Peter Mawhorter offers up a reading list on games: For anyone curious about what I’ve been reading, here’s the list of what I’ve read to get an introduction to this area: “Why We Play Games: Four Keys to More Emotion Without Story” by Nicole Lazzaro. “GameFlow: A Model for Evalucating Player Enjoyment in Games” by…
I don’t usually link to sites that collect a bunch of links and serve them up on a page full of ads, but this is a pretty good list from Squidoo. Here you’ll find the educational sites where my kids play online, and that are most often recommended by other parents who value fun learning…
In California, the governor’s office reacts to hearing of a vulgar message hidden vertically in the first row of letters in this gubernatorial veto. As The Swamp puts it: “My goodness. What a coincidence,” a shocked, shocked Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear is quoted by the Associated Press as saying. “I suppose when you do so…
What can be learned from Fitzgerald’s tax returns? To start with, his popular reputation as a careless spendthrift is untrue. Fitzgerald was always trying to follow conservative financial principles. Until 1937 he kept a ledger–as if he were a grocer–a meticulous record of his earnings from each short story, play, and novel he sold. The…
A few years ago, my daughter was thrilled to receive a hand-me-down fanny pack. (See the price tag hanging on my spiffy new one?)Earlier this month, when my wife took the kids on a family visit for about 10 days, my daughter cried for me at night. Similar:Apparently Facebook Doesn't Know Me Very WellI’m actually…
Will I miss Geocities? No, not really. In 1998 or possibly 1999, I was teaching web authorship as part of a freshman composition class, and this page from a student project made me keep the “make a Geocities home page” and “make a creative hypertext” project around, even though every semester, a certain chunk of…
Looking forward to this promising resource. I’ve wrapped the blogs up, tidied them up, corrected & updated them and put them into 1 handy ebook for you to download and take home. It means you have have an all-in-one desktop reference to giving your multimedia journalism more spark, and getting in the entrepreneurial mindset. Chapters…
Our decision to homeschool began when we moved from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania with a five-year-old, and found there was no option for half-day kindergarten. We decided the move was stressful enough, and since school attendance wasn’t mandatory until age 7, we decided to handle the afternoon naps, storytimes, and playing-with-blocks ourselves. As long as our…
From Awful Library Books. For more schadenfreud, see Cake Wrecks, Photoshop Disasters, and Fail Blog. Similar:My Dad Is a Right-Wing Asshole (Village Voice)A closed-minded liberal writing a letter…CultureThe Women’s Media Center: The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2014[W]e at the Center are acutely aware tha…BusinessDigital Storytelling (EL231: Topics in Creative Writing) EL231 “Digital…
Great stuff from Mark Marino… not only is the content fascinating, but the blog-sized presentation, for discusison, of a fundamental theoretical concept is a great example of what the blogging medium can do for (and to) scholarship. Item for today: = In Donald Knuth and Luis Trabb Pardo‘s article on the history of computers, the…
I’m gearing up to introduce my journalism students to a news project that requires a basic knowledge of math. I don’t want to make it too frustrating to them, but I do want to emphasize how easy it is to be misled by the math. Margin of Error deserves better than the throw-away line it…
I assigned book one of Maus: A Survivor’s Tale to a “Writing About Literature” class, the designated writing-intensive course for our English majors. The students discussed the abrupt ending, the use of ethnic stereotypes, and of course the comic book medium itself. One student’s “Hearing through Yiddish… Seeing in Ink…” is particularly thoughtful. About a…
Clearly, the computer re-energized Bukowski and gave him new life as a writer. Yet much of Bukowski’s late writing was about old age and death. The computer fit into this. In poems, letters, and in The Captain, Bukowski chronicled his struggles with the computer. The shutdowns, the lost poems, the time at the shop for…
Movie critics are sometimes asked why all movies cost the same to view, even though some may have cost $100 million to make, and others $500,000. It’s a reasonable question. I suppose the reasoning is that you get about two hours of movie either way. Now 3-D has provided exhibitors with a subterfuge to force…
Don’t hate on the TV media just because they helped the nation fall for the Balloon Boy Hoax. Back in the day, the print media were the obvious target. On April 13, 1844, Edgar Allan Poe wrote an article in The New York Sun, chronicling how Monck Mason, leaving England for Paris drifted off course…
When Heene appeared, he instead simply displayed a box into which he invited the media to submit questions, to be answered this evening. —CBS Well, he’s managed to extend his fame by another 15 minutes. Similar:Should your grieving mum see your digital secrets?A US state has passed a law that will gi…Current_EventsBBC News – TS…
A fascinating twist to the complex story behind the legal battle behind the iconic Obama “HOPE” poster. New filings to the court, he said, “state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used…and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in…
Jaw-droppingly cool– though it probably helps if you’ve ever worked with Flash. Animator vs. Animation Similar:A former student working in SEO shared this. I miss Google classic.AmusingIn Pittsburgh, science gets playfulImagine: sharing a secret with a friend …AestheticsShe’s on her way to the @thepublicpgh for two shows today as Margot in Dial M for Murder.She’s…
Although I explained how I track and archive my students’ Twitter activity, I didn’t describe what they actually do on Twitter. That’s because I wasn’t sure myself what they do. I mean, of course I’ve reading their tweets and sending my own, but I hadn’t considered in a systematic way how my students use Twitter.…
Similar:She was a musical ingenue Sunday, filmed a slasher movie past midnight Monday, and was pre…DanceThe Supreme Court could soon change the internet forever — here’s what you need to know There’s a history of case law protecting…CybercultureAnnoyed and Bored by Lazy Anachronisms in The Great Gatsby MovieI just watched the recent Great Gatsby m…AestheticsAdded…