My daughter delivered the opening “Marley was as dead as a doornail” speech as the narrator in the Stage Right! homeschool production of A Lyrical Christmas Carol. My son played Scrooge. The show was great. During the bows, I was already pretty misty-eyed when my daughter threw her arms around Scrooge and proudly announced, “He’s…
Dictating student feedback, I said “Would a rational person argue against your claim that Poe is a Gothic poet?” My Mac typed: “What irrational person would argue against your claim that hoe is a Gothic punk?” Similar:When Robert Pinsky Wrote a Video Game[F]or a brief time in the mid-nineteen-e…CultureArtificial StupidityThis article will whip your head…
At the head of the team is a grizzled old engineer who’s been at Apple forever. He’s surly and crude, always making vulgar jokes about iPads. But the company can’t afford to get rid of him—he’s the only one who understands how to operate the furnaces in the iTunes boiler room. Then one morning the…
It’s funny because it’s true. Senior Tech #1: How To Master Texting Similar:The Post-Coding Generation?I knew the command line well, and very o…CybercultureGoogle Stops Scanning Student Gmail Accounts for Ads Google said Wednesday that it stoppe…AcademiaWhat can you do with an English Major?AcademiaStar Trek The Original SeriesAmazing mural. Amazing. …AestheticsMaking Interactive Fiction Mainstream: ReadersJon…
We looked at every story we geotargeted during the months of July, August, and September 2012, focusing on the ones that the localized NPR Facebook following liked, shared, and commented on at a high rate. From this group of successful stories, we identified similarities which allowed us to create nine distinct content categories. We…
The Irish have a weakness for puns, and this is as evident in the Book of Kells as it is in Finnegans Wake, although in the former the puns are for the most part visual, for no monk would think to tamper with the Gospel texts…. Thus on the recto of folio 180, a line of…
The Hobbit stood out from the adventure games of the day in three ways, the first of which was its use of graphics. Many scenes in the game included a colour image that may have drawn at painfully slow speed but still offered a far richer experience than the text-only adventures of the day. The second…
Current US law extends copyright protection for 70 years after the date of the author’s death. (Corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication.) But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years (an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years). Under those…
I asked my 10yo why she was moping. “Because I don’t want to be a dancing mushroom,” she said, in a tone that added an unspoken “duh!” Like most of her theater friends, she is on pins and needles, waiting for Stage Right to announce the cast list for next month’s production of Annie “What…
My favorite story comes from the week I held my office hours in the Brother Gorch Pool Hall. Named for the Congregation of the Holy Cross monk who spent decades in charge of our student center and sometimes played pool with students, it was the perfect location for office hours the week we discussed William…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGh6MasSUVc The Search for IT Relevence – YouTube. Similar:Two Steps Down the Interactive Fiction RoadWonderfully detailed analysis of two gro…AestheticsCode? Not So MuchI teach my journalism students to write …ArtLego faces are getting angrier, study findsThe headline is hype. How about “Lego fa…AestheticsOregon Trail: How three Minnesotans forged its pathRawitsch, a lanky, bespectacled 21-year-…CultureDo Cultural…
Fan Video Win Similar:R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Artistic Prosperity TrailerWe rehearsed and recorded a Zoom recordi…ArtThe right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class When it came time for me to make sugge…CultureThespian robot doesn't let stiff acting stop it from applying for Screen Actors Guild cardA clever…
Similar:Ideal Homeschool Summer Day: Studying Latin, Justifying Nilla Wafers, and Making a Duct Ta…Today, I managed to get in a couple of h…AestheticsDesk blotters, with procedural leather and wood materials by Blendermada. #blender3dAestheticsLawyers who won Happy Birthday copyright case sue over “We Shall Overcome” “We Shall Overcome,” a song that was the…BusinessThe Masque of the Red Death,…
The 18th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition has ended. Congratulations to Marco Innocenti, whose “Andromeda Apocalypse” took first place! The top three games were: Andromeda Apocalypse, by Marco Innocenti Eurydice, by Anonymous Guilded Youth, by Jim Munroe The winners of the Miss Congeniality contest were: Guilded Youth, by Jim Munroe Escape From Summerland, by Joey Jones…
Wonderful story! I still remember that chilly December day, sitting in science class. I’d finished a worksheet early and decided to get a TIME for Kids magazine off of Mrs. Estevez’s bookshelf. It was the 2008 Invention Issue, but that wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye. In the magazine, there was an article…
It’s not surprising, then, that being a woman in geek culture was for a long time a profoundly gender-deviant act. “Girl” and “geek” were a zero-sum dichotomy: to claim space in one, you had to relinquish equivalent claim to the other. Recently, though, there’s been a dramatic change: a sudden surge not only in the…
A handful of vignettes communicating the point that mobile use of the Web is on the rise. It’s a challenge to teach students everything that will truly benefit them in a changing world, so for now all I can do is touch on how to use CSS to deliver different versions of a website for…
Have I mentioned lately that I have some really awesome students? Here’s a narrated screencast, presenting a progress report on a term project that involves programming in Inform 7 to create a text-adventure game designed to teach student journalists how to cover a campus event. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKxPi3L6aDs This is what a 21st-century English major can do,…
I’ll have to look into this. Popcorn Maker. https://popcorn.webmaker.org Similar:"We Need to Be More Vigilant With What We Trust From the Internet." –Fake PresidentFrom Buzzfeed: Sitting before the Sta…CybercultureSecond episode of “Electron Jones” paranormal detective audio series is up. waobaudiotheat…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTe47W3S…AmusingDevil's Due (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 13) Picard vs. sexy devil ArdraRewatching ST:TNG after…
It’s a prototypical Silicon Valley ethos, with one exception: The Khan Academy, which features 3,400 short instructional videos along with interactive quizzes and tools for teachers to chart student progress, is a nonprofit, boasting a mission of “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.” There is no employee equity; there will be no IPO;…