See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
My student Dani Choynowski, a double-major in new media journalism and theatre, is a very busy woman. She’s getting top-notch grades in two challenging majors, her hand is usually the first one up during workshops or discussions, and she’s always ready with some connection to the world of theater or Harry Potter. Last semester, as…
A journalism student at NYU published a Generation Y-ney piece on PBS’s MediaShift. The first thing I notice when I walk into the class is that there are 14 girls and two boys. Already NYU is dominated by females, but the journalism department is exceptionally estrogen-infested. Professor Quigley begins by explaining how blogs are becoming…
I turned into a bobble-head doll, nodding, nodding, nodding, while reading this excerpt. I’ve already requested it for the library. We are at a crossroads. There are two possible paths before us–one in which we destroy what is great about the Internet and about how young people use it, and one in which we make…
‘Hi YouTube, it’s me, Kiki,” the teenager said to the camera as she swiveled in her chair to jazzy background music. ”And today I’m going to show you how to cheat on a test – the effective way.” She demonstrates her technique, slipping a small piece of paper with the answers in a clear-tubed pen…
>get games
Via Crooked Timber and BoingBoing: Thomson Reuters demands $10 million and an injunction to stop George Mason University from distributing its new Web browser application, Zotero software, an open-source format that allows users to convert Reuters’ EndNote Software. Reuters claims George Mason is violating its license agreement and destroying the EndNote customer base. (Courthouse News)…
When I first introduced my Seton Hill students to blogging in 2003, before Facebook had mainstreamed social networking into a neatly wrapped package, my students posted a mixture of personal and academic material. Now that even my committed bloggers do most of their social networking elsewhere, I have started pitching the academic blogs as a…
This is from the robots category of Paleo-Future, which also has categories devoted to picturephones, jetpacks, and each decade’s collected futurism (that is, see what our future looked like to people writing in the 1880s, the 1930s, or the 1980s). Try as it might the robot could not make its desired turn. Its little broken wheel…
Pew Internet: Game playing is universal, with almost all teens playing games and at least half playing games on a given day. Game playing experiences are diverse, with the most popular games falling into the racing, puzzle, sports, action and adventure categories. Game playing is also social, with most teens playing games with others at…
Kotaku reports: Is it finally game over for Florida lawyer and violent video game opponent Jack Thompson? Judgment has been entered in the case that started last year and came to a head when Judge Dava Tunis recommended permanent disbarment for the bombastic, showboating law man. The court has approved the report and has ordered…
During the Great Depression, Americans flocked to the movies to escape the harsh realities of their daily lives. As the stock market tumbled and loved ones went off to war, Americans disappeared into dark theaters, where Shirley Temple sang and tap danced her way into their heavy hearts. Now, as the nation faces arguably the…
Students in my “Media Projects” class are getting practice learning complex, new systems quickly. We’ve learned Blender 3D, we’ve started on Inform 7, and later we’ll move to Flash. My sister (or possibly her husband, who sometimes uses her e-mail address) sent me a link to an editorial on what it’s like to learn a…
The technical term is “deep packet inspection,” a process by which universities can examine the contents of electronic files that pass back and forth on their networks to see if they contain copyrighted material like the latest M.I.A. single or an episode of Gossip Girl. It’s the equivalent of requiring institutions to steam open and…
An informative review of Crystal’s Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, a book I need to put on my reading list. I’ve said many times that I’ve *never* encountered a student who absolutely cannot switch between txtspk and standard English. Thus, to unpack that double-negative, I think students can and do regularly make the shift between social…
When I went off to college (late 80s) I bought a handful of very cheap classical music cassette tapes, simply because I needed some music I could listen to on headphones to drown out the noise in the dorms. I’ve also got a CD of classical marches, but again the reason is practical — I…
A random observation that floored me, reminding me just how different today’s Internet is from the trusty, dusty, crusty home PCs on which I first learned the command-line interface. Today’s front page of The New York Times is over 129 kilobytes of code alone, with another 461 KB of supporting code, give or take. That’s…
Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail account was hacked, and some of its contents posted on the internet Wednesday. (Wired) Was Palin’s personal account fair game because she has been accused of using her personal account to conduct public business? If there really is damning evidence in that account, and a judge delivers a…
The Commonwealth of Virginia announces plans for a free, open-source physics textbook. The Virginia Physics “Flexbook” project is a collaborative effort of the Secretaries of Education and Technology and the Department of Education that seeks to elevate the quality of physics instruction across the Commonwealth. Participating educators will create and compile supplemental materials relating to…
Good editing skills and random, candid video = 2 minutes of awesomeness. This is why I love the internet. Takes just a tad too long to get started — give it about 45 seconds before you decide to bail out. You’ll be hooked by the second time you see the flip-flops. Via. “Ah-ah-ah ooh, ah-ah,…
Thanks, Karissa, for sending this collection of reasons why it makes sense to be careful when you post photos online.. 5. Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum What do you do with a drunken pirate? Throw her in the brig–or, if you’re Millersville University, deny her a teaching degree. That’s what happened to…