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SHU Italy Trip « blogs.setonhill.edu

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Several students on Maureen Vissat‘s M-term trip to Italy are blogging their experiences.

DJ Beckage

Aesthetics | Art | Cyberculture | Design | Essays | Humanities | Literature | Media | Technology

Two Steps Down the Interactive Fiction Road

Wonderfully detailed analysis of two ground-breaking works of interactive fiction. I regularly assign “Photopia” and “Galatea,” but in our media projects course we never have time to analyze the works in this detail. I never did use a walkthrough for “Galatea,” so I am sure I missed lots of it.

Last time I looked at [...]

Aesthetics | Art | Books | Culture | Design | History | Humanities | Literature | PopCult

When F. Scott Fitzgerald Judged Gatsby By Its Cover

With a big Hollywood movie now in theaters, some recent printings of the book have abandoned the classic cover in favor of one that ties in more closely with the film. So high school students working their way through the summer reading list this year will be hard pressed to find a copy without [...]

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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 | 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 | Culture | Humanities | Language | PopCult | Writing

Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore

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I will have to watch for these uses of “slash.” I wonder if it has any relation to the practice of using a slash to denote romantic pairings in fanfic (e.g. Harry/Hermione).

Two weeks ago, one student brought up the word slash as an example of new slang, and it quickly became clear to me [...]

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Huge Collection of Free CC-Licensed Textbooks (2012)

2012 Book Archive.

Business, humanities, writing, science.

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Aesthetics | Books | Culture | Design | Education | Humanities | Personal

Richard Scarry unfinished manuscript to be published

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Some of my happiest memories of fatherhood include introducing my kids to the Richard Scarry books.

Featuring a huge anthropomorphised cast, with recurring characters such as Sergeant Murphy, traffic hound and pursuer of miscreants, and solid, cheerful, lederhosen-wearing Huckle Cat, Scarry’s tales of mishap, derring-do, industry and shopping always feel deeply, richly safe. Some aspects [...]

Academia | Current_Events | Cyberculture | Humanities

A routine day in the life of a digital humanist

The Day of Digital Humanities always sneaks up on me. The blogstream has been pretty routine.

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New Test for Computers – Grading Essays at College Level

Imagine writing an essay for a college, and, instead of sparking personal feedback from an expert who spends five or ten minutes per page writing personalized reactions and tips for improvement, your work was never actually read by a human being who could recognize, appreciate, and encourage your accomplishments. Imagine that your essay was instead [...]