[O]n this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops. Morning routines have been like this since the fall, when school officials mounted a mobile Internet router to bus No. 92’s sheet-metal frame, enabling students to surf the Web. The students…
Walter Frederick Morrison, the man credited with inventing the Frisbee, has died at the age of 90. —Guardian Similar:‘Hunger Games’ to digitally recreate Hoffman filmmakers behind the “Hunger Games” mo…CybercultureStuffed planet Venus, made for me by my dear mother, around 1974.AestheticsSarek (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 23) Aging with Dignity and Vulcan Min…Rewatching ST:TNG…
Interesting examination of role-playing, illusion, identity, and power in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, one small branch of which was the inspiration for the 1976/7 computer game Colossal Cave Adventure. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave was a popular tourist destination for travelers from around the United States and beyond. The cave…
Zach Whalen is turning his dissertation into a blog-web-thing, in the hopes of developing a book-thing. In whatever form it takes, it’s an interesting approach to a textual study of video games. This study asks how the design and configuration of text in videogames contributes to their textuality. I argue that videogames are texts in…
There’s a dissertation in here. All I have the energy to do today is imply a connection. Using a police state to market technology in 1984: Using a police state to market technology in 2010: Similar:The Language of Gender ViolenceOppressors deny their own agency and deh…CultureInfluencers overtaking journalists as news source: reportTikTok influencers and celebrities…
None of this is a surprise to me, but I’m glad to have statistics to back up my impressions. A very small handful of students whose first introduction to online social networking was the SHU blogosphere, before blogs went really mainstream around 2005, are still blogging here, after they have graduated. In 2003-2005 it was…
I didn’t watch the game, but I did catch the buzz about this ad. Yes, I did tear up. (Wired has details.) Similar:Anthony Weiner, Reality Star of Sorts, Returns to the StumpBecause my beginning journalism students…AmusingYour first #blender3d retractable #steampunk landing wheels will be your worst. But you ha…Your first #blender3d retractable #steam…AestheticsHow Literature Became…
It is dangerous to use local weather events (such as a heavy or light winter) to make judgments about global climate. With that caveat, I’m blogging the following because I’ve noted a shift in the online discussion about “global warming,” or the more general “climate change”. This essay does a good job exploring the events…
Coming up… we’ll tell you whether you’ll be impaled by sharp, radioactive icicles hurled by mobs of rampaging robots in your neighborhood. But first, people panicking, filling up three shopping carts of toilet paper and canned food. Hear the techno-pop pulse of our theme music, and know that you’re being conditioned to think of us…
Here’s hoping I left gas in the snow-thrower. Similar:Portraits of my 11yo: Pretty, Goofy, and Pretty GoofyAmusingMan Infected with Ebola Misinformation Through Casual Contact With Cable NewsOn the other end of the link, the New Yo…AmusingEveryone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help Mom do the dishes.CultureLooking forward to what looks…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:How to Keep Students Writing in the Age of AI Tools In a writing-intensive class, studen…Academiai trained an ai chatbot on my childhood journal entries – so that i could engage in real-t…I kept a journal from Feb 3 1983 (the da…CultureYouTube distortion after the same clip…
Our first few readings in my freshman writing course were personal essays, with a clear narrative. We read an academic paper today, and there’s another assigned for Friday. A few students are already reporting feeling a little lost in the detail. I gather this is because they are used to reading textbooks, where all the…
I wish I’d seen this a few weeks ago, before my Video Game Culture and Theory class ended, but it’s still a welcome find. Similar:I create five color variations of each #blender3d building I #design, and each of those ha…I create five color variations of each #…AestheticsMillennials Shy Away from Voice MailI was happy a…
Pee-wee Gets An iPad! from Pee-wee Herman Similar:8 Questions for 'Star Trek' Superfans Restoring Galileo ShuttlecraftThis nerd’s geek heart grew three sizes …AestheticsFox News, accused of manipulating news images, relabels them as "collages," "regrets these…Using bits and pieces of real news in or…CultureReady to teach another set of students what research is (and what it…
“One of the deepest questions in this field,” Nass says, “is whether media multitasking is driven by a desire for new information or by an avoidance of existing information. Are people in these settings multitasking because the other media are alluring–that is, they’re really dying to play Freecell or read Facebook or shop on eBay–or…
I know, I know: Amazon relied on those $9.99 prices to give it a head start in the digital books market. And raising prices to the $12.99 to $14.99 being talked about could certainly slow sales if consumers don’t bite. But here’s the thing: it’s not as if Macmillan is only raising prices for Kindle.…
I usually carry a digital voice recorder with me. In most states it’s legal to record a conversation if all parties consent, although Pennsylvania law requires that all parties to a conversation be notified that a conversation is being recorded. “It is always legal to tape or film a face-to-face interview when your recorder or…
For the one-credit journalism class that I teach every semester, I’m teaching a unit on editorial writing. Students will take a leisurely 10-chapter journey through Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace. It’s the first time I’ve taught a whole unit focusing on sentence-level phrasing. The class meets once a week, for just one hour,…
I’ve sometimes pointed out to my students that in my generation, graduating from high school and leaving your peers behind to go to college mostly meant that you were saying goodbye. Since then, I have gotten back in touch with a couple dozen high school friends, and even some elementary school friends (including the smartest…
Personal comment, with embedded links to recent postings indicating that I’ve actually had independent thoughts about this issue and I really do have something to contribute other than just reposting something that I found on BoingBoing. A brief quote from something noteworthy or controversial, offering an opinion and inviting readers to comment. Similar:A new study…