From Daisy Dunn’s review of Puchner’s The Written World: Socrates envisaged a time when we would forget how to remember. The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Indian epic Ramayanahad been preserved through an oral tradition that seemed destined to perish through overreliance on papyrus. Akhmatova remembered because she had to but Socrates simply chose to. He…
I recently came across a box of old writing, including a binder where I had saved some undergraduate papers. When returning a Beowulf paper for a Brit Lit survey, my instructor had stapled a page of hand-written notes that began, “You come very close to successfully combining argument and explication here, much closer than…
Isn’t the news pointless and boring? Haven’t powerful people who have no personal stake in the matter and obviously have nothing whatsoever to hide called the lying fake mainstream news media the enemy of the American people?Why would anyone want to study journalism? Oh, wait… Former sports doctor Larry Nassar likely still would be sexually…
In English grammar, we use the definite article in front of a noun when we believe the listener knows exactly what we are referring to. Further, use of the word “the” suggests singular, as in The Pope. When you meet The Pope, then you’ve met The Pope. When you meet “the elderly” you’ve really only…
Today is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists. We are sharing a famous prayer that #PopeFrancis has adapted: a prayer to fight #fakenews. If you know a journalist, give them some love today, and feel free to share this prayer. (CNS illustration/Joanna Korhorst) —Catholic News Service Similar:The Myth of ‘Learning Styles’The discourse around…
A multimodal news package simply means “using more than one mode,” typically the written word + some other medium. Exactly what goes into a multimodal news package is negotiable. Editors and journalism instructors will each have their own expectations.
Students who are new to college literature classes often value literary biography very highly, expecting that one of their tasks is to spot one-to-one relationships between the literary texts and the personal lives of the authors. For instance, from the two Sylvia Plath poems that use Nazi imagery to describe troubled relationships with paternal figures,…
Similar:#blender3d is teaching me more than I ever thought I’d need to know about roof geometry. E…#blender3d is teaching me more than I ev…PersonalAnother 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dartAestheticsThe Other 21st Century Skills User Generated Education.AcademiaTop U800. #chesstournamentPersonalMy daughter was five or six when she created the character “Moonbot” for…
A student in my “American Literature: 1915-Present” class used the medium of a 2D graphic adventure game to deliver her multimodal final project. (Students also wrote a traditional term paper.) You are the cameraman of a new TV show based on Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth.” But things quickly go downhill when a…
Reagan recognized that as leader of the free world, his words carried enormous weight, and he used them to inspire the unprecedented spread of democracy around the world. | President Trump does not seem to understand that his rhetoric and actions reverberate in the same way. He has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit…
A mechanism description analyzes (that is, subdivides into components for further scrutiny) an object in space. When you try to organize your major subsections, if no other obvious pattern seems appropriate, you can always fall back on the more-important-to-less-important strategy. Don’t sell the object. A technical writer is not required to persuade the reader that the object is wonderful,…
Don’t spend three pages establishing that some people burn to death, some people freeze to death, and some people drown. Start by saying what we need to do now that the iceberg we are stranded on has caught fire. Similar:The End of Print JournalismThe future of print remains what? Try to…BusinessAbout that Cough, Rough,…
The car shop wanted to charge over $300. I found the part online for under $40. With the help of a YouTube video, the job took about 45 minutes. (Much of that time I spent wandering around my house looking for tools. Grateful that my father-in-law gave me a ratchet set as a wedding present.)…
Similar:My Daughter's Synesthesia: "S" Is Always Red, and "T" Is Lime GreenAccording to a color-picking test at syn…AestheticsThe Rivals #PPTPlaytimeA great production of a delightful play.CultureBeautiful set. Support the humans who do arts in your community (instead of settling for …Beautiful set. Support the humans who d…PersonalIt’s so heartbreaking seeing the amount of disinformation…
That’s a prop knife in my right hand. Similar:The girl around the house casually dressed "as a Jacobite."AmusingRadio News Delivery: How to Sound Like a Radio BroadcasterListen to a short news broadcast, such a…AestheticsNo girl wins: three ways women unlearn their love of video games – OffworldSeveral times I assigned Brenda Laurel’s…BusinessCreating Games for JournalismWe…
I have no reason to trust Facebook to filter my news for me. However, so many people get their news by social media, maybe this will be an easy way for people to check whether a viral meme is a hoax. Maybe an option marked “Look up vetted news reports related to this post.” Yes,…
In general, I avoid clicking on any headline with the weasel words “can” or “might.” However, I did enjoy this reflection on the positive impact of literary reading. I’m teaching a compressed online literature course, so that involves re-reading the literary works I assigned, as well as engaging with what my students write about those…
Similar:Google SGE Recommends You Drink Urine To Pass Kidney Stones QuicklyThe new AI advanced version of Google Se…BusinessLocal news is the building block of a national democracy.Yesterday, I asked my students, “How man…BusinessToday's workload included requesting a "less-depressing used chair" #lowexp…PersonalA Word About Group ProjectsOkay, students… who loves group projec…AcademiaIn one small prairie town, two warring…
Similar:My journalism students just gave me this wristband: "What would Jerz do? / Verify or duck…. AestheticsSiblings gotta sib.PersonalDon't call it "social distancing" or you just might get a polite correction from the admin…AcademiaMy 14yo Helps Teach a Vacation Bible School Class In character as “Pontius Pilate,” wa…PersonalIn March 2000, I was blogging about…
Similar:For New Acquisitions, UMD Libraries Choose Ebooks by DefaultIncreasingly book vendors provide option…AcademiaElsa at noon. College “Intro to Chemistry” in the afternoon. Amy March at night.PersonalA young father sold his beloved sports car for “diaper money.” Years later, the man’s son …“While my dad has always spoken lovingly…AestheticsHexagons Are the Bestagonshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOifuHs…AmusingEssential Journalists: How Coronavirus Changed…