10 Vintage Apple Ads That Time Forgot [VIDEOS]

Awful, awful Apple TV ads. Similar:Storage Wars Sued By Its Star; Show Is Faked And Execs Were Confronted By Cast, Court Pape…”Reality TV” star is shocked — shocked …AmusingThe only snow alert you'll ever need.AmusingToday's students aren't growing up reading "man" for "mankind" — and they notice when the… I’m about 1/4 through teachi…AcademiaComputers and…

Scratch Stats

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:How The Language…

The Poynter Institute's Seminars

 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…

Free cloze test generator

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…

Challenging the lecture-homework paradigm

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…

Study Says Brain Trauma Can Mimic A.L.S.

The mind boggles… Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease. —NY Times Similar:STEM Needs a New LetterCreativity alone does not foster innovat…ArtWhat’s an environmental issue? — Gus SpethI don’t know the provenance of this quot…CultureToday's students aren't growing up reading "man" for "mankind" — and they notice when the… I’m about 1/4 through…

U.S.S. Requin Tour

Similar:Pater Noster Passenger ElevatorsSome 50 years ago, my father took me to …AmusingAlike (2015)This short film reminds us why art matte…AestheticsSherlock Holmes and The Woman (WAOB Live Virtual Performance)I was happy to play Watson. The daughter…BooksEvery few years, I Google the name of the kid who saw "The Empire Strikes Back" the night …History10 questions…

Two Tips for Deliberate Practice

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:Real college classes have writing assignments and required reading.While I can imagine teaching a course th…AcademiaEquilibrium (#StarTrek…

Why Does College Cost So Much?

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…

Yahoo! mail no longer serves mobile version for my iPad

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:How Literature Became Word Perfect There can be no true distinction drawn …CybercultureFacebook Puts a Downer on…

College Undergrads Study Ineffectively on Computers, Study Finds: Students Transfer Bad Study Habits from Paper to Screen

[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…