Medical News:Playgrounds Too Safe to Keep Little Kids Active – in Pediatrics, General Pediatrics from MedPage Today

Strict safety rules for equipment and low budgets at childcare centers were largely blamed for playgrounds that don’t make kids feel like playing, Kristen Copeland, MD, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues reported. “Fixed playground equipment that meets licensing codes is unchallenging and uninteresting to children,” they wrote in the February issue of…

Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects and Activities for Dads and Kids to Share

I almost cried while reading this. But the best part is getting to share with my kids, share the geeky things that informed my childhood and continue to inform my existence: Star Wars, Star Trek, math, science, reading, writing, music, computers and video games, movies and television. I can’t tell you the joy of having…

Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning Is Wrong | GeekDad | Wired.com

“People tend to try to learn in blocks,” Bjork said. “Mastering one thing before moving on to the next.” Instead of doing that Bjork recommends interleaving. The strategy suggest that instead of spending an hour working on your tennis serve, you mix in a range of skills like backhands, volleys, overhead smashes, and footwork. “This…

Relax: Twitter’s New Censorship Policy Is Actually Good for Activists

The new censorship technology announced by Twitter allows the company to block tweets or users on a country-by-country basis. Previously, blocking tweets had to be done globally, meaning if an oppressive regime asked Twitter to remove a tweet or block a user, it had to be done for everyone in the world. Now, Twitter can…

Could digital humanities to undergraduates could boost information literacy?

I think they mean “Teaching digital humanities to undergraduates could boost…” Pedagogically, undergraduate forays into the digital humanities need not be as complete or ambitious as building formal archives and discovery tools from scratch, the panelists said. Rather, the point is to spur students to “think critically and differently” about digital gateways and to “encourage…

Remembering a Golden Age of Reading

Nothing looses a flood of my childhood memories like picking up a Richard Scarry book, with its cartoon 3D diagrams of complex processes such as how wheat becomes bread, how rain becomes electric power, or how justice relentlessly pursues an unrepentant banana thief, all told within the context of the story of the pig family’s…

Hollywood Edition « Aaron Klein

Since they’re so persnickety about licensing agreements, let’s amend all of our terms of use to require all movie moguls to use a special “Hollywood Edition” of our products. Here are some of the special new features we’ll be giving them… Before you can do a Google search, you have to sit through five minutes…

CASSETTE: A Documentary Film about the Cassette Tape. by Zack Taylor and Seth Smoot — Kickstarter

I did not actually think this Kickstarter project was going to make it when I pledged earlier in the week, but it squeaked by. CASSETTE: A Documentary Film about the Cassette Tape. by Zack Taylor and Seth Smoot — Kickstarter. Similar:U Michigan's North Quad Complex: A Media CathedralThe North Quad Residential Complex at th…AcademiaTopical Satire…

It Shoots! FIRST Robotics Competition Rookie Team #3955

My son’s robot-building team is making good progress. Still Rolling Team Arm: It shoots! Similar:U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human AbilitiesAmericans are more worried than enthusia…CultureEnglish teaching: Johnson: Talking past each otherWhen I got to college, I had already lea…AcademiaWhy scientists should care about artMy artsy daughter loves stories about sc…ArtDance of "the…

On Her One Free Day Between Two Shows…

[View the story “On Her One Free Day Between Two Shows…” on Storify] Update, 23 Sep 2018: I entrusted to Storify whatever my daughter did, and I didn’t save it when Storify went under. It’s not easy to search Twitter for your own posts from a specific date, but I managed to find these. Similar:Teaching…

Newspoet: Tracy K. Smith Writes The Day In Verse

Smith sat down with All Things Considered’s Melissa Block to talk about writing a poem in a hurry. She called the day she spent with NPR’s producers “delightful, and a little terrifying.” But reflecting on the headlines isn’t exactly a new activity for Smith. In fact, she said she often finds that news events are…

Kindle Touch converts book addicts to e-book fanatics – Setonian Online

I know what you’re thinking: Why get a Kindle Touch when you already have an iPad, provided graciously by none other than Seton Hill University? That’s simple. The Kindle Touch’s 6” display features the most advanced E Ink Pearl to date. The biggest advantage to E Ink is it’s anti-glare feature. While there will still…

Wireless computing at Seton Hill: “The most connected university I’ve ever seen… Want to see a large-scale, mission-critical installation in action?”

[A]n interview I did with key staff at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA, not far from Pittsburgh. This is the most connected university I’ve ever seen – every student, and there are around 2200 of these, gets an iPad and a MacBook (!), and, of course, they bring their own wireless devices to campus…

Open Source Citation Style Language Editor Under Development

The original headline for the press release highlights the names of the two groups doing the work, which is of course flattering to the groups, but far less newsworthy to the public the PR people are supposed to be relating with. “A large amount of researcher time is spent formatting documents, rather than getting on…

Documentary Review: Get Lamp « Fictional Fans

I was happy to see this review of a great film I used a few weeks ago in my “Video Game Culture and Theory” class. The first five minutes of Get Lamp alone are worth watching for those who may have tinkered around on a MUD at some point, but know little about the origins…

Notes on The Death of the Author

Some passages that struck me as I reviewed the influential Roland Barthes essay. [I]n ethnographic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or relator whose ‘performance’ — the mastery of the narrative code — may possibly be admired but never his ‘genius’.T he author is…

John Branyan – The Three Little Pigs – YouTube

Similar:Do you really keep a diary?ALGERNON Do you really keep a diary? I’d…Amusing'Atari Dump' Will Be Excavated, After Nearly 30 YearsThe New Mexico landfill or “Atari Dump” …Amusing80 Days: "1872, with a steampunk twist. Phileas Fogg has wagered he can circumnavigate the…I stayed up way too late last night play…CybercultureParallel structure in writing: Use it!These…

London’s Big Ben is leaning, parliament sinking: reports | Reuters

Note headline; here is the only time this Reuters article refers to the “parliament was slipping into the Thames” issue: [Professor John Burland of Imperial College London] dismissed concern in the media that parliament was slipping into the Thames, while the commission’s spokesman denied the walls around the palace were suffering from a particularly bad subsidence…

(Don’t Let Her Be) The One That Got Away — Stage Right Greensburg

Ensemble number from Stage Right Greensburg’s opening night of an original musical version of The Little Mermaid. (Script adapted from Hans Christian Andersen by Anthony Marino; music by David Mahokey and Greg Keresten; lyrics by Greg Keresten; choreography by Renata Marino; musical director Cindy Baltzer; set design by Mark Kissner; construction by Mark Cole; costumes…

Revisiting ‘Zork’: What We Lost in the Transition to Visual Games – Atlantic Mobile

In my mind, the house is clapboard, with a black, precisely shingled roof and shutters in a bit of disrepair. The sky is always an intangible, faded blue, and the forest surrounding the clearing is dark green. In other words, it’s always summer — and hot, since I imagine the house surrounded by long, tan,…