The real concern here is that the little guys—the Pies ‘n’ Thighs, the charitable causes, the artists and merchants trying to scrape by with the help of their Facebook fans—will find that they can’t reach even the users who really do want to see their updates. So far, the data suggest that they’re being spared…
Great article featuring the little girl from the 1981 Lego ad. What’s the problem with girl LEGOs? Why is everyone against pink? ask many parents. I’ll let Rachel Giordano answer that question: “Because gender segmenting toys interferes with a child’s own creative expression. I know that how I played as a girl shaped who I…
http://youtu.be/reyclH7zuHI Similar:Wonderfully Detailed Tribute to 1970s British TV Show Space: 1999″A middle aged geek” puts it well: “Utte…AestheticsJournalists dream of puns like this.AmusingPeak Performance (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Two, Episode 21) Riker and his misfit pals challe…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….AmusingI'm Gradually Losing My Hearing. (It’s Part of Aging.)During a department meeting today, I not…AcademiaFantasy…
I turned off the extra screen on my desktop computer. At first, the smaller workspace felt punishingly cramped. But after a few days of adjusting to the new set-up, an unusual serenity invaded my normally harried workday. With a single screen that couldn’t accommodate too many simultaneous stimuli, a screen just large enough for a…
They don’t even seem to want to watch Frozen. Instead they are playing Animal Jam. Similar:Reunion (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 7) Picard Arbitrates Klingon Leaders…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….MediaOn teaching coding to English studies studentsBecause this is a practical, hands-on, i…AcademiaMedia Bias Chart version 10 — Left / Center / Right; Fact…
When I got to college, I had already learned complex grammar fairly well thanks to 3 years of High School Latin. At the University of Toronto during grad school, I took a history of the English language course, which helped tremendously when I later took a medieval drama course. It was very clear during that…
Greater parental involvement in school (serving on committees, checking the kids’ homework) does not correlate with greater academic achievement. I wonder how these findings would relate to homeschooling. The theory was that more active and invested mothers and fathers could help close the test-score gap between middle-class and poor students. Yet until the new study,…
NEWS FLASH: If your sources are an off-the-record comment and a thing you chose to do, and you claim that everyone is forced to do the thing you chose to do, then your news item will probably fall apart. “I took a conversation about the preparation for a press briefing and muddied it with my…
“The big danger always confronting CNN — and it’s confronted CNN since CNN went on the air and started doing 24-hour news — is how loud to shout, how much to do this, how much ‘breaking news’ is really breaking news, and how do you convey to your audience this a huge story?” Sesno said…
[C]hildren play to get oxygen, to understand hierarchy, to achieve mastery at a skill, and to socialize. The patterns were simplified into four categories: under the radar, hierarchy, mastery, and social play. —LEGO turned itself around by analyzing overbearing parents – Quartz. Similar:Well-chosen wordsWhy is English spelling such a tangle? I…BooksLaying out our anti-socialization defenses…
Technology and artistry combine in this touching story. After dance teacher Adrianne Haslet-Davis lost part of her leg in the Boston Marathon bombing last year, she made a promise to herself that she would perform again. So, Haslet-Davis spent the next year of her life working with Hugh Herr, who outfitted her with a revolutionary…
Teacher Jen Marten responds to Google’s latest educational initiative: Do you know what Accelerated Reader and programs like it are doing to readers these days? I’ve heard of teachers being reprimanded for not leveling all their classroom books. I know of school libraries where children have to show the librarian a card with their reading…
In a points-based grade book, the student at the top, Zoe, might assume she’s doing great, but according to the standards-based grade book, she (and the teacher) can see that Zoe is not proficient in an essential skill she needs to move forward in her writing education. Conversely, Pierce’s points-based grade would be lower than…
Good advice from Raph Koster to someone who wants to break into the game design business. The advice goes for writers, performers, and anyone creative. The way to better your chances at landing a creative job is to create. See, the filter here that many employers will use is “motivation.” Games are hot now, and…
A digital story is essentially any combination of a spoken narrative and a number of visuals, perhaps with a soundtrack – along with new technologies to edit and share the story. Although the concept of digital storytelling is closely linked to the use of new technology, we shouldn’t forget that it is always the story…
However there’s a particularly sad tale tied up in Versu’s fate (literally) and it’s why you won’t find me applauding this clean up any time soon. Versu was co-developed by acclaimed interactive fiction writer Emily Short, and for over a year most of the stories she’s made have been strictly for Versu. The unfortunate result…
Under the consent decree cite to http://www.ada.gov/hrb-cd.htm, H&R Block must undertake a number of stringent requirements including:Make its web content conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.0 level AA by January 2015.Make its mobile apps conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.0 level AA by January 2016.Appoint a Web Accessibility Coordinator…
xkcd: Types of Editors. Similar:Hollow Pursuits (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 21) Misfit Crewmember Faces…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….AmusingI create five color variations of each #blender3d building I #design, and each of those ha…I create five color variations of each #…AestheticsThe elements, in haikuEach element of the periodic table gets …AmusingEdward Gorey illustrates H.…
This image, of the audio waveform from a sound clip in Audacity, shows a little “umm” right in the center, surrounded by the larger waveforms of legitimate, fully-voiced words. One reason I enjoy working with audio is I can make myself sound very articulate by carefully snipping out all the vocalized pauses in my speech.…
30th anniversary refit of the cruel, cruel text-adventure game. The game is still the same wonderful piece of interactive fiction that Douglas Adams wrote and Steve Meretzky programmed, but in finding it a new home, a few changes needed to be made. The old Flash game would not work on the new servers, and in…