New media researcher and capital-letter-avoider dana boyd recently answered questions about teens and their use of social media. These folks will be in college soon, so it makes sense for us to learn about their media habits. @mirroredpool: What borders to teens place of social networking sites and education? How would they react to using…
Shackle yourself to your work, and set the timer.Thanks for the link, Josh. Similar:The Pointlessness of UnpluggingWhat sex was for the Puritans, technolog…Current_EventsMore world-building props for a fantasy #steampunk #Blender3D project.DesignLoved part 2 of The Importance of Being Earnest (live videoconference play from @ThePublic…AmusingHow to promote your laser skin clinic effectivelyI rather miss teaching HTML…
A touching tribute in images and words. Phillip Toledano Similar:The Impact of Google on Our MemorySo what is it that makes us memorize les…CultureStephen Coles’ The Anatomy of Type, reviewed.Talk nerdy to me. You’re my type. What …AestheticsWhat happens to local news when there is no local media to cover it?The pressures on local news…
I recently submitted a conference proposal on cloud computing. Google said in a blog post the outage came down to a simple traffic jam at an Asian data center. The search giant described the situation by using the analogy of a large number of airplanes being rerouted through one airport that was not equipped for…
Clever piece on a games-themed theater performance in Brooklyn next month. One of the more unusual plays in this year’s Antidepressant Festival is Adventure Quest, which mimics old-school computer adventure games, combining live action with vintage graphics and 8-bit music. For those too young to remember these strange, puzzle-intensive artifacts of the Reagan era, the…
Okay, I’m officially lame. I teared up a few days ago during Star Trek, and tonight I teared up during this song from The Magic Treehouse: The Musical, based on a series of easy-reader books by Mary Pope Osbourne. The touring show was in my town tonight; we had front-row seats. The song is a…
The following search on our campus — for a published mystery author qualified to teach creative writing — has been extended, and will continue until filled. Candidates interested in this position should apply immediately, as we will be considering applicants over the summer. — Mike Arnzen Similar:Can you tell the difference between factual and opinion…
A budding artist learns his real skill is not artistry, but the ability to critique. I’m blogging this for the next time I introduce iteration as an important cognitive skill — something that requires dedication, time, and a willingness to take risks in order to learn from failures (something that doesn’t often fit will with…
That’s the space shuttle orbiter Atlantis, with the Hubble Space Telescope, in front of the sun. Wow! It’s difficult to imagine a more epic scene, but this photo has modest origins: amateur Astronomer Thierry Legault shot it with nothing but his own telescope, a solar prism and a Canon 5D Mk II. — Gizmodo Similar:Finished…
High-end journalism can and should bite any hand that tries to feed it, and it should bite a government hand most viciously. Moreover, it is the right of every American to despise his local newspaper – for being too liberal or too conservative, for covering X and not covering Y, for spelling your name wrong…
How many of you make a point by asking how many people in the room already know it, and then praising everyone who does? This fall, I’ll be teaching my most content-heavy course — “News Writing.” I have to teach a lot of vocabulary, along with research, interviewing, revision, and copyediting skills, in addition to…
[C]ourse-management software has become a new kind of campus building–a virtual one where online classes are held and new kinds of “hybrid” courses take place. The unsettled question is who controls what these classrooms look like and how stable their foundations are. Colleges don’t want to just buy these online classrooms out of a catalog.…
Nowadays, layout editors can just expand the size of a photo or cheat the typesize to make a story fill a gap. But in the days before such digital magic, newspaper editors needed a steady supply of filler stories — short items, just long enough to plug gaps of a few inches at the bottom…
Last night, I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a member of the computer science faculty. A math professor was hoping to come, but had a change of plans. The previews suggested it would be a bit intense for me to take the kids to see it, but now that I’ve seen…
Several of my students created videos for class projects. EL200 Jessie Krehlik: Self Defense Videos (with Aero Windwalker) Jessie Farine: Suis La Lune Review Rebecca Marrie created this YouTube Channel, which I hope we can use to sort all the SHU student projects I hear about in the future. I have one independent study project…
It’s the first time I’ve given a final exam in a while. I usually mark final projects or final papers, which I’ve seen in numerous draft forms for the past month, so all I really need to do is read the student’s final reflection, after all the hard work is over. But in a large-ish…
This paper riffs on one of the most popular handouts on my website — Short Stories: 10 Tips for Novice Creative Writers (originally written by one of my technical writing students in 2002, though I continue to tweak it), and applies it to mathematics. [B]efore anyone can understand a piece of mathematics, they must first…
The cuteness of a tribble, the temper of a mugatu, and the ham of a Shatner. Similar:Uncanny footage of an outdoor sculpture. – YouTubeUncanny footage of an outdoor sculpture…ArtHow it feels to watch a user test your product for the first time Jonathon Shariat.AmusingNight Terrors (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Four, Episode 17) Trapped crew grows…
I know that my bridge playset has long since gone to the big warp core in the sky, and I can’t seem to find the shoebox where I kept my original Star Trek action figures from the 70s. Even as a kid, I remember being frustrated that the playset didn’t really look all that much…
A masterful spoof of one of my favorite literary works, skewering a reference book I spent a lot of time with in my formative years.. ‘Tis hard to say, which promises more Loot:Writing, or Telling others how to do’t. — Geoff Nunberg Similar:Using a Typewriter Simulator to Teach Media HistoryWorking on the syllabus for my…