See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
In its sometimes-turbulent thirty-year history, the graphic-adventure genre has driven technology adoption, ridden at both the crest and trough of the graphics and audio waves, touched the lives of millions of people, and shaped the rise (and, in some cases, fall) of several big-name people and companies in the gaming industry. It’s a genre that…
In his “Confessions,” which dates from the end of the fourth century, St. Augustine famously hears a voice telling him to “pick up and read.” He interprets this as a command from God to pick up the Bible, open it at random and read the first passage he sees. He does so, the scales fall…
Just after training camp closed last year, Offensive Coordinator Cam Cameron wondered if the Ravens could put their several-hundred page playbook on some sort of tablet reader. A few weeks later, Head Coach John Harbaugh asked the same question. Now, after almost a year of development, the Ravens’ playbook is completely on a set of…
A diploma is the final step in a traditional education, but in the DIY world, credit comes from the reputation you build by doing good work and demonstrating it to others in a community. The rules of this world are informal and evolving, but joining and demonstrating value to a network is not optional for…
Basic tablets (they’re available with all sorts of bells and whistles, the most notable being multitouch), are cheap additions to the classroom, and affordable enough that teachers and professors can simply buy the tablets themselves. The overhead projector might be dead, but for educators who miss the great lessons they could deliver with a few…
It’s polite to say “thank you” when someone offers you a compliment. So I’m grateful to onlinecolleges.net for the honor. Some other favorites of mine that made the list: Spinuzzi The Little Professor digital digs Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
I am not sure what to think about this. This is both a thrilling prospect and a frustrating one. The sound is linked to the line of text for which it was composed, and as I begin reading a Sherlock Holmes mystery on my iPhone, an arrow in the right-hand margin slides down before my…
I created a fresh Google Docs page with a few prompts, and shared it with all my journalism students. After a few minutes, they started to flesh it out with responses. The different-colored cursors represent where each student was working in the document. The energy level was very high. I delivered a running commentary… “Good…
Daniel Donahoo: Gamification in Education: Should We Play?.
People love Apple; at best, they appreciate Microsoft (and, more to the point, grow weary of those people who love Apple). What you see is not “Apple is brilliant,” “No, Microsoft is brilliant.” What you see is, “Apple is brilliant.” “Oh, would you shut up already.” —Steve Jobs And The Cultural Apple : Monkey See…
The idea that the internet is a place that’s separate from reality has faded. People generally have online identities that map to who they really are. Outside of a few legitimate edge cases and the occasional sci-fi fantasy, who we are online is simply who we are. Facebook has done more to influence this than…
Be careful, kids, because every time you say “TV sucks,” an advertising executive loses his Lexus. Just watching TV too boring for today’s children – Telegraph.
The day I got my Seton Hill iPad, I put my Palm Pilot back into its box. I didn’t even bother to synch it one last time. I’d been a committed Palm user since about 1997 — longer than I’ve been blogging. If I ever noticed that Hewlett Packard bought out Palm, I’d completely forgotten…
Our iPads will one day be stacked on a pallet, like these old PCs. They’ll be retro curiosities, having done their jobs — empowering us to build even better tools.
The business of journalism is changing. The approaching anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks is an occasion to reflect on how we received news in the days when newspapers updated their web pages once a day, and Google did not constantly monitor newspaper home pages looking for fresh stories. For journalists thinking about the future,…
There is a lot to like about Google+, and getting to 25 million users so quickly certainly seems promising for the Google social network. But, it doesn’t bode well if the excitement is already fading. Google needs to not only create a capable social network, but it needs to make that social network compelling enough…
This rhetorical power derives from the “-ification” rather than from the “game”. -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it’s usually bullshit. Just add points. Game developers and players have critiqued gamification on the grounds that it gets…
I was doing a lot of impulse buying during the $9.99 days, but since then, on occasions when I’ve seen the ebook offered at a higher price than a paperback, I have just turned to interlibrary load instead. “Terrified” by Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and discounted e-book pricing, five major publishers allegedly acted together to increase…
Which is cooler? That my 13yo son was just sitting at the kitchen table singing lyrics to MC Frontalot’s “It Is Pitch Dark,” or that my 9yo daughter was chiming in with corrections? It Is Pitch Dark