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:I assume the police report didn't specify what kind of underwear,…

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:Vintage Freebies for DesignersI wish I had time for cool stuff like th…AestheticsEveryone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help Mom do the dishes.CultureRediscovering History’s Lost First Female Video Game DesignerRCA’s console never rivaled the impact o…CybercultureVictorian Literature for…

National Headline Contest 2011

Great headlines from winner David Bowman. National Headline Contest 2011. Similar:Why I Resist Web Redesigns (And Maybe You Do, Too)Words many of us never want to hear: “It…AestheticsCreated a new graphic for an existing handout on writing editorials.The “lead editorial” represents the offi…EmpathyLies about history in Texas can be traced to the Lone Star State's…

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:Contagion (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 11)Picard faces aggressive Romulans and an …DesignWe don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.A chemist celebrates the liberal arts. …AcademiaDax (#StarTrek #DS9…

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:Rip Van WinkleCertain it is, that he…

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…