“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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:Carnegie Science Center: Roboworld (and a bit of SportsWorks)Here’s a brief video, made up of…
My son’s robot-building team is making good progress. Still Rolling Team Arm: It shoots! Similar:Why No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext StoryIt’s not that hypertext went on to becom…CultureWhy We’ll Never Live in SpaceAs much as I love escapist science ficti…BusinessWearable Tech: Rest in Peace, Google Glass: 2012-2014I did enjoy the opportunity to play with…CultureWhat…
[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:Seton…
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…
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…
[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…
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…
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…
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…
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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…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV_Wo5BsQyA 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;…
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,…
Students learn to evaluate one another’s thinking and challenge one another–and, far more important, they learn from one another and correct themselves. I cannot think of a better skill to take out into the world. By blogging and responding to one another’s posts, my students aren’t learning how to write for an English professor. They…
While I’m not quite ready to ditch the traditional term paper, students in most of my classes use blogs for brainstorming, prewriting, reflection, and synthesis; I encourage students to post new media artifacts as part of a “creative criticall presentation” in lit and media classes. For freshman writing, I stick fairly closely to a shared…