“But I’m going to be a video game designer!” protests one of my Grade 10 English students. “I don’t need to be able to read novels or write essays.” The way the game is rigged right now, in order to gain admission to a reputable video game design program in a traditional post-secondary institution, one…
The reason they survive to this day, Zipes suggests, is because the classic fairy tales—such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel, which all have analogues in cultures throughout the world—are perfect examples of “memetic” engineering. Drawing on the notion of the meme coined by Richard Dawkins, Zipes imagines the elements of fairy tales competing for…
I’m the one holding the camera and coming in obviously late on the base line, but we’ve all just learned this song within the past 40 minutes or so, and we’re pretty happy with how it’s coming together. Snow White: The Musical “Chores” Rehearsal – YouTube. Similar:Chess with my son. As usual, it didn't go…
Department of Homeland Security-funded video. Part of me hopes it’s more effective than the infamous “duck and cover” cold-war films, but that’s probably the part of me this video is carefully designed to mollify. I must say the chevon design theme looks cool, and the “Run > Hide > Fight” very nicely emphasizes the hierarchy…
Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle transformed an abandoned Walmart in McAllen, Texas, into a 124,500-square-foot public library, the largest single-floor public library in the United States. The design won the International Interior Design Association’s 2012 Library Interior Design Competition. MSR stripped out the old ceiling and walls of the building, gave the perimeter walls and bare warehouse ceiling…
When you talk today to teachers and administrators at high-achieving high schools, this is their greatest concern: that their students are so overly protected from adversity, in their homes and at school, that they never develop the crucial ability to overcome real setbacks and in the process to develop strength of character. American children, especially…
Before class, Watch this 10-minute introduction to Modern Interactive Fiction. Watch this 2-minute trailer for a documentary film on interactive fiction. (Optional: a version of the film is available online: GET LAMP… I’m featured at the 12:30, 17 minutes, and around 41 minutes. You may appreciate the snark I offer at 49 minutes.) In order to understand what…
I’m about to introduce interactive fiction in my “New Media Projects” course. I’m glad to find further evidence that the genre continues to be discovered and shared. If you start playing IF and search for people with the same interests to chat with, good resources, and help of any kind, the intfiction forum is the…
What’s it like on your first day rehearsing for the starring role, joining a cast that’s already been working hard for a week? Yesterday, Elly Noble started rehearsing for “Snow White: The Musical,” part of Stage Right! Greensburg‘s professional theatre season, Sept 21-23 at the Palace Theatre. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wOAF-1c8Yo I managed to pull Elly aside for…
There is a marked difference between how my half-generation and my brother’s engages with and approaches the Internet. I remember dial-up and still have my AOL.com e-mail address (it’s basically a giant spam folder, now). I weed through my Facebook friends weekly, de-friending those whose names I don’t remember or maybe never really knew. I…
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Filing this for future reference. Very frustrating limitation on my machine. Of course, simply looping the “speaker out” jack to the “mic in” jack would probably do the trick, but what a stupid, frustrating kludge. Some PCs have the ability to record “what you hear”, but it depends on the PCs soundcard. But on my…
A few days ago, I blogged about visiting SportsWorks at the Carnegie Science Center. A couple weeks ago, I brought my son and his friend to see an extended tour of the submarine USS Requin. This post is mostly about visiting the Exploration Station, part of the fourth floor installation that features more of the hands-on,…
I’ve been ramping up my video-editing skills, as I launch a year-long project to train students to add video and multimedia packages to the school paper. Along the way, I’ve found several opportunities to make videos just for fun. This is a video I made to help a local nonprofit theater group publicize the brand-new…
In 1812 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published Children’s and Household Tales in the German region of Westphalia and its influence slowly spread all over the world. The Grimms’ book, which they updated in their lifetime, is the second bestselling book in the German language after the Bible. While many in Britain will have first experienced…
I’m generalising wildly, of course, but journalists – particularly student journalists – often try to learn programming from books. That may sound like common sense, but it’s not in an art or a science – and programming is both. Programmers – if I’m to generalise wildly again – typically combine books (which they don’t read…
Multimedia journalism is a pretty nebulous term. As a result, in my experience, when students try to adopt the role two main problems recur: 1) having a narrow assumption of what multimedia means (i.e. video) and 2) not being able to see the multimedia possibilities of your work. Multimedia journalism is a very different beast…
I confess that I have never been all that physical. I do try to take the stairs instead of the elevator at work. I let my daughter talk me into auditioning for a community theater musical (and while my dancing was definitely in the bottom third, or maybe the bottom tenth, I didn’t humiliate myself).…
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The first issue of the Seton Hill student newspaper comes out tomorrow, but the articles are already online. I’m the faculty adviser, so naturally I’m proud. Way to go, new media journos! “The human brain multitasks just fine. If you’re paying attention to me at the same time you are also regulating your heart beat…