The Pulse: Seton Hill’s iPad Experiment

This month’s edition of The Pulse podcast features a conversation with Mary Ann Gawelek, provost of Seton Hill University, discussing how her institution’s iPad experiment — begun in 2010 — has fared. RPP_102_iPads-in-Education.mp3 via The Pulse: Seton Hill’s iPad Experiment | Inside Higher Ed. Similar:Another 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dartAestheticsA stranger…

Youngest-ever National Spelling Bee competitor says fatigue, stress led to misspelling onstage

“Overall, it was just boring. Really boring! Really boring!” —The Washington Post. Similar:[2.5] FPS MouseLook ScriptYay, me. I got the MouseLook script to w…DesignSuddenly Human (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 4) Picard Bonds with Human Te…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break …CultureMy wife Leigh will direct the small-cast drama "Full Bloom" Aug 30-Sep 2My…

National Headline Contest 2011

Great headlines from winner David Bowman. National Headline Contest 2011. Similar:Silicon Avatar (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 4) Grieving scientist mom wrecks…Rewatching ST:TNG Riker does some ser…CultureThe Surprisingly Savvy Weird Al Internet Machine When he talks about his business being…AestheticsWhere Are the Women?Thanks for the suggestion, Nicole. The …CultureNew book: basic skills for the…

Reading in the Morning

To qualify for a day at the local water park, my daughter woke up early, and is now happily reading. Similar:Behold this stack of August Wilson library booksYay, libraries. I’m delighted that my co…AcademiaThe Ongoing Obsession with Shakespeare’s True IdentityI’ve never been all too keen on Shakespe…AcademiaChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth PreservingMany are wailing that…

Updated Journalism Handouts

I updated the journalism portal of my online writing site, and touched up some existing handouts: News Story vs. English Essay Your English instructor carefully reads your essay to evaluate the depth of your knowledge, the breadth of your vocabulary, and the loftiness of your ideas. Joe Sixpack glances quickly at your news story to…

Stage Right! Homeschool Musicals

My daughter was recently in the Stage Right! Greensburg homeschool preteen production of Once Upon a Mixed-up Fairy Tale, playing Little Red Riding Hood. Here the girls are singing “Astonishing.” My son played Marshal Cord Elam in the teen production, Oklahoma. He’s wearing the vest and white hat. Similar:My theory: Trump was composing therapeutic poetry,…

The Evolution of Adventure: Make Game – Asio City

In the early 1970s William Crowther worked for the high-tech R&D company BBN Technologies as part of a team developing the ARPAnet; a computer network predecessor to the Internet. Crowther has never shown any desire to court celebrity for his achievements. Aside from a couple of interviews from books, Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Genesis II: Creation and…

How and Why to Make Your Digital Publications Matter

My intuition is that, even for the wary, recalcitrant, or skeptical, the ways individuals connect now online and learn from one another’s connections no longer represent the pathological or aberrant (i.e. the shallow, distracted, lonely, asocial, unprofessional digital generation:  you know the litany!), but “the future.”  Since many are worried about “the future,” those who…

Choosing Our Own Adventures, Then and Now

If you were a kid during the ’80s and read any books at all, you probably read at least one Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA), probably by either R.A. Montgomery or Edward Packard. And if you read one, you read more than one. They were addictive, candy for our brains, but also, they empowered us…

Is it time for a text game revival?

It’s also a cultural climate where audiences are increasingly used to thinking of books as media companions — popular film series like Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games, or TV series like Game of Thrones, all feel richer to fans if they read the books as well as enjoy the films. Designers of text-based…