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:More split-screen actinghttp://youtu.be/EGgeZWskEs8DesignWriting That Demonstrates Thinking Ability While reflecting…

Vulcans, The Secret Garden, and Venn Diagrams

  Similar:Why Audiences Hate Hard News—And Love Pretending OtherwiseA reminder that polls that ask people to…CultureAnother delightful #blender3d #cgi #steampunk control panel. #design #aesthetics #blender3… On a busy day when I spent 7.5 hours o…AestheticsIn February 2000, I was blogging about "The Heist" (Sorrels); the "Instant Muse Poetry Gen… In February 2000, I was blogging…

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 world's population is lopsided.AwesomeA ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ Lesson for the Digital AgeIf we were surprised Tuesday night, it w…CultureCarolyn had fun playing a street urchin this weekend in Stage Right’s production of Little…Another fun show! Great job, cast…

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”…