What my classroom looks like during today’s video journalism workshop

Within 3 minutes of being placed into groups, my students were out in the field, practicing news gathering. They have one hour to produce a 2.5 min segment. This is the first graded video project of term. (The other two in-class projects have been dry runs.) Similar:LEGO turned itself around by analyzing overbearing parents[C]hildren play…

Vulcans, The Secret Garden, and Venn Diagrams

  Similar:Troy Sterling and the Active and Passive VerbsJerz > Writing > Grammar…AestheticsLooking forward to what looks like an exciting evening of dance.PersonalSaint Crispin's Day Speech from "Henry V"Dennis Jerz performs the famous speech p…CultureEx-Pope Benedict says the Selfish Gene is science fiction. He's half rightThe Selfish Gene is a brilliant phrase. …AcademiaFoggy April morning on the…

Facebook Puts a Downer on Upworthy

Facebook Inc. changed its newsfeed algorithm. You’ll never believe what happened to Upworthy’s traffic next. —Bloomberg. Similar:The Profession That Does Not Exist | Baffler SymposiumI teach my department’s career planning …AcademiaPage Weight MattersUnexpected consequences, when a develope…CybercultureI've spent 8 hours with 24 different Verizon agents who keep transferring me back and fort…It’s not a Verizon…

Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web

We see narrative everywhere. It’s a primitive urge, a way to tie cause to effect, to convert the complexity of our experience to a story that makes sense. We want to see narrative everywhere. Stories are fun, exciting, comforting. This isn’t just a matter of bedtime stories and art. The saga of the Great Browser War, the…

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

My Anti-Linkbait Pledge: Cynical Overhyping vs. Simply Being Online

When I find something interesting that an online friend has shared via a linkbait site, I hereby pledge that I will link to the origin of the story, rather than a third-party site that republishes it without commentary. The people who share and like and respond to Upworthy and similar linkbait websites are just responding…

Feature: History Lesson: the treasured past of LucasArts point and clicks

I played more of the Sierra point-and-click adventures than the LucasArts ones, but “The Dig” and “Full Throttle” were probably as important to me as half a dozen of my once-favorite TV shows or movies. (I’ve revisited these games by watching YouTube longplay videos.) There’s a fondness throughout the catalogue for the catalogue. Monkey Island…

The Formation of Love

Relationships start with a period of courtship: on Facebook, messages are exchanged, profiles are visited, posts are shared on each other’s timelines. The following graph shows the average number of timeline posts exchanged between two people who are about to become a couple. We studied the group of people who changed their status from “Single”…