Ian Bogost Has Won a HuffPo Badge for his Anti-Gamification Comment on HuffPo

Daniel Donahoo: Gamification in Education: Should We Play?. Similar:Small Changes in Teaching: The Last 5 Minutes of ClassI just ordered the book Lang mentions in…AcademiaIn Pittsburgh, science gets playfulImagine: sharing a secret with a friend …AestheticsInfinite Scrolling: XKCD's Creative Insight on a Common Interface IndignityAmusingA Liberal-Arts Education for Business MajorsThe world needs well-rounded leaders. A …AcademiaAlmost…

Steve Jobs And The Cultural Apple

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…

Derek Powazek – “Nobody Uses Their Real Name” and Other Outdated Notions

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…

Just watching TV too boring for today’s children

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:How Fake News Happens: It's simple! A governor tweets a Fox News graphic from a story that…How dare President Biden be invoked by a…CultureLocal TV News Stations Present Amazon…

Save The Words

In honor of the cold I am fighting, I just adopted the word “gleimous,” meaning “slimy, full of phlegm.” —Save The Words. Similar:More Evidence that Choosing a Typeface Is ImportantAestheticsMy understanding of biased polls is… (choose one) AmusingThere’s No Longer Any Doubt That Hollywood Writing Is Powering AITwo years after the release of ChatGPT, …BusinessStudy…

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Fallen Angel « AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com 04/26/2011. Similar:New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand TextFar from being “stochastic parrots,” the…CybercultureWorking Towards a ResolutionLooks like all the content has been remo…BusinessWhat Happens When Digital Cities Are Abandoned?“The great paradox about these digital c…CultureAcademics want to preserve video games. The game industry is fighting them in court.For decades, champions of…

Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive

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:Video games 'teach dyslexic children to read' Playing games…

Science Fiction Used in IPad Lawsuit

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…

Seton Hill Grotto Parking, 6:02.

Look at all these open spaces, thanks to the new employee parking lot. Similar:Girlhood 2014They don’t even seem to want to watch Fr…CultureNot Bad for an English MajorI didn’t have much choice when it came t…HomeHypertext as a Teaching Tool — Brown University Poetry Classroom 1974This short film documents an early attem…AcademiaWhat my classroom looks…

Awesome Modular Tables

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…

Script: Prospero Makes a Circle on the Beach. Scene Designer: “How?”

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…

Solving the White House photo mystery over ‘Jerusalem, Israel’

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…

I’ve Stopped Creating Syllabi. Now I Create Syllabuses.

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…

HP begins TouchPad clearance with $99 fire sale

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…

“Look lives”: Eroding journalistic integrity one hit at a time?

If you watch the news, you’ve probably seen a “look live”. That news-speak term means a reporter who appears to be live in the field, but was taped doing the introduction to their story, or sometimes their throw back to the newsroom or a different type of seemingly live hit, well before the show is…

Photographer Says No To Senior Pictures For Bullying Students – High School Playbook – Main News Story – WTAE Pittsburgh

Freelance photographer Jen McKendrick won’t take pictures of “ugly people” — that is, the high school bullies who were doing what bullies do on Facebook. “If you are ugly on the inside,” says McKendrick, “I’m sorry but I won’t take your photos to make you look pretty on the outside!” A WTAE-TV article explains it thus: McKendrick…

Commonly Misused Words: ALL RIGHT and (Slang) ALRIGHT

For more on ALL RIGHT, ALL READY and ALL TOGETHER, see Grammar Girl. The slang term “alright” is always slang. Similar:William Zinsser: What Is Good Writing? (Clarity, Simplicity, Brevity, and Humanity.)Most of the students in my “News Writing…CultureI'm Asking My Students to Be Deliberate about the Word "Novel"In the past few years, I have noticed…

Commonly Misused Words: THAN and THEN

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Hyperbole and a Half: The Alot is Better Than You at Everything

The Alot is an imaginary creature that I made up to help me deal with my compulsive need to correct other people’s grammar. It kind of looks like a cross between a bear, a yak and a pug, and it has provided hours of entertainment for me in a situation where I’d normally be left…

The Hunger Games: Seton Hill University Student Videos

In addition to iPads and MacBooks, every freshman who arrives at Seton Hill this fall will get a copy of The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. I taught this book last term in my American Lit class. Here are two of the best student projects on The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games: 2 Sides of…