My colleague David Stanley links to this article. Many people, especially academic experts, have argued that Wikipedia’s articles can’t be trusted, because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted. Nevertheless, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. The reason is that Wikipedia’s community of more than seven million…
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html I’d like to be able to link to specific details on the map, but I don’t think it’s possible. I’d never heard of the “Argument Slide” before. The “concept visualization” cluster is probably most useful for teaching my freshman writing students. I’m taking a quick break from marking midterms, and I only glanced at…
I’m saving this for the next time I talk to my journalism students about surveys. Language Log. Do you think surveys asking for people’s opinions about the way things are, rather than verifiable things they have done, are an even more extreme form of stupidity, resulting in nonsense like “43% of employees believe managers may…
My provost just sent some of my colleagues a link to this article on games and literacy: But doubtful teachers and literacy experts question how effective it is to use an overwhelmingly visual medium to connect youngsters to the written word. They suggest that while a handful of players might be motivated to pick up…
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…
Whenever ice cream sales rise, so do shark attacks (eating ice cream makes you tastier?) (Part of a great series by the BBC. Bookmarked for a future journalism class.) Similar:Researchers: Nearly Half Of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Likely BotsResearchers identified more than 100 fal…Current_EventsThe Pepe the Frog Meme Is Probably Not Worth Understanding”Life is…
Last year a colleague in the English department described a conversation in which a friend revealed a dirty little secret: “I use Wikipedia all the time for my research–but I certainly wouldn’t cite it.” This got me wondering: How many humanities and social sciences researchers are discussing, using, and citing Wikipedia? — Lisa Spiro When…
I’m teaching a 200-level “Writing for the Internet” class, with students ranging from seniors to first-semester freshmen. Our opening unit is on social, academic, and professional conventions, foregrounding the fact that the internet on which young people play and learn is the same internet in which the adults in their lives are teaching and working…
The possibilities make the mind reel. YouTube Comment Snob is a Firefox extension that filters out undesirable comments from YouTube comment threads. You can choose to have any of the following rules mark a comment for removal: More than # spelling mistakes: The number of mistakes is customizable, and the extension uses Firefox’s built-in spell…
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Our provost sent this link to English faculty members this morning. One of my recent juniors was particularly eloquent on the subject. After having sat in my classroom for a year forcefully projecting his boredom, he started an e-mail dialogue with me over the summer. “The reason for studying fiction escapes me,” he wrote. “Why…
Boston.com: A man from Somerville, Mass., and his friend who went around the country this year removing typographical errors from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon. Similar:MAGA World Is Splintering: Following the riot at the Capitol, Trump supporters are having … Bryson Gray, a 29-year-old…
From The Washington Post: It hit Mark Gruntz all at once, while he was sitting flat-broke in an airport in Greece: He had lost credit for three summer courses, wasted $11,474 in student loans and gotten kicked off a boat. All because he hadn’t cited Wikipedia enough in a paper about a movie. Last week,…
Teaching a large first-year course at a British university, I am fed up with correcting my students’ atrocious spelling. Aren’t we all!? But why must we suffer? Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I’ve got a better idea. University teachers should simply…
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think the lack of respect for math and science is one of the largest unacknowledged problems in today’s society. And it starts in the academy — somehow, we have moved to a place where people can consider themselves educated while remaining ignorant of remarkably basic facts of…
From a 2007 report on liberal education, by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences,humanities, histories, languages, and the arts Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporaryand enduring Intellectual and Practical Skills, Including Inquiry and analysis…
A good feature from the New York Times: Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the…
Former editors protest and lament the discontinuation of a literary staple: The dismantling of the Sunday Book Review section and the migration of a few surviving reviews to the Sunday Calendar section represents a historic retreat from the large ambitions which accompanied the birth of the section. To be sure, no section of any newspaper…
Thanks for the link, Neha. Inside Higher Ed has a good article on the place of composition within the field of English studies. I have no interest in the now clichéd grumblings over English departments and their esoteric if not onanistic engagement in high-octane literary theory. I will only say that there is merit to…