One in a Billion: email tips – Google Search

In the grand scheme of things, this means very little… but still, it’s kind of cool to be one in a billion. —email tips – Google Search. Similar:Granting a Student SuperAdminGoddessOMGWhatHaveIDone Network PrivilegesI should probably not grant a student su…AcademiaWhat Jonson meant by Shakespeare's "small Latin and less Greek" Jonson famously eulogized Shakespeare …CultureThe Post drops…

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:Yes, I do feel rather awesome right now.Lost brand-new earbuds. Reached…

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:A certain potions instructor is done with everything after submitting midterm grades. (Har…AcademiaThe Cover Letter That Led to Awesome InterviewsWhen I do a career planning unit, I am o…BusinessOregon Trail: How three Minnesotans forged its pathRawitsch, a lanky, bespectacled 21-year-…CultureHe couldn’t get over…

National Headline Contest 2011

Great headlines from winner David Bowman. National Headline Contest 2011. Similar:Author Says a Whole Culture—Not a Single 'Homer'—Wrote 'Iliad,' 'Odyssey'I think it’s a mistake to think of Homer…CultureMom’s Fears About Daughter Leaving For College Channeled Into Fight About Storage BinsImpatiently scanning store shelves while…AmusingVideo: Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror – NASA Jet Propulsion LaboratoryYes, 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:Peak Performance (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Two, Episode 21) Riker and his misfit pals challe…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….AmusingMy 1951 day DuoLingo streak was fun, but… Ever since DuoLingo announced it…BusinessShe was a musical ingenue…

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:Yes, we will see almost anything branded…

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…