While Pittsburgh has become more metropolitan in the last generation, the culture here one county to the east still bears witness to its rust belt past. This may sound dull as ditch water to those who believe that the “flyover” states are inhabited largely by clodhoppers, fundamentalist zealots and loudmouthed Babbitts. In fact, Lauck’s aim…
I like introducing my English majors to coding. Here’s a computer scientist who’s returning the favor, advocating the importance of writing skills. “If you succeed in attaining a position that allows you to do something great, if you do something that really is great, and if you realize that it’s great, there’s still one more…
By the end of the semester you will be able to: * Write a good clickbait headline * Fire off a snappy tweet to trolls * Use facts ironically to disprove the President * Locate Sean Spicer in a variety of diverse hiding places * Pin a congressional candidate in under 60 seconds —McSweney’s Internet…
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Successful people may just be lucky; focusing too much on their successes can silence the honorable failures that we can all stand to learn from. People who consider themselves “lucky” take more risks, and are therefore more likely to discover opportunities. They brush off their failures rather than dwell on them. People who consider themselves…
I wrote the following in 2004, when my son was 6 and my daughter was 2. The time is waning that my son will want nothing more than to play Battleship and The Magnificent Race with me all afternoon. Some day I’ll make a silly joke, and my daughter won’t giggle with glee, she will…
Sobering analysis. Would I be able to follow this advice in the unthinkable event I had a personal account to share? Terrorists use social media to recruit, but they also depend on you and the media to use it to amplify their message…. The motivation for terrorism is not mere murder or maiming but the…
Does the world need another working definition of digital humanities? Do you have one? Here’s mine. Digital Humanities is the deliberate, critical application of emerging technology to the study of traditional subjects such as literature, art, philosophy, and language, often (but not always) with a focus on how those traditional fields are now using emerging…
Many a high school student has muddled through a book report in a single caffeine-fueled sitting, but successful research term papers or quarterly progress reports require planning. In technical writing, a prototype might be a full table of contents (with summaries for each major section) and one or two complete chapters. If conducting a survey is…
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I’m gobsmacked by the creativity that went into researching, writing, and crafting this layout. A look at how students in the Kansas City region commemorated the campaign in keepsakes meant to be enjoyed by all classmates, no matter their leanings. Source: It Was Hard This Year to Keep Politics Out of High School Yearbooks Similar:The…
The Washington Post, famous for breaking the Watergate scandal that brought down Nixon’s presidency, is churning out top-quality journalism in the age of Trump. As an organization the Post is gaining readers, hiring journalists and scooping its competition. As a private company since 2013, when the deep-pocketed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought it for $250…
This is why I spend time teaching my journalism students about how to write photo captions. Which description is more trustworthy? Which description will likely get more shares on social media? Similar:Preparing for some serious nerd time with the family this summerSet phasers to “nerd”! This summer I’ll…CultureToday's annoying adventures of adulting: fixing the bathroom…
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Not a day goes by without The Girl reminding us that everyone else her age has a phone — but she also compares her desire for a phone to Gollum’s desire for The Ring. Many adults have told her she’s lucky not to carry around the burden of social media updates, though part of her…
This fall I will be teaching Shakespeare again; but thereafter, as part of a curriculum redesign, Shakespeare will be rolled into a “Shakespeare in Context” course that will also need to address Beowulf, medieval drama, Arthurian legend, Chaucer, Marlowe, etc. I intend to do this by teaching five different Shakespeare plays, focusing on one play…
It used to bother me that people got all excited about the color shirt that was being worn by a particular person holding (or throwing, or tossing, or avoiding) a small round object. Then I read the Onion article “Walking Sports Database Scorns Walking Sci-Fi Database:” A self-described “sports fanatic” who experiences vicarious thrills through…
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