Pinkalicious — “Buzz Off”

My daughter plays the Bumblebee in “Buzz Off,” which both ended Act I and opened Act II in last weekend’s Stage Right! production of Pinkalicious. Similar:Refreshing my memory of working with reel-to-reel tape as a radio news intern (c. 1989).HistoryWithout ComPUNction: Doing verbal battle at the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships. “It doesn’t have to…

Make Games in the Classroom with Inform 7

I’ll blog pretty much anything that has to do with Inform 7. Text-based games, or interactive fiction, have continued to evolve since the days of Zork. Many works can be powerful for play in the classroom: Emily Short’s “interactive epistolary” First Draft of the Revolution, Andrew Plotkin’s physics-grounded Dual Transform, Peter Nepstad’s historically grounded 1893: A…

Almost Flat Design

Apple, Google and Microsoft have very different design aesthetics. Almost Flat Design | Matthew Moore Design. Similar:Professor Sees Parallels Between Things, Other Things”By drawing parallels between things and…AcademiaNASA has flown a drone on Mars. A tiny robot. A flying robot. On. Another. Planet. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Succe…AwesomeWhat if Generative AI turned out to be…

Why You Never Truly Leave High School

It’s also abundantly, poignantly clear that during puberty, kids have absolutely no clue how to assess character or read the behavior of others. In 2005, the sociologist Koji Ueno looked at one of the largest samples of adolescents in the United States, and found that only 37 percent of their friendships were reciprocal—meaning that when…

Surviving the Next Apocalypse: a Modest Curriculum

Obviously, given this surge in student demand, we need to make survivalist education another distinctive feature of our educational mission, and we must scramble to build institutional capacity in “apocalypse preparedness.” The admissions office already has brochures: “Where would you send your child: someplace that prepares them for a 20th-century job, or a community that…

Internet Explorer and Murder Rates: More Fun with Causation and Correlation

IE.png – mlkshk. Similar:Selling Point (Audio Drama) I had fun recording this in the stud…Amusing"Only You" — 11yo Carolyn Sings a Power Ballad from "Starlight Express"The observation car Pearl sings of her l…AestheticsIs Superman the next Drudge? Clark Kent quits newspapers in latest issue Even Clark Kent can see through the wri…Current_EventsAdam Savage’s 10 Commandments…

Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax

Great example of investigative journalism, piecing together a coherent narrative from conflicting bits and pieces culled from various sources. A reminder that journalists — even when they are fighting deadlines, and even when they are writing more-fluffy-than-the-crime-beat pieces — must verify claims before going public. Too many sports journalists reported unconfirmed bits and pieces of…

Smartphones, Silly Users

Frequent smartphone use imposes significant psychological costs on the user, and negatively impacts our personal and professional lives. —Daniel Gulati – Harvard Business Review. Similar:The Case for Banning Laptops in the ClassroomMaybe the students in this photo are dil…AcademiaBob Dylan's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speechhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TlcPRla…CultureEverybody Dies (Shakespearean Tragedy Infographic) The image (by Magee and Griffin) is…

Next Role for My 10yo: Peter Pan

She’ll perform next week as the bumblebee “Hi… are you a flower?” in Pinkalicious (sharing the role with two of her fellow Annies) but today Stage Right posted the cast list for the homeschool preteen production of Peter Pan. She’s a natural for the part. The cast list for the teen “Wizard of Oz” should…