Faculty lining up for #SetonHill’s “Go Orientation” — new ceremony hands students from their parents to robed Hogwarts pretenders.

Similar:Creating textures for background buildings in a medieval theater simulation project. I can…Creating textures for background buildin…AestheticsSeton Hill Student Journalists Launch Local Election Coverage Students in my journalism class are pu…AcademiaMeet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureBogus hit-and-run story about Vice President Kamala Harris created…

Dani Girl (Oct 1-3, 2015) at the Geyer Performing Arts Center

Vinnie Tresco, Carolyn Jerz, Matthew Hommel, and Kathryn Pretz are in the cast of this playful, intense & inspiring musical. Similar:Loved part 2 of The Importance of Being Earnest (live videoconference play from @ThePublic…AmusingBird flight simulator. The boy goes for altitude and distance, the girl does stunts.In the bird-flight simulator at the Pitt…CybercultureI just finished…

Advising incoming majors.

Similar:The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow: Icelandic bromance, with weapons, secret panels, and…I try to read to my kids for an hour eve…BooksDouble Entry Journals: Your Scholarly Research Notes for College-level Critical ThinkingWhat is a double-entry research journal?…Academia12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes MakesDescriptive grammarians rejoice. Formal…CultureIf I don’t hang…

To Learn More, This High-Schooler Left The Classroom

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:Most Americans have a high opinion of the humanities, and 81% use at least one humanities-…While some survey respondents were unfam…AcademiaWhy…

Unscheduled Disasters in Journalism: Learn to Deal

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…

Thoughtful PopCult Analysis of ‘Peanuts’ Deserves Better than a Clickbaity Headline Hating on Snoopy

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…

One wild place. (Sunday.)

Similar:Lounge area of a steampunk villain’s lair. Still needs a light fixture or two. #blender3dAestheticsFall 2020 Midterm Grades: SUBMITTEDPersonalAnother 10sq cm section of a #neovictorian control panel for a personal #blender3D #steamp…AestheticsWe love us some Sherlock any way we can get it.PersonalProud of My JournosI saw several heads that I recognized, b…AcademiaDo you get…

My laptop hard drive is full & my comfort-food shelf is empty

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 girl is intrigued by the plot twists in _The Mayor of Casterbridge_.PersonalNews report from 1981 about the Internet.A human interest story about an early ex…BusinessWhy…

Amazon may well be the most evil company in tech

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…

After a successful piano recital.

Similar:Pieces of Earliest Games RecoveredThese small sculpted stones unearthed fr…CultureWhy Can't My New Employees Write? | Just VisitingWe’re talking about elite students here …AcademiaToday I didn't save the world, but I did help a student while power-walking at the mall.I’m far from perfect, and injustice and …AcademiaFall 2022 Grades: SUBMITTED AcademiaOh No, Performers Coming Into…

Facebook Should Pay All of Us

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…

Just wrote the first ending to my in-progress journalism game (created in Twine)

3,486 words, 120 links, 57 lexias, and currently this is the only ending.

How Technology Has Changed The Way We Write

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…

Sesame Street Is Moving to HBO, and the Symbolism Is Crushing

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…

TARDIS from today’s 3D printing class.

Similar:This English major will walk off the graduation platform this weekend, and into a full-tim…Be yourself. If have you a bad attitude,…CultureThe American Scholar: Celebrity ProfilesPhllip Lopate writes a good essay on the…EssaysThe Strangest, Most Spectacular Bridge Collapse (And How We Got It Wrong)At a glance of the edited footage, it’s …DesignWoah there, online tech…

A serious summer activity.

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:Official Rules to NanofictionaryI was at a youth car wash today, watchin…DesignDespicable Me 2 "Bottom" gag will do for A Midsummer Night's Dream what Disney's Little Me…The name “Bottom” in A…

Keyboard Shortcuts for Novelists

Use the command-alt functions to add sexual tension, plot twists, or a humorous interlude. —The New Yorker Similar:This makes a lot of sense.AmusingThe Distracted Classroom: Transparency, Autonomy, and PedagogyI don’t ban technology in my classroom, …AcademiaWhat Do Happy Teens Do? Hint: It doesn't involve their phones.I was surprised to see how closely happi…CultureThe daughter was…

Updating Journalism Handouts

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…

Why Teachers, Parents, and Society at Large Have Destroyed Kids’ Love of Learning

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…

Introduction to Twine (Tutorials by Vegetarian Zombie)

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…