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:Blender 3D Flyover of Fantasy Steampunk Spacecraft When my kids were small, at bedtime …AestheticsWhat’s Wrong With Being From the South? Just Ask an Academic in the NorthAs an American studying…
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:Children of Time #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 22) Defiant crew meets happy co…Rewatching ST:DS9 In the Defiant mess…AmusingThe girl sank her brother's last ship with the homophonous cry "I-1."AmusingCanadians Love Poop, Americans Love Pizza: How Emojis Fare Worldwide The company SwiftKey analyzed more tha…AestheticsI'm just getting around to watching this…
[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:No, Running Online Classes Isn't CheaperA good response to the myth that the lab…AcademiaDesk blotters, with procedural leather and wood materials by Blendermada. #blender3dAestheticsA Las Vegas public official is held on open murder charge in connection with…
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:Iffy "Cloak of Darkness" on Inform7/Parchment”Iffy Cloak of Darkness” is based on the…CybercultureA Christmas Carol (WAOB Audio Theatre)I had a…
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:This Is What It Looks Like Just Before the Muslim Brotherhood Jumps YouAs the recent death toll in Egypt surpas…CultureAnne Of Green Gables Blond On Book CoverEr.. no. This is not Anne of…
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:Astaire Unwound (Ceiling Dance from "Royal Wedding")My high school physics teacher, Admiral …AestheticsThe crying Honduran girl on the cover of Time was not separated from her mother, father sa…The original was a stunning image, which…Current_EventsLovely set for @prime_stage Frankenstein. The daughter joined this cast less than a…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:New York Times Ready to Charge Online ReadersI will miss it, but honestly, I do not s…BusinessFacebook Instant Articles Are on Their WayTons of large new media operations produ…BusinessFair use prevails as Supreme Court rejects Google Books copyright caseFair use is a concept baked into US copy…BooksOn…
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:How to lie with charts, by the @NYTimes I tend to defend journalism when sho…Current_EventsUnderstanding Shakespeare: "Pick a play. Click a line…"Pick a play. Click a line. Instantly see…CultureElmo? Yes, I…