Whereas a mere couple decades ago, one could simply point a finger at the mass media and their powerful cultural producers as the source of most offensive stereotypes about minority groups, Web 2.0 technology and the #Occupy movement shows us how stereotypes can be perpetuated, embellished, nay, even constructed at the grassroots level, by men…
Does anyone still think journalists aren’t creative writers? Take a look at this brilliantly concise character sketch: The rumpled scholar sat discussing the dispute on a recent afternoon in his high-ceilinged living room, which was crowded with books and his paintings. A parrot named Ike provided the occasional squawk, and sunlight streamed over the 400…
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:Fake News Taints Facebook's Trending TopicsIn an experiment conducted over several …CybercultureSeattle Times ‘Outraged’ FBI Created Fake Web Page, News Story To Catch SuspectThe FBI fabricated a story to look like …CybercultureThe A.V. Club's AI-Generated Articles Are Copying…
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:How Technology Has Changed The Way We WriteSocial media services have put writing t…CultureMeridian (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 3, Episode 8) Dax falls for a man from a Bridgado…Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira tells Odo about …EmpathyMy understanding of biased polls is… (choose one) AmusingThe woman and the car: a chatty little handbook for all women who motor…
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:It's such a privilege to introduce these young people to Shakespeare's body of work.After starting my 200-level “Shakespeare…AcademiaPlato's Allegory of the CaveIn The Republic, Plato uses an extended …AcademiaAre we spreading…
My 13yo son plays through chapter 2 of my 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition entry, Fine Tuned. Similar:Stuffed planet Venus, made for me by my dear mother, around 1974.AestheticsMy big brother and my son facing off at chess. I am outclassed! GamesHow One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s LifeA PR professional should have known bett…BusinessIN-ZOOM…
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:The Miracle Worker opens tomorrow.PersonalChallenge Accepted.PersonalThey still need work but we have 2 weeks before classes start, so I feel pretty good.They still need work but we have 2 weeks…PersonalSportsWorks Adventure at the Carnegie Science CenterI confess that I have never been all tha…CultureBlender 3D Flyover of Fantasy Steampunk Spacecraft When my kids…
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:Dress Rehearsal for "My Son Pinocchio"My wife, daughter, and I waiting to star…AmusingWhat Does the Demise of Cursive Mean?Are you aware that our children aren’t b…CultureYesterday's Enterprise (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 15) Alternate histor…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….MediaCameras and Masks: Sustaining Emotional Connections with Your Students in an Age of COVID1…There are…