@THATCampPGH is getting started. I spent a half ho…

@THATCampPGH is getting started. I spent a half hour wandering around Chatham… made it to registration just before things got started.

Game Design Program for Education & Training

I haven’t tried GameSalad yet… and won’t even download it until at least after I’ve submitted midterm grades next week, but it looks very promising. (I haven’t yet exhausted the possibilities of Scratch, but since Scratch games don’t work on an iPad, I’m looking at alternatives.) GameSalad Creator is a powerful game design and mobile…

The Abomination of Ebooks: They Price People Out of Reading

Random House, which jacked up its ebook prices to libraries 300 percent last year, limits the number of check-outs per ebook. This means libraries have to lease another “copy” when they reach a certain threshold … as if the ebook had died or something. In fact, that’s the problem some authors have with ebooks —…

I Know How You’re Feeling, I Read Chekhov

Reading Chekhov for a few minutes makes you better at decoding what other people are feeling. But spending the same amount of time with a potboiler by Danielle Steel does not have the same effect, scientists reported Thursday. […] Albert Wendland, director of a master’s program in writing popular fiction at Seton Hill University, said,…

Sinéad O’Connor’s open letter to Miley Cyrus

I was never a fan of Sinéad O’Connor, but I remember being impressed back in the 80s when Madonna’s bohemian antics were threatening to overwhelm her talent (not that I was a fan of Madonna, either), and a wise-sounding O’Connor told her some of the same things she has just told Miley Cyrus. You are…

My new MacBook Air took 10 minutes to render a vid…

My new MacBook Air took 10 minutes to render a video that would have taken 2-3 hours on my previous computer. Thank you, @SetonHillCIO !

Making Interactive Fiction Mainstream: Readers

Jon Ingold describes the gamelike storytelling philosophy of Inklewriter. (I’ll be teaching a “Digital Narrative” creative writing class in J-Term, so I’m on the lookout for resources.) Our stories tend not be about “choosing what happens” – if readers wanted to control a story, they could write one of their own! Instead, the idea is…

I just gave in the 2013 Day of Giving at http://t….

I just gave in the 2013 Day of Giving at pittsburghgives.org

A Brief Tour of the Digital Delights of the Folger Shakespeare Library

But luckily for you, one does not need to go to the Folger Library in DC to see these pieces of history; they live online as well. And, in some cases, online they are even more enchanting. Take, for example, the Wenceslaus Hollar map. In person, it’s lovely, but online, it’s amazing. Go ahead and…

J.J. Abrams apologizes for overusing lens flare: ‘I know it’s too much’

“I know I get a lot of grief for that,” Abrams admitted. “But I’ll tell you, there are times when I’m working on a shot, I think, ‘Oh this would be really cool… with a lens flare.’ But I know it’s too much, and I apologize. I’m so aware of it now.” The director tells…

When I tried to intro my 11yo to “Bohemian Rhapsod…

When I tried to intro my 11yo to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” she started singing, “I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me.” (Wife got to her first.)

While doing a mic check, a student launched into a…

While doing a mic check, a student launched into an epic extemporaneous oration about my fanny pack. #el200

A Catholic Case Against MOOCs

Catholic universities can be true leaders in higher education. Instead of following the hype, they can reassert the belief that education is a moral enterprise that develops human dignity and promotes social justice.MOOCs not only fail to accomplish those goals; they undermine them. And if large Catholic universities pursued strategic aims through MOOCs, they could…

Take It From an Ex-Journalist: Adapt or Die

So what if every reader survey ranked international news coverage near the bottom of what people wanted to read? Didn’t they know our Africa correspondent had just won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting? People needed international reporting even if they were too ignorant to recognize it, and we were determined to give it to…

Computer grading will destroy our schools (says a humanist whose appeal to the humanities will be ignored by technologists)

Sadly, the people who are spending (and receiving) the huge sums of money to support the dehumanization of essay-grading are not the ones who will be swayed by an appeal to the humanities. Once the use of automated essay grading becomes common knowledge, the implicit message will be hard to miss. For any self-aware, warm-blooded…

The 19th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition

Welcome to IFComp 2013, the competition for short text adventures! The games are available! You can play them online or download them for offline play. About the Competition For the last eighteen years, the members of the Interactive Fiction community have held a yearly interactive fiction competition. For fans of the old Infocom games as well as for…

Facebook, Twitter battle in ‘real-time’ arena

“Real-time” conversations are emerging as the new battleground for competing social networks Facebook and Twitter, and for their advertisers. While Twitter has been beefing up its ad business in advance of its stock market debut, Facebook has been adding features such as hashtags – words or phrases that represent a topic of discussion – and…