Technology’s Impact on Education

Technology’s Impact on Education | Visual.ly. Similar:11001001 (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 14) When Will's holo-date's hacked, and the ship …With the Enterprise in drydock for a com…AmusingMy Memories of "Joseph…" [an original cast member reflects on Rice/Webber/Waring's amazi…My high school Drama coach and freshman …DramaShakespeare's Globe Theatre, Minecraft Stylehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_conti…AestheticsClicking, collaborating, and talking in the…

Wikipedia:VisualEditor – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia is testing a visual editor, in the hopes of lowering the barrier for first-time authors. Wikipedia:VisualEditor Similar:In discord with its own rules, the AP refers to an 18yo mass-shooting suspect as a "teenag…The AP’s own rules say an 18yo is an adu…Current_Events‘Unexpected item’: how self-checkouts failed to live up to their promiseBusinesses still fret…

NAVY TO DROP ALL-CAPS COMMUNICATIONS

Caps off to the Navy’s plan to drop all-caps. OFFICIAL COMMUNICATIONS AND ORDERS HAVE BEEN IN ALL CAPS SINCE 19TH CENTURY. YOUNG SAILORS ACCUSTOMED TO TEXTING SEE ALL-CAPS ORDERS AS A FORM OF SHOUTING! NAVY WANTS ITS ORDERS AND OFFICIAL MESSAGES TO BE MORE READABLE AND LESS RUDE. “WHILE THIS DECISION WAS MADE TO SAVE…

Lego faces are getting angrier, study finds

The headline is hype. How about “Lego faces are getting more diverse?” That would be just as true, and less misleading. Many of the recent sets come with heads that you can rotate — a happy face on one side, a scared or angry face on the other side. So it’s also true that Lego…

Positive Feedback on a Blogging Assignment

A former student who is now excelling in grad school took a moment to share her thoughts about my blogging portfolio assignment, which is usually 25-40% of a student’s grade. In April, a different former student who had blogged for me in several classes, whom I invited as a career workshop guest, surprised me by…

The Essayification of Everything

The word Michel de Montaigne chose to describe his prose ruminations published in 1580 was “Essais,” which, at the time, meant merely “Attempts,” as no such genre had yet been codified. This etymology is significant, as it points toward the experimental nature of essayistic writing: it involves the nuanced process of trying something out. Later…

Ave atque vale

What is a liberal education and what it is for? From Cicero’s artes liberales, to the attempts at common curricula in more recent times, to the chaotic cafeteria that passes for a curriculum in most American universities today, the concept has suffered from vagueness, confusion, and contradiction. From the beginning, the champions of a liberal…

Remembering When Ice Cream Was, You Know, Ice Cream – NYTimes.com

I’ll be alert, you be alert, for Breyers “frozen dairy dessert.” [N]ot all Breyers is what we once understood the name to mean. A Breyers carton in the store’s freezer might be ice cream, but the Breyers carton right beside it, identical in nearly every way, might be something called “frozen dairy dessert” — which,…

Computers and Writing Conference 2013

Where a nerd can be a nerd. (Thanks for sharing the photo, Jill Morris.) Similar:Girlhood 2014They don’t even seem to want to watch Fr…CultureYou'll Cry When You See This One-footed Penguin Rescue the Blind Vegetarian Orphans Who Ru… Watch A Trailblazer Become An Inspir…HomeWhat my classroom looks like during today's video journalism workshopWithin 3 minutes…

It’s Not What You Say; It’s What Google Says

“More people will learn about your institution from Wikipedia than from your own site,” the panelist said. “And in a crisis, more people will learn about what happened from Facebook and Twitter than from your own press releases.” That was a sobering assessment to many of us in the room. —It's Not What You Say;…

Does Math Exist?

Millions of high-school students might wish math did not exist, but, alas, it does, at least as a human creation. The question, however, of whether math exists independent of humans is a much deeper one, and PBS’s Mike Rugnetta gives a fun, brief overview of the age-old philosophical debate in the video above. via Does…

The Speech Eisenhower Never Gave On The Normandy Invasion

A fascinating text from an alternate history. “Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” Eisenhower wrote. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery…

LGN Launches Quandary to Develop Ethical Thinking through Play

The Learning Games Network, a non-profit spin-off of the MIT Education Arcade and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Games+Learning+Society Program, today launched Quandary, a unique game that encourages players to think ethically as they lead a human colony struggling for survival on fictional planet Braxos. The game’s goal is to provide an engaging experience for players aged 8-14…

Picture Books Languish as Parents Push ‘Big-Kid Books’

Picture books are so unpopular these days at the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., that employees there are used to placing new copies on the shelves, watching them languish and then returning them to the publisher. “So many of them just die a sad little death, and we never see them again,” said Terri…

Press X to Teach

Ready to mash up gaming and teaching at Computers and Writing 2013. Press X to Teach. Similar:National Science Foundation announces plan for comprehensive public access to research res…This is good news. It’s unfair that gove…AcademiaIf You Ever Find a Link to ThoughtCatalog, I'm Begging You Not to Click It Here’s a thought… nothing you can…

Preparing for some serious nerd time with the family this summer

Set phasers to “nerd”! This summer I’ll be schooling the kids on classic Star Trek and Babylon 5. Similar:Finished Reading "Fibble," Book 4 in "Heck: Where Bad Kids Go."I finished reading to my daughter the fo…BooksJourney's End (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 20) Picard must relocate a North … Rewatching ST:TNG An obviously tr…CultureThe…

Jerz Family Tin Can Robot Wars

Similar:Airlock for a #steampunk #blender3d project featuring #neovictorian #greebles. #blender3da… AestheticsThe Battle (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 8) A Ferengi plots tricks with Picard's former …A Ferengi set on revenge tricks Picard i…HistoryAt Computers and Writing #cwcon for the weekend.Am I wise now? At an event for encouragi…AcademiaHow Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing…

The Milestones That Matter Most

[W]hen Japanese and American fourth and fifth grade children were asked why they shouldn’t hit, gossip or fight with other kids, 92 percent of the American kids answered “because they’d get caught or get in trouble.” Ninety percent of the Japanese kids asked the same question responded, “because it would be hurtful to someone else.”…

Teenage Usability (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

Teens often work on laptops with track pads, making interactions that require precision — such as drop-down menus, drag-n-drop, and small buttons — difficult. Design elements such as rollover effects and small click zones are also problematic, if they’re usable at all. Small text sizes and dense text make reading difficult. Combine these elements with…

Kairos: Open Since 1996

As a plucky new faculty member I wrote a critique of an early design for the online journal Kairos. My article was snarky in form (I invoked Mystery Science Theater 3000) but serious in intent (“The overdesigned Kairos site perpetuates the myth that online rhetoric is necessarily complex and arcane,” with the earnest bold text in the original). They hypertext…