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:My Son Plays Mozart Too Fasthttps://youtu.be/gXAtRI1NLxs He says “M…AmusingIn February, 2002, I was blogging about…In February, 2002, I was…
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:If I don’t hang my own artwork on the walls of my #steampunk fantasy ship-of-the-line, who…AestheticsJournalism students guiltily ignoring the "no electronic devices" note in the program duri…That moment when you see a dozen or more…AcademiaFor News Outlets Squeezed From the Middle, It’s…
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:Let's talk about AI art (long, scrollworthy post from The Oatmeal)https://theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_artAestheticsYep, it's time to read student papers on Flannery O'Connor.Academia‘Twelfth Night’ is a Shakespearean hoot, and Prime Stage actors Carolyn Jerz, Malcolm MacK…Why is Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Nigh…AestheticsPioneering Harvard Blog Site Wrapping It UpI still use blogs.setonhill.edu, which…
Fan Video Win Similar:The Hidden Subversive Messages of [MGM's Screen Adaptation of] The Wizard of OzWhen I tried teaching The Wizard of Oz i…BooksWhen Robert Pinsky Wrote a Video Game[F]or a brief time in the mid-nineteen-e…CultureMe: Carolyn, are you ok? Carolyn:Just reminding myself that I am a gift.AmusingSamaritan Snare (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 17)(Rewatching…
Similar:Drinking milk and using the #WaybackMachine to fix broken links in a 10-year-old blog post…PersonalMy big brother and my son facing off in chess. I am totally outclassed here.PersonalSnape and Ginny at the Hogwarts Club event.PersonalFor Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.Farhad Manjoo says he’s a better, more-i…Culture12yo…
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:When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a MoraySomewhere today a headline writer is wea…AwesomeUsing a Typewriter Simulator to Teach Media HistoryWorking on the syllabus for my “Media an…CultureWhat Is Newsworthy? (10m animated lecture)https://youtu.be/xSKllj9wuSk How do j…CultureAmenities are limited on…
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;…