I took one of Jill’s classes two years ago and got addicted to blogging. I still keep it up although I don’t write as much anymore, partly because of what Elin said I think: it’s too separated. Facebook, flickr etc. connects, and are more “chill out” places where it’s ok to simply goof around and…
— Matthew White —[White]-o-Glyphics:Introduction (White-o-glyphics) These glyphs translate as “It was a dark and stormy night.” Fascinating stuff. It reminds me of a long bus ride that I spent sitting next to a hearing-impaired woman. I had learned the American Sign Language alphabet in third grade, but after spending several hours with this woman I figured…
“The 2007 National Freshman Attitudes Report,” a survey by Noel-Levitz of nearly 100,000 incoming freshmen at 292 public and private two- and four-year colleges, finds that men and women share high expectations for getting a degree, “no matter what obstacles get in my way.” But male students at the same time report coming into college…
I have seen it, touched it, and played with it. The final industrial design prototype for the XO, the device that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative is going to start shipping to countries across the world this summer. AMD hosted a luncheon on Monday to give the press an update on the project,…
The reality is that readers have never enjoyed a bigger market for books. Shoppers can buy everything from hot-off-the-press titles in mint condition to out-of-print rarities from secondhand dealers. They can even download audiobooks to their MP3 players and listen to them while jogging or driving to work. Companies such as Google and Microsoft are…
There are remarkable parallels between “The Canterbury Tales” and modern rap, Brinkman said at Wellesley College during a recent stop on his tour of high schools and colleges across the eastern United States and Puerto Rico. “Chaucer and rap are both performance-based and they’re both battles of words where your proficiency gets you by,” said…
“I am seeking a new position as i have recently been laid.” —Cover Letters from Hell (Killian Advertising) That is… laid off. Blogging this to save it for a professional development unit in “Intro to Literary Study” next term. Similar:Where Professors Send Their Children to CollegeTo understand this story, you have to ke…AcademiaTime’s Arrow, Part 1…
I no longer see cases of blatant plagiarism as personal insults. They are, instead, the pathetic bleats of students who think they know enough — maybe all there really is to know — about how to read and think and write. The paradox of plagiarism is that in order to be really good at it,…
‘Theory’, we are told, has radically changed the nature of literary studies, but people who say this do not mean literary theory, the systematic account of the nature of literature and of the methods for analysing it. When people complain that there is too much theory in literary studies these days, they don’t mean too…
The Internet has become so pervasive that to be truly literate in 2006 demands some degree of technological fluency or at least familiarity. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 73% of American adults had used the Internet or e-mail as of March 2006. For the first time, the National Association of Adult…
We started laughing, and I forgot that I didn’t like this and that I’d rather be doing something else. We worked together and never actually hit a point where we couldn’t make things work on our own. It was a nice, independent sort of feeling (which is a feeling that has been quite rare for…
I would like to send my condolences out to Catherine Altman, Robert Altman’s wife, as well as all of his immediate family, close friends, co-workers, and all of his inner circle. I feel as if I’ve just had the wind knocked out of me and my heart aches. If not only my heart but the…
“I’ve been making up bedtime stories for my children and suddenly I’ve had a brainwave. These stories are good! These stories are brilliant! I would be failing in my moral duty to my adoring public if I did not put them down on paper.” If my theory holds true, it is scary, because it suggests…
Inkshedding was first developed by writing teachers Russ Hunt and Jim Reither in the 1980s. You can find all kinds of information about it online. Of course, as with any popular teaching technique, many different practices now fall under the name of inkshedding, as instructors have personalized it and made it their own. Dan’s version…
I’ll return to my analysis of Kairos as a project identity later. But first I’d like to consider one other aspect of Jerz’s critique–attention to audience. Kairos’s design (referring to Issue 5.1), Jerz says tongue-in-cheek, “has drastically improved,” making it “no longer an easy target.” The only mention of audience in Jerz’s critique is when…
Public education in America operates on a manufacturing metaphor. Line up the parts, send ’em down the line, inspect them, then ship them out. The assembly line idea couldn’t be more out of synch with the way a wired (and now wireless) teenager deals with information and with other people. They are social in fundamentally…
A new, meticulously researched book of quotations attempts to set the record straight on those beloved phrases that have crept into everyday use as signs of wisdom and wit, including Sigmund Freud’s sage advice that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” (He didn’t quite say that, although his biographer thinks he would have approved…
At first Nihal and I were slightly wary of each other and then I told him I wondered if an ageing Radio 4 presenter could learn “street”. He humoured me and gave me a lesson. I flatter myself that I have a reasonably good ear for language. I reckoned I could get away with a…
A place to read? How many students come to scholastic grief because they never find one? Last year the daughter of a friend flunked out of a huge state university because, she claimed, she could never actually read anywhere. The dorm room? Her roommates were all fun and games. The library? Far too noisy. In…
The Federation of American Scientists called for major investment in digital educational games that could reshape how students learn and workers are trained for 21st century jobs…. The news may confound some parents, upset about the hours their teenagers “waste” on video-gaming or about the sex and violence portrayed. But scientists have long recognized such…