Gripping story of an effort to use data to predict teaching excellence. As Teach for America began to identify exceptional teachers using this data, Farr began to watch them. He observed their classes, read their lesson plans, and talked to them about their teaching methods and beliefs. He and his colleagues surveyed Teach for America…
Excellent feature about Roger Ebert’s bout with cancer. (Ebert’s own words on his cancer are also worth a read.) When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be. He is a wonderful writer, and today he is producing…
Google Buzz combined the openness of Twitter with the “whoo-hoo look at me!” aspects of Facebook. The result? A total face plant. —PC World Similar:Edible Chess Chess pastry cutters handmade in bra…AestheticsThe White House’s plan to colonize the moon, briefly explained: Putting humans on the moon… Political tensions alone could be a ma…BusinessThe Hitchhiker's Guide…
This week, I’ll be facilitating a week-long collaborative annotation project, as part of the Critical Code Studies Working Group online conference, on the source code to Crowther’s original Colossal Cave Adventure (a classic text-only computer game from the 1970s). According to Donald Knuth, designer of the “literate programming paradigm,” Colossal Cave Adventure is the “ur-game…
“People thought what they had was an address book for an e-mail program, and Google decided to turn that into a friends list for a new social network,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington. “E-mail is one of the few things that people understand to…
This eagerly awaited restored version of Fritz Lang’s silent classic uses what it said to be nearly an hour of footage long thought to be lost.This is one of the the most important film archival discoveries in history, as surprising as if the missing ending of “The Magnificent Ambersons” were found. —Roger Ebert According to…
Valentines for Journalists. Similar:Leonard in Slow Motion (9min video)Leonard exists in slow motion but lives …AestheticsMedia Companies Are Getting Sick of FacebookAll of us with Facebook accounts do work…BusinessLeftovers from the food my colleagues brought in to bribe/reward those few students who sh… Leftovers from the food my colleagues b…AcademiaFake News Can Be Deadly. Here's…
[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:ABC News executive placed on administrative leave after reports surface of insensitive, ra…The Huffington Post reports that dozens …CultureAuthor Says a Whole Culture—Not a Single 'Homer'—Wrote 'Iliad,' 'Odyssey'I think it’s a mistake to think of Homer…CultureThe Galactically…
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:Why No One Clicked on the Great Hypertext StoryIt’s not that hypertext went on to becom…CultureA warning to college profs…
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:WordPress duplicate images driving me crazy I’m using the Atahualpa Theme with WPT…HomePioneering Harvard Blog Site Wrapping It UpI still use blogs.setonhill.edu, which I…AcademiaAnother 10sq cm section of a #neovictorian control panel for…
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:Playing with depth of field (blurring details that are closer than and farther from the fo…AestheticsDetails for a modular mid-range scoutship, from the #steampunk #neovictorian bedtime stori…Details for a modular mid-range scoutshi…AestheticsSherlock Holmes and The Woman (daughter and I rehearsing for a live recording Friday after…CultureThe Best…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:Dozens of Plagiarism Incidents Are Reported in Coursera's Free Online Courses”If we really are trying to teach the wo…AcademiaIn January 2001, I was blogging about Bill Clinton's #WhiteHouse security deposit, anachro…In January 2001, I was blogging about …AcademiaThe science of fake news: Addressing fake news requires a…
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’d never heard of this play before now, but I love it." — World Drama studentA gifted graphic design major in my Worl…AestheticsMissouri governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found…