The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)
I always enjoy my visits to the studio. This recording was a quick one!
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…
Is AI making us less intelligent?
This morning, after students submitted a homework assignment (a 200-word evidence-based argument paragraph), I asked them to annotate a printout of the instructions (including a rubric), had them peer-review their own submission, and then had them write additional annotations on the assignment sheet, in which they stated what changes they now realized they needed to…
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…
Don’t Be a Sucker (antifascist film from 1945)
Full version Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Jesus Christ SuperstarThe Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during a midterm exam.
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…
I have for some reason reached another #duolingo milestone.
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 million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…
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…
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…
Sesame Street had a big plot twist in November 1986
My older siblings say they remember our mother sitting them down to watch a new TV show called Sesame Street. A running gag was that Big Bird’s friend, the huge, gentle wooly-mammoth-like Snuffleupagus somehow always disappeared before anyone else on Sesame Street could see him, leading the adults on the show to believe “Snuffy” was…
Google, AI Announcements, and the Future of Learning
Glenda Morgan does not sound that impressed with Google’s latest promises about AI and education. [T]hus far I am unconvinced that the kinds of tutoring currently offered via AI matches the concept of watching a student’s thought processes and identifying the core issues they aren’t understanding. Instead, AI tutoring today seems to consist of breaking…
Choice of the Journo: A Branching-path Phone-friendly Role-playing Simulation for Journalism 101
How can a nostalgic, branching-path story-game encourage my 100-level journalism students take risks and learn from their mistakes? Using the ChoiceScript programming language, which features a robust stats system that can remember and respond to player choices, I coded up a “writing your first news story for the student paper” scenario, which unfolds as a…
Memo to faculty: AI is not your friend (opinion)
I was approached on LinkedIn with the opportunity to work to help train an AI, for an hourly wage that’s much higher than I would get for teaching an extra class at my university. I thought about it. I told myself it would help me do my job better if I have a clear sense…
Yesterday my stack of unmarked assignments was about 120, so this is not bad.
Nothing in this stack is pressing, but they do include rough drafts of final papers, so that will involve concentration and tact and empathy and time. 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…
ai, ai, ai: critical thinking and literacy won’t save you
Here’s the underlying problem. We have an operating image of thought, an understanding of what thought is and how to make thought productive of knowledge and truth through the use of various methods. This image and its methods are, of course, products of human history. They change over time, in different cultures, and so on.…
This is what the techbros are excited about? Really?
Some 2300 years ago in ancient Greece, Plato wrote a dialogue featuring his mentor Socrates, who argued that the ability to churn out the longest written compositions on trivial topics or the shortest compositions on important topics is a shallow skill that has nothing to do with human understanding, much like demonstrating that you can…
“Save the date for the 2024 eclipse,” the young teacher told his students back in 1978. Decades later…
Similar:The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityIs AI making us less intelligent?Letter to the editor: Setting record straight on Seton Hill newspaperDon't Be a Sucker (antifascist film from 1945)I ordered a box of composition books. Low-tech response to AI.
New infographic to help our graduating English majors make sense of their capstone project.
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 detail establishes your credibilityMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during a midterm exam.
Double Entry Journals: Your Scholarly Research Notes for College-level Critical Thinking
What is a double-entry research journal?
Reading with a highlighter in your hand encourages you to agree with or ignore what you read. That’s a very limited way to engage with a text.
By contrast, double-entry notes are a way of making complex connections between different things that you read.
My students often tell me that when they take good double-entry notes, they get a much better paper when the time comes for them to start actually churning out the paragraphs.