National Day on Writing

NCTE, the National Writing Project, and The New York Times Learning Network invite you to celebrate writing in all its forms: through photos, film, and graphics; with pens, pencils, and computers; in graphs, etchings, and murals; on sidewalks, screens, and paper. This year we encourage you to focus your writing on your community in any way you…

Granting a Student SuperAdminGoddessOMGWhatHaveIDone Network Privileges

I should probably not grant a student superadmingoddessomgwhathaveidone access to a network at 11:59 on Friday night, but I just did. #trust Similar:Kairos: Open Since 1996As a plucky new faculty member I wrote a…AcademiaIn September, 2002, I was blogging about science writing, satire, ebonics, Google News, ow…In September, 2002, I was blogging about…CybercultureGoodbye, Google Search. I've…

A New Talent Emerges

I tried hard to frown disapprovingly when my beautiful daughter demonstrated that she can burp the alphabet, but she did *such* a good job…   Similar:When a Blogger Shares a Too-good-to-be-true Meme Featuring Hilarious Handwritten Notes fro…Or something like that.HomeThe Declaration Of Independence, 240 Years Later (NPR)When in the Course of human events, it b…CultureFacebook,…

What Is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks

I’ve been following the frustrating slow burn that is #Gamergate for some time. I’m planning to introduce it in my online Video Game Culture and Theory class this January. This ground-level introduction will help add context to the mayhem. Until recently, you might have lived a life blissfully unaware of the online #Gamergate movement. But…

Ada Lovelace at 17

The First Programmer Was a Lady

Over a hundred years before a monstrous array of vacuum tubes surged into history in an overheated room in Pennsylvania, a properly attired Victorian Gentleman demonstrated an elegant little mechanism of wood and brass in a London drawing room. One of the ladies attending this demonstration brought along the daughter of a friend. She was…

The Interactive Fiction Competition

Download and Play The Games of the 2014 IFComp The Interactive Fiction Competition. Similar:My Memories of "Joseph…" [an original cast member reflects on Rice/Webber/Waring's amazi…My high school Drama coach and freshman …DramaSocial Distancing: Because the Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the FewEmpathyDeadline seems to have briefly published, then taken down, story that…

Sources tell Seton Hill University’s Dennis Jerz that TV news websites emphasize self-promotion over reporting the news

Sources tell Seton Hill University’s Dennis Jerz that online write-ups of TV news stories seldom miss the chance to self-promote. Sources tell Jerz that two of the first three paragraphs in the text version of this Miami CBS TV news story put the name of the TV reporter before any actual news allegedly spoken by some nameless source.…

Reporters say White House sometimes demands changes to press-pool reports

The decades-old White House press pool was created as a practical compromise between the news media and the nation’s chief executive: Instead of having a mob of journalists jostling to cover the president at every semi-public function, a handful of reporters are designated to act as proxies, or “poolers,” for the entire press corps. Poolers…