Page Layout 101: Proximity creates context. Don’t let this happen to you.

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Finished Reading “Deathly Hallows” for the First Time

Whem my kids started reading the books on their own, I fell behind. I finally just finished reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” I’m glad there were just 3 Hallows, and rather wished there were about that many Horcruxes. Shortly after I arrived at SHU a student compared me to Lupin, so I’ve followed…

Kristin and Haley’s Discussion on Poe’s “The Raven”

I gave my literature students 30 minutes to come up with a 3-minute podcast in which they demonstrated their ability to have an evidence-based disagreement over The Raven. In the past, at this point in the semester I simply had students record themselves reading a poem, but I decided to get more ambitious this time.…

Two Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots Talk and Argue with Each Other

Sounds like a typical grad school seminar. Similar:How to lie with charts, by the @NYTimes I tend to defend journalism when sho…Current_EventsAnother delightful caricature by Rebecca ScassellatiAestheticsStop trying to figure out if screentime is good for studentsPro-technology response to the NYT “No C…Academia"Shakespeare in Love" with the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra and Stage Right!When I teach…

Margaret Atwood: English lessons teach us to miss the true meaning of literature

Every time I teach a college literature class, I have to budget time in the syllabus to help my students unlearn the way they learned to read in high school. Atwood does a great job explaining the role a reader plays in constructing the meanings they find in a literary text. It’s all the fault…

‘She didn’t have credibility anymore’: The moment Rolling Stone’s U-Va. rape story unraveled

Blogging the latest developments in a story I use in my journalism classes. “When I got off the phone, I felt like the ground had shifted from under my feet,” Erdely said. “The person I had talked to was not the person I was familiar with from my story. I felt that she didn’t have…

Practicing Intellectual, Evidence-based Disagreement

This is what a busy literature seminar on evidence-based disagreement looks like. I’ve asked the students to pair up to create a 2-3-minute podcast that demonstrates they can participate in a respectful, evidence-based disagreement over Poe’s “The Raven.” I asked each student to introduce the other student’s position, and to do so respectfully, without caricaturing…

What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

This sounds a lot like wishful thinking, but there’s plenty to learn from well-articulated alternate opinions. What if, in the mad dash two decades ago to repurpose and extend editorial content onto the Web, editors and publishers made a colossal business blunder that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars? What if the industry should have…

Readers Are Liars: The 1928 Study That Predicted the Future of News

The invention of the telegraph and the syndication of news brought national and even international news to local readers. This didn’t just change how newspapers worked. It changed what newspapers meant. | In the late-1800s, there were papers for every “class, sect, and political group,” Gallup said. Local journalism in that time was easy to do.…

How “Hail Mary” Became Inextricably Linked to American Football

I am revamping an existing “News Writing” course so that it becomes “News, Arts and Sports Reporting,” and am thus trying to educate myself about sports writing. Good writing is engaging no matter what the subject is. This is a great example. The headline is written for an international audience. Without assuming that the reader…

The Best Word Book Ever, 1963 and 1991.

As a child, I obsessed over many Richard Scarry books. I liked What Do People Do All Day best, but I also remember this one fondly — The Best Word Book Ever. As a parent, I don’t think I owned a copy of this one — we just checked it out of the library every…

Rolling Stone heading to trial over debunked story of UVa rape

For the first time since Rolling Stone magazine’s shocking story about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia hit shelves two years ago, the public may hear from the young woman at the center of the now discredited article “A Rape on Campus.” | A defamation trial against the magazine is set to begin…

Fake News Taints Facebook’s Trending Topics

In an experiment conducted over several weeks following Facebook’s promotion of the fake Megyn Kelly story, the Post recorded which topics were trending for it every day, on the hour, across four accounts. | That turned up five trending stories that were “indisputably fake” and three that were “profoundly inaccurate,” Caitlyn Dewey reported. | There’s no…

Imagine, if you will, a Shakespeare course / Propos’d in blank verse like the Bard would write

Verses Proposing a New Course: “Shakespeare in Context” You’ll pick a modest count of Shakespeare plays– Say, five. Three weeks to each you’ll dedicate. One context week, one week on text, and next One week to multi-modally create A research paper, podcast, monologue, Or supercut of twenty diff’rent Lears Who curse their sixty daughters’ cruel hearts. Professional and student actors we will hear, In stagings mounted locally. What’s more, We’ll…

Debunking the newspapers are dying idea

Don’t count on viral social media posts or TV talkshow monologues to form your world view. It’s a moral obligation for people in a free society to have access to credible, unbiased information. All evidence shows that people of all ages want and consume more news than ever. We need to focus on new ways…

Scientists Trace Society’s Myths to Primordial Origins

Ancient cultures from Africa to Asia to the Mediterranean share core myths such as the animal pursued by a hunter who is transformed into a constellation, or a sculptor falling in love with a statute that comes to life, or a clever hunter outwitting a monster who keeps animals in a cave. This Scientific American…

The Pepe the Frog Meme Is Probably Not Worth Understanding

“Life is short, much of Internet communication is more Dada-esque than denotative, and mastering dank memes has an effort-to-payoff ratio that really, truly is not worth it.” –NPR reporter Camila Domonoske, taking a cleansing breath before explaining the Pepe the Frog meme. Similar:Far-Right Twitter Trolls Won’t Admit They Were Wrong About Killing of a “Patriot” in Denve… …

Ode to Huckleberry Finn, Dec’d

(Inspired by Emmeline Grangerford, Dec’d.) Girls, take his cold dead hand and kiss The knuckle – very thin, And bid adieu and ballyhoo Poor Huckleberry Finn. And was it prowling cannibals Or adversary’s sin That spilled the flood of crimson blood Of Huckleberry Finn? O hear my sad, sad words of woe (As I more…

How to Make a Website: Guide to Web Creation, Design & Styling

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How to Make a Website: Guide to Web Creation, Design & Styling

I am a textual thinker, not a visual thinker. The resources I create for my own students focus on my own strengths and needs as a college English teacher: the writing, basic conventions, and genres such as instructions and emails, and user-focused areas I’ve picked up out of necessity after watching my students learn to write for…