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:The Air Force's Rules of Engagement for Blogging [Updated]GlobalNerdy, via.You’ve probably seen ma…CybercultureHow Zuckerberg’s Facebook is like Gutenberg’s printing pressHistorian Niall Ferguson notes that Sili…BooksMoving from Debate to EmpathyIn my freshman writing class, my…

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:Your Brain Does Not Work Like a ComputerThe brain-as-computer is a powerful meme…HealthEmail Tips: Top 10 Strategies for Writing Effective EmailAfter reading a clickbaity Bloomberg art…HomeVerizon Forced Me to Remove…

How To Talk To Babies About Semiotics (and Marxist Theory)

BABY: read dog book again ME: okay fine show me where the yellow doggie is on this page BABY: [points] ME: good now show me where the brown doggie is on this page BABY: [points] ME: now show me where the author is BABY: [stares blankly] ME: that’s right the author is dead via Mallory…

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…

Chilling Dawn's treatment of the Poe story.

The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe

So, who else is taking advantage of current events and assigning “The Masque of the Red Death”? Are we thoughtful educators? Shameless opportunists? Both? (The disease Poe describes is more sudden than that caused by the ebola virus.) No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the…

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 right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class

When it came time for me to make suggestions to the school about how they could best meet this little boy’s needs, my answer was simple: “He needs more time to play and move his body. Fifteen minutes of recess is not enough. I recommend an hour-long recess session everyday.” Most of these teachers had…

Harvard University says it can’t afford journal publishers’ prices

Robert Darnton, director of Harvard Library told the Guardian: “I hope that other universities will take similar action. We all face the same paradox. We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free … and then we buy back the results of…

Writing a Cutline (Caption) for the News: Three examples of an often overlooked journalism skill

In journalism, the “cutline” is the text below a picture, explaining what the reader is looking at. It’s what most people call a caption, but to a journalist, a “caption” is more like a title that appears above the photo, while the “cutline” is a few lines of text under the photo. An AP style…

Man Infected with Ebola Misinformation Through Casual Contact With Cable News

On the other end of the link, the New Yorker has illustrated the blog post with a screen shot from Fox News, but the text of the post actually blames CNN (which recently hyped ebola as the ISIS of bio-agents). An Ohio man has become infected with misinformation about the Ebola virus through casual contact…

Jeff Bezos Plan for News: The Washington Post Becomes an Amazon Product

For the past few months, a group inside the Post has been working on a new application that will offer a curated selection of news and photographs from the daily newspaper in a magazine-style, tablet-friendly format. The application will come preinstalled on Amazon’s newly updated Kindle Fire tablet, expected to be launched later this fall…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu

When a Textbook Plagiarizes Your Student’s Work

In a few days I’ll be gearing up to teach my freshman writing students about plagiarism. Not the “terrify them and make them fear punishment from the authorities” speech, but the “why people who work in a community of minds take plagiarism so seriousy” speech. How interesting, then, that I found a textbook published in…

Saturday morning cartoons are no more

I certainly have fond memories of Saturday morning cartoons, but I can think of scores of things I’d rather my kids do instead of staying at home watching TV all day. I am no TV snob — I love me some Star Trek and with the kids have recently watched Doctor Who and the 1980s…

Today Was The First Day Without Saturday Morning Cartoons In Over 50 Years

I certainly have fond memories of Saturday morning cartoons, but I can think of scores of things I’d rather my kids do instead of staying at home watching TV all day. I am no TV snob — I love me some Star Trek and have recently watched Doctor Who and the 1980s BBC Hitch Hiker’s…

The Interactive Fiction Competition

Download and Play The Games of the 2014 IFComp The Interactive Fiction Competition. Similar:Google's AI could probably beat you at AtariWhat’s significant in this story is not …CybercultureLoki's Loop Escape RoomGreat concept for a virtual escape…CultureScratchy "Cloak of Darkness" on Scratch”Scratchy Cloak of Darkness” is based on…AestheticsReunion (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 7) Picard…

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.…

The Emma Watson nude pictures hoax shames our ‘news’ culture

Did you hear that a shady group of antisocial hackers threatened to release nude pictures of Emma Watson after she gave a highly visible speech at the United Nations? It turns out that was just one of many hoaxes that professional journalists unwittingly helped to propagate last week. By Wednesday, a supposed PR firm had…

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…

The magic of words opens a whole new world of fun

Emily Short’s work is always worth seeking out and exploring; she’s been a visionary in the world of text-based games for years and her personal blog is a masterclass in both reading and writing interactive fiction. I’d recommend starting with her short game, made with Liza Daly, The First Draft of the Revolution, in which…

On Death and iPods: A Requiem

I never owned a classic iPod, though I did have a B&W PalmPilot and a color successor. They day SHU gave me an iPad, I carefully collected all the cords and manuals and put my Palm away in its original box. I still feel a little guilty that I didn’t even bother to synch it one…