Vintage TV News Coverage of Pac-Man

Vintage TV news coverage of Pac-Man. Similar:"It's called an amphora," the artist says.AestheticsI had a singular time voicing Sherlock Holmes in The Mystery of Dr. Watson (WAOB Audio The… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azja…CulturePersonality Profiles: Prize-Winning Student Journalism SamplesThe personality profile is a staple of i…CultureWhat Grammar and Style Checkers MissTeaching students to write does not mean…AcademiaAdvising incoming majors.Academia'Peter…

All the world’s an app

A review of three books — The App Generation, Status Update, and It’s Complicated — that explore and critique the function of social media in our lives. I used to ask the internet everything. I started young. In the late 1980s, my family got its first modem. My father was a computer scientist, and he…

Memories of Toronto Yonge Street Encounters

I arrived in Toronto in 1992 as a 22yo grad student, and left it as a 29yo assistant professor, husband, and father. I spent a lot of that time walking. Just before I woke up on September 11 2006, I was having a dream about walking down Yonge street. I wrote down as much as…

Without ComPUNction: Doing verbal battle at the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships.

“It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be a pun.” The Punslingers event may be the only sport on Earth in which the highest level of play is the most painful to watch. –Ted Trautman, Paris Review.

We Got A Look Inside The 45-Day Planning Process That Goes Into Creating A Single Corporate Tweet

The professionals don’t always spend 45 days designing a single tweet, but this one got just two favorites. Shortly after, Lindsay met with a copywriter and graphic designer to brainstorm tweet ideas for the next month. It was then that the copywriter suggested a tweet centered around the idea that Camembert, a French cheese popular…

Amazon’s Tactics Confirm Its Critics’ Worst Suspicions

This week, as part of a contract dispute with the publisher Hachette, we’re seeing Amazon behaving at its worst. The company’s willingness to nakedly flex its anticompetitive muscle gives new cause for concern to anyone who cares about books — authors, publishers, but mainly customers. Here’s the back story: In an effort to exert pressure…

Facebook, Now You Remind Me of a Half-Drunk Cocktail Party Schmoozer

Last week, Facebook asked me what sportsing teams I cared about (and helpfully supplied me with a list of the teams I’d be statistically most likely to favor if I had any interest in sportsing). Now Facebook is asking me what TV shows I’ve watched. Well, yes, I’ve watched episodes of each of these shows, but I…

A Revolutionary Approach to Treating PTSD

Inhabiting an improvised play designed to heal trauma. Fascinating exploration of art and the human mind. Eugene had already called on some group members to play certain roles in his story. Kresta, a yoga instructor based in San Francisco, was serving as his “contact person,” a guide who helps the protagonist bear the pain the…

Show, Don’t (Just) Tell (New Example)

I wrote down this example on a student paper a while ago, and thought I’d add it to my existing handout on showing and telling. Winning is important to me. It doesn’t matter to me what I do, so long as I win. Unengaging and unconvincing. This is like saying “I am a hard worker”…

Star Wars: TIE Fighter 20th Anniversary Retrospective

In the Star Wars films, the empire is evil to the core. But TIE Fighter let you see the empire from a new perspective. The game didn’t make you feel like a bad person doing bad things, but like a pilot who might reasonably have believed that what he was doing was in the galaxy’s…

Facebook’s Mike Hudack rants about the media: Why won’t anybody do something about these shallow viral stories?

When a Facebook executive whines about all these shallow viral links clogging our feeds, Slate’s Jordan Wiessmann clicks him a new one. If only we, the American people, could summon a champion. Someone who could, with the change of a single algorithm, turn the entire media ecosystem on its head. But who? –Jordan Weissmann, Slate.…

Effects of Internet use on the adolescent brain: despite popular claims, experimental evidence remains scarce

Big difference between the clickbaity verson on BoingBoing (“Everything you know about teenage brains is bullshit“) and the dry, academic version on cell.com: [C]urrent evidence suggests that typical Internet activities do not impair social development during adolescence. | Both adolescents and adults are now using the Internet more than ever. Evidence increasingly suggests that time…

Writing That Demonstrates Thinking Ability

While reflecting on my semester for my annual report, I noticed I hadn’t updated my handout on Bloom’s Taxonomy in a while. Like, 12 years. If your instructor asks you to write a 500-word analysis, but instead you provide a 500-word summary, it won’t matter that your grammar is flawless and your facts are correct.…

What Makes Ohio State the Most Unequal Public University in America?

So while university presidents are making huge salaries, Tom Frank explains, students “borrowed and forked over enormous sums in exchange for the privilege of hearing lectures…lectures that were then delivered by people who earned barely enough to stay alive. It is a double disaster of the kind that only we Americans are capable of pulling…

Adam Savage’s 10 Commandments Of Making

Adam Savage took a few minutes today at the Maker Faire Bay Area to share what he feels are the 10 Commandments of Making. Make something Make something useful Start right now Find a project Ask for help, advice, and feedback Share Recognize that discouragement and failure is part of the project Measure carefully Make…

Blogging is NOT Analog Writing in Digital Spaces

Blogging in education is about quality and authentic writing in digital spaces with a global audience, while observing digital citizenship responsibilities and rights, as on documents, reflects, organizes and makes one’s learning and thinking visible and searchable! Blogging is not analog writing in digital spaces. Blogging is not an activity, but a process. The process…

A Classicist Goes to Work in Silicon Valley

Kristina Chew writes about what her friend called “the most creative career change ever.” It turns out a humanities Ph.D. can provide you with precisely the opposite of what people think—skills that are applicable and even useful outside the academy. Graduate training provides one with well-honed research and analytical skills as well as the steadfastness…

I Made Cheerful Maze Game in Scratch

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Microsoft Research Launches Code Hunt Game to Teach Programming

Another item for the “when I’m finished with my current to-do list” list. Instead of presenting you with a problem and comparing your solution to a set of fixed test cases, Code Hunt presents an empty slate and a set of constantly changing test cases. It thus teaches coding as a side consequence of solving…

How Are Websites Made?

This one chart is actually the punch line… click through for the full effect. —I Love Charts. Similar:Vandal scratches Poe phrase into car at dealershipLanguage nerds will appreciate this news…AmusingThe News from Ferguson – Live, on Twitter[I]t turns out that Twitter is not just …AcademiaBattle of Agincourt — 600 Year Anniversary of Henry V's "St.…