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…
Ready to mash up gaming and teaching at Computers and Writing 2013. Press X to Teach. Similar:The difficulty is the point (teaching critical thinking skills differs from teaching facts…In the past few years I have seen more s…AcademiaThe iPad Falls Short of Expectations—But What Does That Mean? The iPad market is saturated. Table…BusinessProgress on a…
Set phasers to “nerd”! This summer I’ll be schooling the kids on classic Star Trek and Babylon 5. Similar:Text Adventure Geeks Rejoice: Major Inform7 UpdateI have final grades, an annual report, a…Current_EventsDaily 10sq cm of control panel eye candy. #blender3d #blender3dart #steampunkAestheticsHow the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive The ink used in a fountain pen, the…
Similar:When we play Star Trek Monopoly, I am the Captain’s chair. GamesSpaghetti dinner with my son.PersonalDragging Myself to a New Skill Level with Blender 3DWorking on some very complex stuff in Bl…AestheticsMy students were awesome. So many thoughtful final projects. So much growth. A stressful, …PersonalAt the Johnstown Flood Museum. (May 31 1889 the neglected dam…
[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.”…
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…
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…
It’s rather hard to believe it took them so long. DC Just Announced Plans For Choose Your Own Adventure Style Digital Comics. Similar:Monument Valley: Minimal story, but an engaging world and a satisfying ending.I was in no rush to finish the beautiful…AestheticsWhy teens are leaving Facebook: It’s ‘meaningless’However, there’s a silver lining for Mar…BusinessThe Emissary…
Chris Person posts a link to this very clear critique of news reporting that blames violent video games and movies for real-world violence. One Author Breaks Down the Reality of Violent Games in the Media. Similar:The first ever photograph of light as both a particle and waveThere’s so much I don’t know! When teac…EducationUnearthing a…
It’s your resume, only better: Everyone has a resume. But a blog allows you to highlight the skills on your resume, times ten. For example, if you’re a writer, you can flex your writing muscles and post examples of your creative writing. Even if you’re a tax accountant, you can write your thought-provoking opinions on…
The iPad Mini and the ChromeBook are just loaners, but it was fun to arrange them this way. Similar:Such deep roots you have: How Little Red Riding Hood's tale evolvedDid all these stories spring from a comm…HomeSHU Commemoration of September 11 Terrorism Attacks — Looking Back After 10 YearsCome to listen. Come to share. Come…
Last year, NASA announced that the Curiosity rover had found preliminary evidence of an ancient streambed, indicating that water once flowed freely on Mars. After a few more months of study, that preliminary announcement has been confirmed – Curiosity has found the remains of an ancient stream. —Forbes. Similar:Melissa Terras' Blog: Male, Mad and Muddleheaded:…
The New Mexico landfill or “Atari Dump” where the game console maker buried its mistakes — the biggest being the game E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial — will be dug up by game developer Fuel Industries, which hopes to make a documentary about the project. Also known as the “Atari Graveyard” or the “E.T. Dump”, the desert…
Below is a snippet from “Texty Cloak of Darkness,” which aims to use prose conventions to emulate game-state changes and alternate endings (in a medium designed to be linear). Since our encounter, such as it is, has already begun, it may as well happen in a place. The foyer of the opera house is where…
Earlier this week, the Computers and Writing folks discussed the decline in the use of the word “computer” in MLA job ads. The decline is more than offset by a rise in related terms, so the discussion appropriately focused on the value of “computers” as an umbrella term. (In our daily lives, we increasingly use…
“The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news,” The Sun-Times tells Channick in a statement. “We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements.” “I think I would read that to…
I am working on some conference papers that touch on coding as a liberal art. While reviewing classics, like Stephenson’s In the Beginning Was the Command Line and Knuth’s approach to “Literate Programming,” From the insightful and quirky “A Mathematician’s Lament,” by Paul Lockhart. A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he…
A few months old, but still interesting: entrepreneur and digital culture promoter Diana Kimball responds to a hacker brainstorming session. Alex Payne recently posted a picture of this whiteboard from Hacker School, and it rings wildly true to me. I was interested and encouraged to see that the question “What scares us the most about programming?” elicited more…
A father learns the Postal Service website is no help in teaching a new generation of snail-mailers where the stamp goes. “Get your computer. Go to USPS.gov (turns out it’s really USPS.com).” If he saw for himself – on the screen – how to properly mail a letter, maybe he’d get it, I thought. Unfortunately, the…
I have a Yahoo account that I use when a website or a local business insists I must provide an email address. Over the years, it has gotten clogged with spam. The filter is actually pretty good, so I can always find what I need, but it’s not usually a service I check more than…