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:NPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as 'state-affiliated media'NPR will…

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:Charlie Brown has his kite-eating tree. I have my keys-eating chair. #foundthem PersonalStarship Down #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 7) During a battle with the Jem'Ha…Rewatching ST:DS9 An enjoyable “crisi…EmpathyMy beautiful daughter says "Happy Valentine's Day"   View t…AestheticsIrrational Geographic : snopes.comBoosting the…

National Headline Contest 2011

Great headlines from winner David Bowman. National Headline Contest 2011. Similar:Here's to the grim-based photojournalist who saved my bacon ~35 years ago Here’s to you, grim-faced photojournal…AcademiaHighlighters and Intellectual Growth in CollegeTucked away in this article on how to av…AcademiaYou have 20 minutes before the sun blows upThis charming game focuses on exploring …AestheticsRiding on…

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:from “The Poet” by Ralph Waldo EmersonThe poets made all the words, and theref…AestheticsYounger Americans and Public LibrariesMillennials are quite similar to their e…BooksVisiting my parents. Admiring their original Hallmark Enterprise Christmas ornament. I ask…AmusingWoodward…

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:The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves…

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…