Several of my journalism students have gotten interested in infographics. I’m not finished with the spring term yet, but I can’t help thinking about the fall. When we look at our reading habits and our daily interaction with all this digital data that surrounds us day and night, it becomes clear that Kress point does…
Nancy Grace and Ashleigh Banfield Hold Split-Screen Interview in Same Parking Lot – Dashiell Bennett and Philip Bump – The Atlantic Wire. Similar:Photo of William Crowther, 2012I just noticed that a few days ago, a Wi…CybercultureWhat Does Children’s “Obsession” With Technology Tell Us About What They Really Need?Wise thoughts. When we look at children…CybercultureJust…
PHD Comics: It’s in the syllabus. Similar:The Media Bubble is Real — And Worse Than You ThinkIn the early 20th century, print journal…CultureIt's Science! Carolyn Uses Anastasia's Lip Balm KitMy friend Anastasia gave me a home-made …AestheticsChoose wisely… you have the power to turn this wrap into a sandwich or a candy bar… or…AestheticsNarnia…
Similar:I've spent 8 hours with 24 different Verizon agents who keep transferring me back and fort…It’s not a Verizon Wireless issue. It’s …BusinessI've missed doing this! Another 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel goodness. #blender3d …AestheticsIn June, 2001 it seems I only blogged three times…I’m not sure what else I was doing durin…AmusingWhat’s My…
Be still, my nerdy heart. Steampunk — which has inspired books, art and fashion — hinges on the idea of a future in which we use steam, rather than oil or electricity, as our primary source of energy. Still confused? Think 19th-century fashion and technology, but applied to a futuristic world. Or check out bing…
In most situations, the person juggling e-mail, text messaging, Facebook and a meeting is [not multitasking, but] really doing something called “rapid toggling between tasks,” and is engaged in constant context switching. As economics students know, switching involves costs. But how much? When a consumer switches banks, or a company switches suppliers, it’s relatively easy…
The Harryhausen family regret to announce the death of Ray Harryhausen, Visual Effects pioneer and stop-motion model animator. He was a multi-award winner which includes a special Oscar and BAFTA. Ray’s influence on today’s film makers was enormous, with luminaries; Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, John Landis and the UK’s own…
Similar:More modular, swappable building components. I’ve got to work on the sides of these mid-si…More modular, swappable building compone…AestheticsA pleasant Independence Day photo shoot with the daughter.AestheticsPuns really matter to us over here in English.I swore I would wield my powers only for…AcademiaMy big brother and my son facing off in chess. I am…
Open Culture. Similar:My simulation project does not require me to master medieval daub and wattle architecture….My simulation project does not require m…AestheticsHow Literature Became Word Perfect There can be no true distinction drawn …CybercultureScammer tricks YouTuber who exposes scams to delete his anti-scammer channelThis one is hard to unpack, and painful …Current_EventsAcademic Writing BluesTwo days…
I don’t expect students to be constantly after me—and I wouldn’t want them to be. I also know that what looms large for them are their friends, families, and personal lives. But I’m beginning to learn that if students at large universities are starved for personal attention and connection, students at small colleges have so…
I’m on a committee that is exploring a multimodal a revision to my school’s freshman writing program. So far I have never seriously tried introducing new media content into a freshman writing course, but this may do the trick. After two semesters of teaching students to read, play, and write IF games, I can say…
Amusing visual representations of the color references in a handful of literary works. These are my colour signatures, an ongoing collection which are basically graphs of all the visual content in the books. For example when it might say ‘yellow brick road,’ ‘yellow’ gets a tally, or when for example in The Road it says…
Fairly early in the semester, I can spot the students who will struggle to complete big assignments, because they are often the same ones who can’t resist the urge to check up on their Facebook friends. Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their…
Tech companies and university administrators get excited from time to time about the value of software that purports to evaluate student writing. This article does a great job explaining exactly what it is that writing teachers do when they respond to student writing. (We’re doing a lot more than looking for misplaced commas.) The past…
Very important bit of history. For a start we would like to restore the first URL – put back the files that were there at their earliest possible iterations. Then we will look at the first web servers at CERN and see what assets from them we can preserve and share. We will also sift…
The other day, a Facebook friend posted a snapshot of a young store employee absorbed by a smartphone instead of stocking or cleaning. My 15yo has expressed zero interest in Facebook, though my 11yo is irked that some of her preteen friends already have accounts (despite the official 13+ Facebook policy). But soon I will…
At the University of Virginia, one summer when I had a summer job writing press releases for a theater company, and I also volunteered for one of the campus papers, I was amused to see how much of my press releases would appear under a different author’s name in the competing student paper. One time…
It’s not that hypertext went on to become less interesting than its literary advocates imagined in those early days. Rather, a whole different set of new forms arose in its place: blogs, social networks, crowd-edited encyclopedias. Readers did end up exploring an idea or news event by following links between small blocks of text; it’s…
Yesterday, I performed in a school matinee for Suessical, dashed back to campus to advise with students working on their 20-page term papers for Literary Criticism, served on oral exam panels for four graduating seniors, then went back to the theater for an evening performance. Somewhere along the way, I found myself chatting in an…
I will have to watch for these uses of “slash.” I wonder if it has any relation to the practice of using a slash to denote romantic pairings in fanfic (e.g. Harry/Hermione). Two weeks ago, one student brought up the word slash as an example of new slang, and it quickly became clear to me…