Nick Bain, 17, was in class one day when he calculated that only “2 1/2 to three hours” was actually useful instruction. So he decided to go out on his own to learn. —NPR Similar:My "Writing About Literature" Students Are Sampling Text Adventure GamesI’m having my students play Adam Cadre’s…CultureToday I didn't save the world,…
In school, we expect our professors to answer our questions, to return our emails, to invite us in for a consultation, to pay attention what we say and read carefully what we write. One of the important lessons of being a student journalist is learning how to deal with the unexpected. Unfair things happen in…
On a shelf in the slanty room under the stairs, next to her college textbooks, my mother kept a stash of inexpensive Peanuts paperbacks — dozens of them, which reprinted the newspaper strips, perhaps on a yearly basis, maybe more frequently. I spent many a summer afternoon reading through those books, and I remember sorting…
Similar:It's Science! Carolyn Uses Anastasia's Lip Balm KitMy friend Anastasia gave me a home-made …AestheticsNarrating "A Christmas Carol" for WAOB Audio Theatre. (The four episodes will be released …DramaIn May, 2000, I was blogging about the 'I Love You' virus, hacking URLs, PG Wodehouse, and…In May, 2000, I was blogging about …AcademiaPsychology Today: Dreams:…
My laptop drive is full & my comfort-food shelf is empty; however, that package slip was for a new external hard drive and a case of Clif Bars. #winning! Similar:The Case Against Reading EverythingRight now, I’m teaching “American Lit 19…BooksBeam me up, Chewie!AwesomeThe Girl Has Started Rehearsals for PICT Classic Theatre’s Jane EyreI’ve chauffeured the…
Last week, I had a hardware emergency. A kid in a small-town hardware store spent about 15 minutes helping me find the right nut. I had the troublesome part with me, and used a vise on their worktable and their wrench to twist it in place. The nut cost 50 cents. I asked the kid if…
Similar:Pippin! Last show today at 2pm.CultureThe Penance of Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, by Edwin Austin Abbey.This painting was inspired by the scene …AestheticsA student who is writing her research paper on Taylor Swift made a passing reference to Ka…PersonalAll those fights over late-arriving mail ballots were much ado about very littleJust in case you haven’t…
The trick is that most people think they are getting a good deal out of Facebook; we think of Facebook to be “free,” and, as marketing professors explain, “consumers overreact to free.” Most people don’t feel like they are actually paying when the payment is personal data and when there is no specific sensation of…
3,486 words, 120 links, 57 lexias, and currently this is the only ending.
Social media services have put writing tools into the hands of people who probably don’t think of themselves as writers, but there they are, captioning photos and picking hashtags and maybe even pausing just a few seconds to edit before they hit “post.” This radio interview offers a good, informal overview of why people who…
I’ve been fascinated by the rhetoric of headlines surrounding the “Sesame Street moves to HBO” story. * HBO gentrifies ‘Sesame Street’ –VentureBeat * Sesame Street Episodes Will Shrink to Half an Hour –Time * Sesame Street Is Heading to HBO, and Getting Even Bigger –Esquire * This episode of Sesame Street brought to you by…
Similar:#Blender3D practice: #Steampunk control panel #trimsheethttps://youtu.be/4j7qAzaDg3w …AestheticsThe Physics Behind Traffic JamsIn between today’s various events, I das…CultureThe girl told me to post this with the caption, “The Addams Family Goes to the Big League….PersonalThank you, male ballet dancers everywhere, for making moments like this possible.AestheticsAdded a pilot and cockpit details to my flyby of…
Once classes start again, we will all have less time for the game of life. Let’s do some serious playing while we still can. Similar:Actually, this post really *is* about ethics in journalism.People – journalists and non-journalists…Current_EventsFake News Remains Top Industry Concern in 2017“In the past, people fabricated content….CultureHow Humans Respond to RobotsThe play that…
Use the command-alt functions to add sexual tension, plot twists, or a humorous interlude. —The New Yorker Similar:I just finished "Beyond Eyes" and I think there's something in my eye.My 20yo son, who plays a lot of Star War…AestheticsAnyone capitalized in a standard how way without no lowercase pretension down.Fact CheckYork Corpus Christi Play Simulator…
Jerz > Writing > Journalism I’ve spent the afternoon touching up some older journalism handouts, seeing which are still in good shape, which need some work, and which new ones I’ll need to create from scratch. I realize I’ve never actually written a handout on the inverted pyramid, writing leads, writing headlines, punctuating quotes from sources… of course there…
I have experimented with rewarding students for embracing complexity, taking risks, and for celebrating their failures. Returning to musical theater after a 25-year break has been a valuable lesson in humility for me, and a reminder of just how scary it is — exciting and scary — to do something new. The truth—for this parent…
I will always love Inform 7, but I chose to develop a journalism training game in Twine (because it will be much easier to teach Twine to my students). To prepare for my game, I spent about 6 hours (during my son’s last chess tournament) roughing out about 20 lexias. Since then, I’ve spent about 6…
The camera’s first good image came back a month ago, which was cutting things a little close for the July 16 moon crossing (NASA released the images on Wednesday), according to Szabo. “We were very much aware that the moon would be passing in view, and we worked very hard for it,” he says. The…
Several times I assigned Brenda Laurel’s Utopian Entrepreneur, which described the rise and heartbreaking fall of her girl-centered, girl-positive gaming company, Purple Moon during the 1990s. My own daughter (who is 13) has enjoyed man more opportunities to be both girly and nerdy — something that seems to have been a lot harder 20 years…
History is complex and baffling and fascinating. Reading this (an explanation that the stiff-arm salute that we now identify with the Nazis was a general gesture that was common in America before WWII) made my head spin almost as much as reading about the myth of 8 unbroken hours of sleep. A group of about…