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:Yesterday my stack…
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…
There were a lot of spammy hits out there, so here you go, semantic web: I just found a free cloze test generator that I rather like. It doesn’t seem to be able to save an interactive test, or score the test automatically, but it’s still a time-saver. I’ll be using as part of a close…
While discussion has always been a big part of my pedagogy, I very much enjoyed this item from an engineering professor about what happened when he pushed the lecture out of class time, and spent what used to be a lecture period as a lab. In my American Lit class, I’m not planning to record…
The mind boggles… Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease. —NY Times Similar:In September, 2003, I was blogging about the emerging fad of internet plagiarism, ethnical…In September, 2003, I was blogging about…CultureAnd to think… I had just decided to retire this meme because the last time I used in cla…AcademiaYour Students Learn by…
Clever writing in this story about a priest who rides around in a “God Squad” car. Father Strand, who is currently ministering at the Holy Family Catholic Community in Fond Du Lac, Wis., was perhaps slightly surprised when Best Buy sent him a cease-and-desist letter, which told him that the company believes he is infringing…
Similar:My student journos are meming it like bosses.PersonalBoston Bombing Survivor Dances Onstage for First TimeTechnology and artistry combine in this …CultureSome new locations for my #neovictorian #steampunk personal project. Created in #blender3d…AestheticsBeautiful set. Support the humans who do arts in your community (instead of settling for …Beautiful set. Support the humans who d…PersonalMore #blender3d #steampunk…
So, you’re an office worker who sends tons of email? Take one hour, read this article on writing effective emails, and then rewrite your last ten emails according to those guidelines. Forever after you’ll be a better emailer.–Stubbleblog Similar:Microsoft has no shame: Bing spit on my ‘Chrome’ search with a fake AI answer It was…
For 136 years, then, typing in English has meant making certain neurological associations. Words exist in our minds and on our tongues, but they also live in our hands and fingers. Anyone who types envisions and feels words in space, and for English speakers who use technology, this space is defined by the qwerty keyboard.…
Our technology story rests on three strong pillars. First, like many personal services, including much of health care, the law and banking, higher education remains essentially an artisanal industry. These are industries in which technological progress has not reduced the number of labor hours needed to “produce” the service. By contrast, labor productivity in basic…
The very efficient mobile phone version of Yahoo! Mail, m.yahoo.com/mail, no longer works for my iPad. A purple screen with a spinning animation just hangs. What gives? The full web version is way too busy for a touchscreen. Similar:YouTube Now: Why We Focus on Watch TimeYouTube has adjusted its search algorith…CybercultureThe Xplor Store: The Forgotten…
[A] new study indicates that computers alone can’t keep students from falling into their same weak study habits from their ink-and-paper days…. The research, published in The Journal of Educational Psychology, found that students tend to study on computers as they would with traditional texts: They mindlessly over-copy long passages verbatim, take incomplete or linear…
Doom was a ground-breaking 2003 1993 first-person shooter, with a successful business model that involved releasing the first few levels as shareware and charging for the full game. From GoldenEye to Modern Warfare 2, I’ve played first-person shooters made of polygons. As the years advanced, I’ve watched the worlds and figures these games depict advance…
A skillful exercise, this sonnet blog. Such parser game nostalgia warms my heart. You might be int’rested in Graham Nelson’s Command-line Shakespeare remix, The Tempest. Similar:A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse The newest and most powerful technolog…Business5 tips for choosing the right typefaceWhen it comes to picking a typeface, you…AestheticsPartisan…
Here’s the proposal for an in-house “Teaching and Learning Seminar” I’ll be presenting October 13: There is no scholarship on the academic use of iPads, because people like us — who have just begun teaching and advising and facilitating with iPads — haven’t published it yet. We can, of course, draw on related academic inquiry…
Sheaffer Pen celebrates the art of writing, highlighting (predictably) the technological advances of the fountain pen. (Thanks to Ryan Trauman, who posted this on techrhet.) Near the climax of Death of a Salesman, Biff confesses that he has totally blown a business opportunity because he stole a big-shot’s fountain pen. When I first read the…
A new federal law requires publishers to provide textbook price information to professors and calls on colleges to identify course textbooks during registration, giving students more time to shop around. Experts call it a step in the right direction, but not a game-changer. At the same time, a robust online marketplace of used books and…