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:CNN Reports On The Promising Future of the Steubenville Rapists, Who Are Very Good Student…Excellent analysis of the emotional impa…Culture''Uh…''And…
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:The End of Headphone Jacks, the Rise of DRMWhen you plug an audio cable into a smar…BusinessSweet Lenten RegretsThis Lenten evening / Your orphaned feas…AestheticsIt's “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” 111th birthdayInteresting introduction to the history …BooksWhy typewriters beat computersThe BBC offers…
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:Blender 3D UpdateHoly ray-tracing, Batman, it’s a Blender…AestheticsYour second attempt at modeling #medievalyork fortifications in #blender3d will be better …Your second attempt at modeling #medieva…AestheticsI have for some reason reached another #duolingo milestone.CultureMany familiar faces in this cast but this one is my favorite. Sold out opening of Grand Ho…PersonalUshering The Lion, the Witch…
In a bid to save money, the station is planning to reassign the technicians who operate the electronic prompters that feed scripted news copy to the anchors while they’re on the air. Instead, the station wants its anchors to do the job themselves. […] “Instead of orchestrating coverage, fact-checking, handling breaking news, paying attention to…
When people can more easily fire off all sorts of messages–from updates about their breakfast to questions about the evening’s plans–being able to figure out which messages are truly important, or even which warrant a response, can be difficult. Information overload can lead some people to tune out messages altogether. Such noise makes us even…
I don’t use APA style, but this article about nine pages of corrections to the APA style manual caught my eye. “It’s egregious,” said John Foubert, an associate professor of education at Oklahoma State University, who bought two copies of the book – one for his office and one for home – when it was…
In the figure of the coltish, resolute Sigourney Weaver, Alien may just be the film that overhauled the old, unreconstructed horror genre and dared to put a woman centre-stage. Because make no mistake: a horror movie is what Alien is. “It’s basically a haunted house film,” explains the critic David Thomson. “The only difference is…
I’ve asked students in my “Writing about Literature” class to write a book review, in order to establish a connection to the literary world outside the classroom. The Purdue Online Writing Lab has a brief handout, Writing a Book Review, which begins by explaining the difference between a “book report” (written for the teacher who…
I just drafted a new handout on writing editorials. I couldn’t find anything online pitched at the proper level, so I had to write it myself. (I’ll probably be able to use a version of this in my freshman comp class too.) Presume that your opponent has good reasons for disagreeing with you. Talk to…
Robin Burkinshaw has finished Alice and Kev, an interesting exercise in computer-assisted storytelling, using screen shots from The Sims 3 to tell the story of a homeless father and daughter. Originally the story was told serially, with a few posts a week; then there were a few very long gaps, but the story is finished…
The AP recently raised eyebrows last year when it announced its intent to charge bloggers who quote from an AP story, and again more recently when it announced vague plans to track the spread of AP stories through secret embedded codes. The AP’s position is that if search engines are making money delivering customers to…
Yesterday in my journalism class, I asked everyone in the room to take out a coin and flip it twice, and raise their hand if it came up the same. Then I asked the ones whose hands were up to flip again, and keep their hand up if the coin came up the same yet…
Course management systems (CMSs), used throughout colleges and universities for presenting online or technology-enhanced classes, are not pedagogically neutral shells for course content. They influence pedagogy by presenting default formats designed to guide the instructor toward creating a course in a certain way. This is particularly true of integrated systems (such as Blackboard/WebCT), but is…
Though moribund today, for decades Usenet was the paper of record for the online world, and its hundreds of millions of “newsgroup” postings chronicle everything from the birth of the web to the rise of Microsoft, as well as more trivial matters. In February 2001, Google rescued that history when it acquired the New York-based…