Midterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!
I planned ahead pretty well this term. I like the pace in all my classes.
MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibility
After marking a set of bibliography exercises, I created this graphic to focus on the kinds of citation errors I found in submissions that students clearly aren’t proofreading. I’m amazed that students don’t correct the capitalization errors (often caused by the keywords the student was searching for) or when they don’t notice that entries repeat…
Stapler jam during a midterm exam.
My years of watching MacGyver definitely paid off. (Not that my GenZ students got the reference.) I’m doing a lot more in-class work with paper, giving students handouts to annotate in class, asking them to write in copybooks. For the midterm I gave students a short academic article, excerpts from a play we haven’t read…
Letter to the editor: Setting record straight on Seton Hill newspaper
Here’s my letter responding to an recent article about the future of the student newspaper I advised for over two decades. A pause. The Seton Hill University student paper is on what my English department colleagues described in a recent email as “indefinite hiatus.” At the time, we didn’t know for how long. I was…
Hey there, chaotic world in academia and beyond, could you settle down just a bit so I can mark these papers on August Wilson? Thanks!
Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Jesus Christ SuperstarFor the Uniform #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 13) Sisko pursues former Federat…Midterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibility
I ordered a box of composition books. Low-tech response to AI.
I felt like a capitalist, buying in bulk on the cheap and selling individual books for $2 (about a 20-cent profit, per book, but I’m really rounding up so I don’t have to deal with change). Students will spend time in class annotating printouts and writing in their copybooks. They’ll still do online activities but…
It Costs So Much to Run ChatGPT That OpenAI Is Losing Money on $200 ChatGPT Pro Subscriptions
I’m also thinking of the cost to the students who have to repeat a course or fail out of a demanding program because they couldn’t AI their way to a passing grade. “People use it much more than we expected,” the cofounder wrote, later adding in response to another user that he “personally chose the price and…
Today I didn’t save the world, but I did help a student while power-walking at the mall.
I’m far from perfect, and injustice and suffering and tragedy in the world won’t be much affected by the story I’m about to narrate, but as I was walking in the mall with my son, I dictated a 500-word email response to a student whose paper topic didn’t work out and who asked for my…
The daughter missed her graduation ceremony because she was performing in Kinetic Theatre’s A Sherlock Carol.
The daughter missed her graduation ceremony because she was performing in Kinetic Theatre‘s A SHERLOCK CAROL. Thank you, David Whalen for officiating in this “irregular” backstage ceremony! Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Jesus Christ SuperstarFor the Uniform #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 13) Sisko pursues…
This was a rough term. Still have a winter term course to publish before midnight but time for a break.
Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Jesus Christ SuperstarMidterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityStapler jam during a midterm exam.Letter to the editor: Setting record straight on Seton Hill newspaper
‘People are rooting for the whale’: the strange American tradition of Moby-Dick reading marathons
When I went off to college to be an English major, my father (who passed last December at 90) told me a story about how his respected professor at Northwestern University spent a whole lecture on the seven levels of symbolism in Melville’s Moby-Dick. Being of an analytical mind and precise mind, my father copied…
Googling Is for Old People. That’s a Problem for Google.
When I ask my students to use the library database to find scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles, some students stick with the search methods they’re already familiar with, and they submit works cited lists that include articles written by undergraduate interns, or articles from low-value pay-to-publish ecosystems like “Frontiers.” While I don’t read every article students…
I’m thinking this is a still from the cringey Season 1 episode of TNG where the natives build a religion around a bag of Starburst candy that falls out of Wesley’s pocket. #design #aesthetics #startrek #tng
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What have my students learned about creative nonfiction writing? During class they are collaborating on a Google Doc that’s coming together very nicely before our eyes.
What have my students learned about creative nonfiction writing? During class they are collaborating on a Google Doc that’s coming together very nicely before our eyes. Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Midterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to…
I’ve been teaching with this handout for over 25 years, updating it regularly. I just removed some references to poorly focused overhead transparencies! #overdue
I first started teaching with this handout in 1999 and posted it on my blog in 2000. Like the Ship of Theseus, I’ve made gradual changes so it’s not really the same document, but just now I spotted hilariously out of date references to bringing along transparencies with you as a backup. Similar:My crowd simulation…
I was perhaps a bit more conversational and chipper than usual during class today. A grinning student asked what I was drinking. (It really is just iced tea.)
I was perhaps a bit more conversational and chipper than usual during class today. A grinning student asked what I was drinking. (It really is just iced tea.) Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Jesus Christ SuperstarMidterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes…
A spooooooky post about predatory journals for this Halloween season.
Predatory publications are not concerned with writing quality (or even coherence), and thus also do not care about writing tools (although we could, perhaps, include generative AI as a tool that replaces those used by human authors). The rules change pretty radically as the predatory version does away with nearly all of the rules in…
Thesis Reminders and Transitions: Touched up and created an infographic for a web page that I first posted in Nov 2000.
Touched up and created an infographic for a web page that I first posted in Nov 2000. Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Midterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the…
Happy to see a familiar face in a slide during today’s Academic Affairs Workshop. Classes start Monday. #syllabusforward
Happy to see a familiar face in a slide during today’s Academic Affairs Workshop. Classes start Monday. #syllabusforward Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Jesus Christ SuperstarMidterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityMore than a…
The posthuman liberal arts
As those familiar with the liberal arts know, in antiquity there were seven such arts. Three formed the trivium of the humanities: rhetoric, grammar, and logic. And four formed the quadrivium of the sciences: music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The assertion was this was the knowledge one required to participate as a citizen, as a…