I created a fresh Google Docs page with a few prompts, and shared it with all my journalism students. After a few minutes, they started to flesh it out with responses. The different-colored cursors represent where each student was working in the document. The energy level was very high. I delivered a running commentary… “Good…
Painfully funny-because-it’s-true satire from The Onion’s original coverage of the 9-11 terror attacks. According to Georgetown University history professor Timothy Schuitt, our interest in stupid bullshit is what makes America great. “The United States is a free country, a strong country, a prosperous country,” Schuitt said. “Many veterans gave their lives so we would have…
Star Wars Han Solo in Carbonite Silicon Ice Tray. “All too freezy.” Similar:New infographic to help our graduating English majors make sense of their capstone project…AcademiaEnjoying my "Dystopia in American Literature" class.After a kind of prelude in which we look…AcademiaOffice Hours in the Pool Hall My favorite story comes from the week …AcademiaZork: The…
Instead of dispensing a card like Zoltar, the Gypsy would actually speak your fortune from a hidden record player. When you dropped a nickel in the slot, her eyes would flash, her teeth would chatter and her voice would come floating from a tube extending out of the eight-foot-tall box. Word got out when the…
Until today, the understanding I had of black holes was as a spherical “event horizon” with a singularity at the centre. The event horizon is the surface of no return – anything which goes past it can never escape. The singularity is where quantum gravity kicks in, and is very handy for evading the speed-of-light…
Journalism — New Media » It’s the inevitable stain on every single college commencement, an abominable cliché that speakers use as an ice-breaker: At some point during the address to graduates, the keynote talking-head will deadpan, “And now you will all go on to rewarding careers—except for the English majors.” Hardy-har. But just because the…
Daniel Donahoo: Gamification in Education: Should We Play?. Similar:This is what happened when a KDKA-TV journalist showed biasSocial media platforms are full of peopl…Culture"The threat is no longer simply from government censorship."After using examples from Warsaw and Pra…CultureThe Case Against High-School Sports”I’ve been in hundreds of classrooms,” s…CultureAttached (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 8)…
People love Apple; at best, they appreciate Microsoft (and, more to the point, grow weary of those people who love Apple). What you see is not “Apple is brilliant,” “No, Microsoft is brilliant.” What you see is, “Apple is brilliant.” “Oh, would you shut up already.” —Steve Jobs And The Cultural Apple : Monkey See…
The idea that the internet is a place that’s separate from reality has faded. People generally have online identities that map to who they really are. Outside of a few legitimate edge cases and the occasional sci-fi fantasy, who we are online is simply who we are. Facebook has done more to influence this than…
Be careful, kids, because every time you say “TV sucks,” an advertising executive loses his Lexus. Just watching TV too boring for today’s children – Telegraph. Similar:More than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the… Imagine a society that engineers its…CultureWhy the Internet Isn’t Fun AnymoreI used…
In honor of the cold I am fighting, I just adopted the word “gleimous,” meaning “slimy, full of phlegm.” —Save The Words. Similar:Shovel ReadyShovel Ready I recently heard our dean …CultureAppreciating the production values and so-stupid-it-might-be-brilliant comedy in Avatar: T…The daughter is showing my wife and me “…AestheticsSpit & Polish ''Pac Gentleman"Spit & Polish:…
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Stunning collection of thousands of hours of video clips documenting the moment our world changed. Each image in this sequence represents about 30 seconds of what CNN was airing. Clips are also available from Moscow, Paris, Baghdad, and elsewhere. Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive. Similar:When you need to record footsteps on a sidewalk,…
Samsung notes that “the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table’s surface), and a thin form factor.” You don’t actually see the actor interacting…
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Maura 331, where I’ll spend 6 hours a week teaching has been refitted with these awesome modular tables. Our great CIT folks took out the huge, blocky, immobile PC stations. Since students have their own MacBooks and iPads, there is no reason to clutter up the space. I love the freedom this setup provides. It’s…
I was amused by this little note on the production blog for Seton Hill University’s upcoming production of The Tempest. Notes From 3rd Reading | SHU Tempest. The armchair reader of the script would not have to think about this kind of detail. The production blog also includes reference photos that the designers are using…
Photo captions matter. Someone has to write them. Looking forward to the chapter in my journalism textbook. Here’s a real-world example of how captions can affect the news. In this case, the captions were themselves newsworthy; they created the news. The Weekly Standard reported Aug. 9 about a set of White House photos from Jerusalem that…
At some point, using “syllabi” as the plural of “syllabus” started to bother me. Being “correct” about egg-headed words such as phenomenon/phenomena or criterion/criteria is among the most visible markers of education and class — and insufferable pedantry. For instance, those who wear tinfoil hats while blogging from their parents’ basements are likely to wave…
The day I got my Seton Hill iPad, I put my Palm Pilot back into its box. I didn’t even bother to synch it one last time. I’d been a committed Palm user since about 1997 — longer than I’ve been blogging. If I ever noticed that Hewlett Packard bought out Palm, I’d completely forgotten…