Pagers, Pay Phones, and Dialup: How We Communicated on 9/11
For much of the day, those aboard Air Force One with the President of the United States were less informed than the average American sitting at home watching CNN.
Students say they prefer lectures, but “active learning” is more effective
A recent study measured differences in student learning, comparing the results of traditional lectures (where the students sit passively while the instructor connects all the dots for them) and active learning (where the students get guidance, but have to connect the dots themselves). Students gave lower ratings to instructors who made them think harder and…
Elementary, Dear Data (TNG Rewatch: Season 2, Episode 3) When a holodeck bet spawns a fictional threat, that’s a-cosplay
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. LaForge works on his model ship in main engineering (?) and invites Data to enjoy a Sherlock Holmes holodeck adventure. Sounds fun, but a slow start, with low stakes. We can forgive the director for spending a lot of time showing the characters reacting to…
A day after using an apparently altered hurricane map, Trump defends his Alabama claim
It was Mr. Trump who used a black Sharpie to mark up an official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration map, which he displayed during an Oval Office briefing on Wednesday, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “No one else writes like that on a…
Inverted Pyramid, #SharpieGate edition
Context: Sunday, President Trump tweeted a supportive message for people in the path of Hurricane Dorian; however, he included Alabama in the list of states in the path of the storm. Within minutes the National Weather Service posted a statement asserting that Alabama would not be affected. As usual, Trump doubled down when facing any…
Reporters accurately repeat what VP spokesperson says; different official cites “misreporting”
The media reports that on an official trip to Ireland, VP Pence will not stay in the vicinity where he is doing work, but his entourage will fly 180 miles away to stay at a Trump-owned property. To respond to public criticism, the Pence camp organizes a media event, where the main speaker is the…
What Critics of Student Writing Get Wrong
[T]o improve as writers, students need to write frequently, for meaningful reasons, to readers who respond as actual readers do — with interest in ideas, puzzlement over lack of clarity or logic, and feedback about how to think more deeply and write more clearly to accomplish the writer’s purposes. There is no shortcut… When…
The history of Tetris randomizers
A pleasantly detailed analysis of how the various editions of Tetris chose what piece was next. In 1985, Alexey Pajitnov and Vadim Gerasimov released Tetris to the public. This fun and highly addictive game challenged players to fit pieces together that were dealt in a random order. Since then, over 150 licensed versions of Tetris games have…
Yellow Journalism Did Not Cause the Spanish-American War (Role of Sensationalized Headlines Often Exaggerated)
When a correspondent sent to Cuba to cover a possible war telegraphed that there would be no war and he wanted to come home, Newspaper mogul Willam Randolph Hearst is said to have replied, “Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” It’s a story I remember learning in middle school. …
Me (glares in iambic pentameter)
Me: I need to post the opening lecture for my online Shakespeare class. Also me: I should compose it in blank verse. Me (glares in iambic pentameter): Also me: O for a Canvas of fire, to surpass The farthest distance of instruction. SHU tech is cool, but can a Macbook hold A seminar discussion? Can…
Your Brain on Shakespeare
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Bureaucrats Put the Squeeze on College Newspapers
Few school newspapers are financially independent from the institutions they cover, says Chris Evans, president of the College Media Association. As a result, college administrators hold powerful leverage over student journalists and their faculty advisers. The need for aggressive student news organizations is as acute as ever. But image-obsessed administrators are hastening the demise of…
Thank you, male ballet dancers everywhere, for making moments like this possible.
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In August 1999 I was blogging about Poohsticks Bridge, penmanship, Archimedes, and ebooks
In August 1999, I was blogging about Conservation efforts at Poohsticks Bridge A Penmanship camp in Philadelphia Recovering the only known copy of a lost work by the Greek mathematician Archimedes (erased by a 10th-century monk who scraped off the writing to reuse the parchment) Fourth-graders using e-books at Resurrection Catholic School in Dayton, Ohio…
What is Technical Writing?
I noticed an uptick in traffic to an older page, “Technical Writing: What Is It?” So I touched it up and created a new graphic. Similar:I was part of a nerve-racking, thrilling attempt to break a world record I drove the girl and myself to the Pal…AestheticsMy journalism students just gave me this wristband: "What…
Take my feedback if you want to pass.
I won’t be so assertive in the first week of class, but I created this meme out of frustration that some students don’t actually read the feedback that I spend a lot of time writing. (I have experimented with giving more oral feedback. I’ll likely do more of that in my online Shakespeare class.) Similar:Journalism…
Where Silence Has Lease (TNG Rewatch: Season 2, Episode 2)
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. The Enterprise spends a lot of time in a budget-saving black void, where the crew scans things, searches databases, launches a probe, navigates in circles, gives up, sets a self-destruct timer, philosophizes about death, shuts off the timer, and warps away. I had never seen…
The girl’s first day on set filming for “The First Day of Summer”
Carolyn plays a teenager who’s outside the “in” group that’s stalked by a killer. She has some action sequences that I know she’ll enjoy filming. I also have “two and a half scenes” playing her father. Similar:Equus. Powerful theatre.PersonalThe Big Goodbye (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 11) When a holodeck glitch taints Picard's… Rewatching Star…
The Child (TNG Rewatch: Season 2, Episode 1)
Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation after a 20-year break. As science fiction, this was an interesting premise with great production values and character moments, that ultimately didn’t deliver any real drama because our main characters lacked any significant agency. The Child opens with some lovely footage of the Enterprise alongside another starship, and a…
Unplugging for a Few Hours at Spruce Flats Bog
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