Pretty awesome, focused use of Inform 7. (I’m generally content just to let my students explore, trusting through experience that they will learn from testing each other’s games and asking me specific questions realated to the stories they are creating, such as, “So how do I make it so you can’t enter the TARDIS without…
Makers, take note. Let’s be clear. This is NOT an attack on teachers. That’s because teachers are being pushed hard to focus on standardized, multiple-choice tests. But as the national Gallup organization points out, we should care about this because “Hope, engagement and well being of students accounts for one third of the variance of…
I just freshened up an older instructional page, Resumes: Top 5 Tips for Job Hunters. I still need to update the examples, but my advice is pretty much the same as it was in the late 1990s when I posted the first draft. Value the Chance to Try Again Balance Creativity with Function Details, Details,…
Similar:Star Trek: The Next Generation Rewatch I was in college and grad school dur…CultureA study in breaking news headlines.For the UK Guardian, the news is the wor…CultureChildren of Eden (Stage Right, April 2014)My wife and I in Biblical costumes for C…CultureWARNING: Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin have been stolen in UKOne of several paintings that were,…
This didn’t even happen at my table. The note was left for another server, who allowed me to take a picture of it at the end of the night. Someone had scribbled on the receipt, “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?” I assumed the customer’s signature was illegible, but I quickly started…
I don’t know what the text I wrote means, I just like it. Oh, phooey. I tried to save my image with my iPad, but it didn’t work. Well, it was fun anyway. PULP-O-MIZER: the custom pulp magazine cover generator. Similar:Hard Time #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 19) O'Brien deals with the implanted m…Rewatching…
Comic Sans is a typeface, not a font. I therefore choose to interpret this song as parody, in which case this video is awesome. “Comic Sans is the best font in the world / If you want your designs to look like they’re done by little girls.” Similar:Google engineers mined the text adventure game "Zork" for…
Er.. no. This is not Anne of Green Gables. Canada’s beloved literary heroine is a freckled redhead who thinks she’s plain. This stock photo hottie in no way fits the bill. And Wuthering Heights is not a prequel to Twilight, as this cover design seems to suggest. Anne Of Green Gables Blond On Book Cover…
Are you aware that our children aren’t being taught to trim their own goose-quill pens? And don’t get me started on the growing number of urban children who lack adequate access to parchment. Here’s a welcome, balanced response to the decreased role that penmanship plays in today’s schools — and in today’s society. My clients…
A wonderful analysis of an important part of world-building in science fiction. As most of you probably know, filmmakers use the term “MacGuffin” to stand for some object that various characters in the tale are competing for. A secret paper, a formula, a stunning gem, a statue of a Maltese falcon… In Fantasy and SF…
This is why I require my “new media journalism” students to do more than simply write stories — they must know how to edit, create multimedia, and work on team projects. See other sobering charts, via Business Insider. Similar:For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.Farhad Manjoo says he’s…
When you click “like” for a cause in Facebook, you may be helping scammers make money. People buy and sell fan pages. That “like” that you clicked gives whoever owns the page more access to your Facebook feed; the more feeds the page can access, the more money it’s worth. Structure of a Facebook scam…
The honeymoon with MOOCs is over. The reality check has finally arrived which was inevitable. MOOCs will not solve all the woes of higher education. It is unfortunate it had to be a class on how to design an online course; it was the Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application [FOE] offered through Coursera…
Similar:"Dammit Mom, I'm a daughter, not a theoretician!"”Dammit Mom, I’m a daughter, not a theor…AmusingThis Woman Inspired One of the First Hit Video Games by Mapping the World’s Longest CaveThe Medium headline calls Colossal Cave …AcademiaNovel defined: a term used by some students to mean “any text we study in English class”AcademiaThat's it my boy,…
This is making the rounds among my English professor Facebook friends. I’m an English Professor in a Movie Good morning, and welcome to Advanced English Literature—I’m Professor Anglosoundingname. As you can see, I have a mane of silver hair and wear a corduroy blazer with leather elbow patches stitched with corduroy threads that have their…
My sister would fill up a video tape with episodes of Babylon 5 as they aired, and she’d send me each tape as it filled up. When a new tape arrived, my wife and I would watch the whole thing in one sitting. While I haven’t deliberately made time to watch any TV show since…
Most teachers are those who, not surprisingly, have made it through the educational system smoothly enough to replicate it, even when they think of themselves as radical reformers of that system. Especially English teachers. English teachers are the gatekeepers to the normal brained. (I see this all the time when I am hanging out with…
Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:CDC: Vaccinated people can resume activities without a mask or physical distance (with som…CDC: “Fully vaccinated people can resume…AwesomeFather copes with toddler son's cancer by creating 'empathy' gameGreen and Larson both admit that even th…AestheticsPsychology Today: Dreams: Night SchoolJay Dixit, in Psychology Today, surveys …GamesPlaying video games linked…
People with similar vocabulary sizes may vary significantly in their talent and in the depth of their understanding. Nonetheless, there’s no better index to accumulated knowledge and general competence than the size of a person’s vocabulary. Simply put: knowing more words makes you smarter. And between 1962 and the present, a big segment of the…
NBC aired doctored versions of a 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case, which led to an apology and several people losing their jobs in April. On Monday, MSNBC aired a video that seemed to show a grief-stricken man being heckled by pro-gun lobbyists while talking about his recently murdered son. via The Hollywood Reporter Similar:Thank you, frog…