Celebration of Writing

  My freshman writing students are among the scores presenting their research in preparation for drafting their big term paper. Similar:Girl Moved To Tears By Of Mice And Men Cliffs NotesIn what she described as “the most emoti…AcademiaStudents say "math class is stupid and boring," and they are right. –Mathematician Paul L…I am working on some…

Out of the Zuckersphere, (back) into the Blogosphere

This is why I still blog. While commercial platforms like Facebook and Twitter are designed to keep you churning out new content that attracts shallow attention, a weblog encourages reflection, the exploration of lateral thinking and deep linking, and the accumulation of ideas (your chronologically sorted, taggable history of posts) over time. Mark C. Marino…

The problem I just learned about calls for tea in the big mug.

Similar:Masks serve many purposes. How sad that they’ve become politicized. I’ve seen the original meme on my so…Current_EventsIn Changing News Landscape, Even Television is VulnerableThe transformation of the nation’s news …CultureUshering The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. @prime_stagePersonalLetter Grades Deserve an 'F'In a points-based grade book, the studen…AcademiaThe Naked Now (Season 1, Episode 2:…

Former student: “I remember sometimes being annoyed with all of our blogging assignments, but…”

A third alum in the last few weeks has contacted me to thank me for challenging her while a student: When I look back on my time at SHU, I remember sometimes being annoyed with all of our blogging assignments, but yet again, this is proof that the skills you taught us so a few years ago…

Journalism isn’t dying. But it’s changing WAY faster than most people understand.

Think of journalism as falling into three basic baskets: The “what” basket, the “so what” basket and the “now what” basket. The “what” basket is filled with reporting in a straightforward manner on things that happened. “There was a fire at 8th and Elm Street today. No one was injured,” and all that. The “so…

Fair use prevails as Supreme Court rejects Google Books copyright case

Fair use is a concept baked into US copyright law, and it’s a defense to copyright infringement if certain elements are met. The US Copyright Office says the defense is decided on a case-by-case basis. “The distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear…

For News Outlets Squeezed From the Middle, It’s Bend or Bust

Hundreds of thousands of people on Facebook followed BuzzFeed’s live video of two people putting rubber bands around a watermelon until it burst. We should all reflect on how journalism can make the news that is truly important interesting enough to compete with exploding fruit. Traditional media companies face the increasingly daunting task of hooking…

Chess tournament in Monroeville. Two losses, two wins.

The boy’s personal best in terms of win-loss. Trophy for performance at his level. A fun Satuday. Similar:Candyland is a masterpiece of game design (John Brieger unpacks the specific cultural cont… AestheticsThe Unbearable Weakness of Trump’s MinionsNote that the URL of this story indicate…AcademiaBrought my in-progress #blender3d project into the #unity3d gaming engine. Plenty of…

Jimmy Maher’s Appreciation of Infocom’s Classic Sherlock Text Adventure

I learned a lot while reading this enjoyable essay by Jimmy Maher. Looked at today, however, Sherlock certainly wasn’t a bad note to go out on. Being built on the sturdy foundation of everything Infocom had learned about making text adventures to date, it’s not notably, obviously innovative, but, impressively given that it is a…

The Minecraft Generation

It’s a world of trial and error and constant discovery, stuffed with byzantine secrets, obscure text commands and hidden recipes. And it runs completely counter to most modern computing trends. Where companies like Apple and Microsoft and Google want our computers to be easy to manipulate — designing point-and-click interfaces under the assumption that it’s…

Recent SHU journo grad, upon the hiring of an even more recent SHU journo grad: “Many times she’ll say, ‘that’s why he did that to us’ ? And then be grateful.”

A couple weeks ago I posted about a recent graduate and former Setonian editor-in-chief who said that skills she wasn’t at the time exactly thrilled I made her learn in the new media journalism program helped her land her first full-time job with benefits. Today I heard from a different former editor-in-chief, who was thrilled…

Lawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over “We Shall Overcome” 

Similar:The Trouble With Online EducationI’ve taught an online “Video Game Cultur…AcademiaApple’s new diverse emoji are even more problematic than beforeThis author did a great job articulating…AestheticsEveryone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help Mom do the dishes.CultureRethinking TV news, Part III: First, kill the stand-upI’ve told my journalism students that TV…DesignConnecting…

Lawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over “We Shall Overcome” 

“We Shall Overcome,” a song that was the “unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement,” was wrongly placed under copyright and should be put in the public domain, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court. The complaint (PDF) was filed by the same group of lawyers who succeeded at putting the world’s most famous song, Happy Birthday, into…

The geekling is 14 today.

Similar:Ushering The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. @prime_stagePersonalCarolyn as Hodel and Peter as Lazar in the Stage Right homeschool Fiddler on the Roof.PersonalMake a date with #HeartOurArt at The Westmoreland Museum of American ArtWhile our daughter is performing in Stag…Art"I'm a geek. Deal with it." –my 11yo daughter. #geekgirlproblemsAmusingCarolyn plays Ti Moune in the…