This is the section of the book where the relationships between the characters start to take solid shape, and Hawthorne makes these points numerous times. When we aim to interpret a literary work, our task has to go beyond listing our emotional reactions, our gut reactions, to the events of the plot or the setting.…
I have seen a lot of very talented people fail because they couldn’t, or didn’t, write. And some much less talented people (I see one in the mirror every morning) have done OK because they learned how to write. —Michael C. Munger, Chronicle Here’s a tip that does a good job explaining a concept I’m…
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A great usability strategy, keeping their website so free of clutter like the email address for technical support. Gotta save that valuable screen real estate for the links to the big PDF manuals that haven’t been updated since the upgrade. tiisupport@turnitin.com Once again, that email is technical support for turnitin.com. Just in case you want…
Hawthorne carefully explains to his reader that these people are different from you and me. Our 21st century values may leave us shocked at the sight of male authority figures punishing Hester this way. Of course, the author wants us to be shocked that the authorities are treating Hester this way. Hawthorne created a bleak…
My university set me up with a trial Mobile Me account, and on the set-up day when I created my iTunes account, I was told to type in the Mobile Me address, so I did. I never used the service, though my receipts for iTunes purchases showed up there. A year later when the service…
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Why would an upright young citizen of Salem, with a new wife and a proud family tradition behind him, risk the good opinion of his neighbors, all for a romp in the woods with the wicked? If society is rotten to the core, and your minister, your Sunday school teacher, even the spirit of your…
Sometimes we’re tempted to think that people who lived “back in the day” were simpler and less sophisticated than we are, and perhaps because Rip Van Winkle celebrates a simple soul, we might think that the author himself was also simple. Irving, born in New York City in the late 1700s, wrote early biographies of…
Anytime you post online, you publish. Anything you say or do that might be posted by someone else reflects upon that brand that you’ll be working so hard to build. Don’t undercut your hard work with moments of Facebook foolishness. Nor should you stop reporting when you surf for fun online. Stories can emerge from…
It wasn’t just the blog, but the fact that the student was entrepreneurial and dedicated. In the end, the blog honed a lot of my online skills and was an excellent precursor to the professional world. Additionally, because I was covering the very school I was attending, the blog served as a bridge from my…
Scratch is a kid-friendly programming sandbox, designed by MIT in order to introduce kids to computer science concepts. I’ve been using it with my own children for a couple years, and am currently using it as a gentle introduction to development, for an upper-level class designed for the “New Media Journalism” program. Similar:My Father's Day…
I’m teaching a “New Media Projects” course, which aims to explore the connections between communication with words (linear, narrative) and communication with programming (interactive, procedural). Out in the wider world, The Poynter Institute hosted this session this week. I’m glad to see the profession moving beyond digital cameras and blogging. Programming for Journalists / Journalism…
Grinnell College here, like others, has found it necessary to be explicit about when parents really, truly must say goodbye. Move-in day for the 415 freshmen was Saturday. After computer printers and duffle bags had been carried to dorm rooms, everyone gathered in the gymnasium, students on one side of the bleachers, parents on the…
One exhibit will be a BBC pronunciation guide from 1928, in which broadcasters are told to pronounce combat as cumbat and housewifery as huzzifry. There will be examples of the linguistic games people played, and a poem from Gleanings From the Harvest-Fields of Literature, published in 1867. In it, 130 years before the arrival of…
If you could recommend a game as a community-building activity for your school, what would you recommend? I thought about some of the arty Jason Rohrer games, but maybe those would be more appropriate for a “How can games lead to deep thoughts” pre-discussion, something I might use to get buy-in from the non-gaming community…