In general, I find Turnitin.com’s GradeMark function a time-saver, though the process of creating rubrics is tedious. Over the years, I’ve collected a big list of stock comments that I can drop into a paper easily. Just now, I was re-alphabetizing those comments in order to make them more useful, when the screen started acting…
Touched up this handout on integrating quotations: If your college instructor wants you to cite every fact or opinion you find in an outside source, how do you make room for your own opinion? Paraphrase. You can introduce studies that agree with you (Smith 123; Jones and Chin 123) and those that disagree with you…
For my journalism class, I have already created some fake press releases and other documents and created a scenario that simulates how a student reporter might cover an incident involving a member of the campus. If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that there’s been a real-world incident. I’ve been freshening up what I…
Associated Press The Associated Press has added a new entry on retweeting to its social media guidelines. Staffers are reminded to keep their opinions to themselves. Retweets, like tweets, should not be written in a way that looks like you’re expressing a personal opinion on the issues of the day. Disclaimers — like “retweets do…
Designed exclusively for Amazon Prime subscribers who own a Kindle (sorry, iPad users – the Kindle App alone will not suffice), the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library allows consumers to borrow one book per month without any due dates. Amazon can only offer this option because the books are digital; the company isn’t loaning consumers much…
Testing out the new WordPress iOS app on my iPod Touch. Improved authoring tools, very much appreciated. Similar:Feeling a bit puzzled by the "Twitter Tools" pluginI really like MailChimp’s “Social” plugi…Social_SoftwareAdventure | T.M. CampGreat story of nerdiness and discovery a…CybercultureBen Franklin Sings about Your Rights as a PhotographerIf you’re legally present on a public st…AmusingBlender…
One of the most popular pages on my site — a single page that earns about 20% of my hits — started out as a class assignment for a technical writing student whose project for a real-world client ran into a snag. In Fall 2002, I showed my student Kathy Kennedy a model of a…
Similar:The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely movingFascinating article about how the extrem…CultureMLA Citations: Citation generators make mistakes. Here’s how to spot 5 errors they often m…Overview Animated GIFIndividual SlidesC…AcademiaThe Protagonist’s Best Friend Would Like to Stop Having to Shoehorn So Much Exposition int…Look, it’s just—now that you’re the prot…AmusingWhat to Do With…
I believe I feel like a pribbling idle-headed mumble-news. (Thanks for the link, Jessica!) Tastefully Offensive | Premium Funny: Shakespeare Insult Kit – StumbleUpon. Similar:Delightfully geeky news story about a legal kerfuffle over typefacesI’m very amused at this nerdy news story…AestheticsWhich of my colleagues wants attention?AcademiaMade it to the closing performance @quantumtheatreDramaOne of the benefits…
My 13yo son plays through chapter 2 of my 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition entry, Fine Tuned. Similar:Starting my “Writing about Literature” class by having students react to a John Donne sonn…PersonalEye of Sauron, Hobbit Door, Palantir and One Ring Easter Eggs.AestheticsMasked, vaxxed, and settling in to watch live theaterBarebones is a little black box theater,…BooksR…
The local paper’s headline spins the news a bit more negatively than it probably deserves. I rather enjoy the opportunity to look at some familiar words in a fresh light. Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer: (Current Text) Priest: Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us. (New text)…
[poll id=”2″] Similar:A student who had often been frustrated during my class used this poem in her final reflec… PersonalMy student journalists sport their fashionable “What Would Jerz Do?” wristbands.AcademiaInterface (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 3) LaForge, using experimental augmen…Rewatching ST:TNG The cold open featu…AmusingMe Checking into My #4C19 Conference Hotel RoomI’ll just mark a…
While teaching Richard II in a Shakespeare class, I had to get up to speed on the rules and customs of succession, as Shakespeare knew them, so that my students and I could understand and explore the political issues that Elizabethan audiences would find in the play. News from England today bears word of some…
Students collaborate on a breaking news journalism assignment. I wrote a mock police report, an official statement from a university official, and some personal info from various simulated sources, and gave students 45 minutes to churn out a news story. Here, students collaborate on a Google doc while consulting their textbook on a iPad. My…
In the mid-1950s mathematician John McCarthy issued a call for research on “Automata Studies,” but the phrase was so bland that few people understood what he meant. So he came up with a more provocative description of the idea he was promoting. He called it artificial intelligence. via John McCarthy, the father of artificial intelligence,…
A fantastic series of photos exploring the world as it was. The photo of Louie Armstrong playing his trumpet in front of the Egyptian pyramids is pretty cool, but I’m going to call out this one. NASA’s Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related…
The problem is that Google is killing off the current crop of social functions from Reader – and in doing so, they’re fundamentally altering the way most of us use Reader, and in the process they’re sending a huge archive of curated posts and shares and comments down into the void. And this is a…
Similar:Bacon Starry Night MemeI’ve no idea where the “Bacon Starry Nig…AestheticsCertainty vs. uncertainty: "In which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has r…I’ve taught Plato’s Phaedrus before, but…CultureReal college classes have writing assignments and required reading.While I can imagine teaching a course th…AcademiaCelebration of Writing My freshman writing students…AcademiaBe Kind, for Everyone…
Of Archimedes, he who allegedly popularized the word “Eureka!”: “His cleverness is beautiful. Understanding Archimedes is like understanding the most elegant joke in the world.” The researchers paid their respects to the 10th-century scribe who copied down works by Archimedes of lasting importance. The palimpsest contains the only version of “On Floating Islands” in Greek…
The value of this essay is not specifically in the nostalgia for ye goode ole days of bloggynge, but rather the combination of work-ethic angst and the recognition of the value of investing effort in long-term projects, as opposed to seeking immediate rewards for clear-cut, predetermined actions. The philosophical reflections of the shovel-wielding ditch-digger are…