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:PICT Classic Theatre brings The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll to the airwavesI’m proud of the daughter for her involv…CultureDaughter Carolyn plays Cherry in Prime Stage's production of The Outsiders (Mar…
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:Closing the Door on the Video Store Era (with tweets) · chutry · StorifyNow that Blockbuster Video has officiall…BusinessOpinion: Time for media to turn up the pressure, Potsdam resident says Sometimes people get the name of my sch…CultureAll About Soap — Why Washing Your Hands Fights the CoronavirusPeople typically think of soap…
[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:Behold this stack of August Wilson library booksYay, libraries. I’m delighted that my co…AcademiaAnother 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. Trying to add a subtle pattern to the light-…One of many steampunk control panels I’v…AestheticsDeadline seems…
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 dawn of the post-literate societyThe world of print is orderly, logical a…BooksThe Surprisingly Savvy Weird Al Internet Machine When…
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:New stamp commemorates Irish priest who saved thousands from the NazisI recall being very moved by the 1980s G…EmpathyText, Speech, Machine: Metaphors for Computer Code in the Law : Computational CultureOn my to-read…
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:Crime coverage on Fox News halved once US midterms were over In the weeks leading up to the US midt…Current_EventsPICT PROUD: PICT actress Carolyn Jerz takes on Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth NightPICT PROUD: She’s appeared on our stage…CultureIdentity Crisis (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 4 Episode 18) The…
Fascinating software study of the Doom iPhone port.http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/index.php Similar:At Computers and Writing #cwcon for the weekend.Am I wise now? At an event for encouragi…AcademiaStack of wooden desk trays with metal supports. #Blender3D. Normal map, glossy map; mahoga…My goal in trying to do an object each d…AestheticsToday’s adulting was brought to you by a failed motor…
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:The reflection should show what's about 60 degrees above the shuttle, not what's in front …AestheticsDonald Trump Is a Broken Man (Assessment by Speechwriter for Reagan and both Bushes)Powerful assessment of…