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

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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:Celebration of Writing Fall 2018PersonalRussian trolls 'spreading discord' over vaccine safety onlineThe good news is that there are fewer Am…CybercultureSurprised by Mama Cass Elliott's "Different" — powerful folk-pop ballad in trippy 60's "H…I miss the…

Advising incoming majors.

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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:I had a grand time recording this little story about a misunderstood genius who just wants… The Cask of Amotillado (read…

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.)

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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:What It Means If You're A 'Paragraph Texter'A very fluffy article that does a good j…CultureShakespeare's WillPersonalMy virtual army of grey capsules is just barely smart…

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.

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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.

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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:'Inappropriate' dance moves lead to calls for student lessons in Peters Mr. Merrell said the students told h…AmusingSalman Rushdie: how Cervantes and Shakespeare wrote the modern literary rule bookBy a set…

Keyboard Shortcuts for Novelists

Use the command-alt functions to add sexual tension, plot twists, or a humorous interlude. —The New Yorker Similar:Inaccuracy Of Every Single Detail Forces Student Paper To Pull Story At Last Minute“We at The Recorder strive to ensure tha…Amusing4 writing lessons from the comedy of Joan RiversAll writers can learn from studying the …Current_EventsFour Benefits of…

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…