a different former student who had blogged for me in several classes, whom I invited as a career workshop guest, surprised me [...]

Academia | Culture | Design | Education | History | Humanities | Literature | Philosophy | Rhetoric

Ave atque vale

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What is a liberal education and what it is for? From Cicero’s artes liberales, to the attempts at common curricula in more recent times, to the chaotic cafeteria that passes for a curriculum in most American universities today, the concept has suffered from vagueness, confusion, and contradiction. From the beginning, the champions of a liberal [...]

Books | Culture | Education | Media

Picture Books Languish as Parents Push ‘Big-Kid Books’

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Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher.

“So many of them just die a sad little death, and we never see them again,” said Terri [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Education | Essays | Media | Technology

Kairos: Open Since 1996

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As a plucky new faculty member I wrote a critique of an early design for the online journal Kairos. My article was snarky in form (I invoked Mystery Science Theater 3000) but serious in intent (“The overdesigned Kairos site perpetuates the myth that online rhetoric is necessarily complex and arcane,” with the earnest bold text [...]

Culture | Cyberculture | Education | Essays | Humanities | Literacy | Media | Modding | Rhetoric | Technology

Students say “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right. –Mathematician Paul Lockhart

I am working on some conference papers that touch on coding as a liberal art. While reviewing classics, like Stephenson’s In the Beginning Was the Command Line and Knuth’s approach to “Literate Programming,”

From the insightful and quirky “A Mathematician’s Lament,” by Paul Lockhart.

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he [...]

Academia | Cyberculture | Education | Writing

Diana Kimball on “What Scares Us About Programming?”

A few months old, but still interesting: entrepreneur and digital culture promoter Diana Kimball responds to a hacker brainstorming session.

Alex Payne recently posted a picture of this whiteboard from Hacker School, and it rings wildly true to me.

I was interested and encouraged to see that the question “What scares [...]

Culture | Education | Literacy | Media | Writing

My Teenage Son Does Not Know How To Mail A Letter – I Blame Technology – ReadWrite

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A father learns the Postal Service website is no help in teaching a new generation of snail-mailers where the stamp goes.

“Get your computer. Go to USPS.gov (turns out it’s really USPS.com).” If he saw for himself – on the screen – how to properly mail a letter, maybe he’d get it, I thought.

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Academia | Education | Essays | Personal | Rhetoric

I didn’t mark a single paper or set foot in a classroom. Here’s why this prof is tired from a hard, productive work day.

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I submitted my final grades a few weeks ago. Yes, it was a great relief. Yes, the pace of my job changed drastically. But I still have plenty of work to do before I get a chance to rest.

Yes, I did take a whole day off last Friday, in order to help move boxes [...]