What would it have been like to be brought up by George Orwell? Pretty grim, you might think. But you would be wrong. In June 1944, Orwell and his wife Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy whom they named Richard Horatio Blair (Eric Blair being Orwell’s real name). Now a retired engineer living happily in an…
I generally discourage my students from delivering PowerPoint presentations, in part because they typically grab images from everywhere and anywhere, which is a practice I don’t want them to retain if they should start working for the student paper. I prefer instead for students to post a richly linked blog entry (with links pointing directly…
A minor disturbance is a 6, while a major disturbance is a 6X. A major accident is a 7X. An officer wanting to grab something to eat? That’s a 50. Got that? 10-4. (Understood.) Dallas police acknowledge there could be a slight learning curve for some officers and dispatchers. But they don’t anticipate issues, especially…
Many married women choose to hyphenate their married name and maiden name. But there are times when you just shouldn’t!! (Mature Content) CBS 13 I laughed so hard my six-year-old daughter rushed downstairs to ask why I was crying. Similar:Hoarding disorders have increased during the pandemic. Here’s how to help a loved one who …Hoarding…
The son of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has taken his own life, 46 years after his mother gassed herself while he slept.– Times Online I’m teaching Plath in my American Lit class tomorrow. Similar:International Studies Association proposes to bar editors from blogging “I think it’s a really strange propo…AcademiaA news site used…
I don’t know any bloggers who don’t crave comments, but there are many more places than blogs that you can leave comments these days: on news articles, photos, videos, comment walls, and more. Comment writing is something of a new art form, and as many people who get comments will tell you, some are great…
You can’t do this on dead trees. A great example of how a new media widget makes a news article interactive. From the Wall Street Journal. The Letter Law View Interactive Compare letter frequency across various English language sources, from Scrabble to newspapers to fiction. Similar:Today's 10sq cm of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dartAestheticsBabel (#StarTrek…
THERE is nothing particularly unusual about the living room of the two-story town house that Scott Veazie shares with his wife in Washougal, Wash., except for one piece of furniture in a corner: a full-size replica of the captain’s chair from the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, as seen in the original “Star Trek” television…
Kristen Seas, “Ripple Effect: A New Perspective on Rhetorical Agency” Lars Soderlund, “Kairos and Emergence” Marc Santos, “Social Bookmarking as Distributed Research” Jeremy Tirrell, “Decorum and Emergent Ethics” I was particularly interested in this panel, in part because I taught the session chair in a few technical writing / new media classes when she was…
[I came in about 10 minutes late so I didn’t catch the beginning. These are my rough notes, lightly edited.] Similar:Undergrad Danielle Sidoti Nails an Oral Interpretation/Analysis of "Barbie Doll" by Marge …In my online “American Literature” class…AestheticsCover your Backside with B-roll on Vimeo Video School on VimeoGreat resource. Cover your Backsi…AestheticsRussia is relying on…
Unused newspaper racks clutter a storage yard in San Francisco, California on Friday, March 13, 2009. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) (Boston.com) I’m not so sure this image really depicts the recession. Rather, it’s a sign that the business model of print journalism has changed irrevocably, due to the internet. The younger generation has not continued the…
Applause for Eric Glicker, who got the ball rolling on an annotated bibliography of social software. Many plans, some commiseration, a few very pleasant surprises. Matthew S. S. Johnson reported that his mid-tenure review committee agreed to accept my blog entry on one of his previous CCCC presentation as a citation. I asked him if…
At the meeting, Charlie Lowe presented Bradley Dilger’s suggstion that we disband the SIG, since we can do more good splitting up and talking about open source issues in different groups, rather than getting together and preaching to the choir. Bradley was taking notes (on his cell phone no less… boy do I feel inadequate,…
3500 attendees, successful innovations in on-site childcare and poster-paper sessions. Finances are good, considering the recession. There will be a slow increase in internet technology; 2 years ago there were 3 dedicated “internet rooms,” this year there were 6, and next year there will be 9. I should check the WPA-L archives for explanation of…
Short animated video Similar:Star Wars: The MusicalThe Walls are Closing In  It’s all …DramaEvolution of Gambling: Pay by Phone CasinoWhat will we use our phones for next?&nb…BusinessStudents are trusting software like this to do their work. The technology will continue t…CultureHow Zuckerberg’s Facebook is like Gutenberg’s printing pressHistorian Niall Ferguson notes that Sili…BooksMultimodal News…
Four brief case studies, representing new and changing populations on campus. The group has left lots of time at the end for discussion. “We don’t have any easy answers.” Kari Warren, ” ‘Did My Mom call you yet?” Teaching Millenial Students (And Their Helicopter Parents)” Heidi Hanrahan, “‘I’ve got to pay the rent’: Teaching the…
Nate Krueter, “High Stakes Style” Star Medzerian, “Rereading the Past: Style’s Place in Our Disciplinary Memory” Mike Duncan, “Destroying the Topic Sentence” William Fitzgerald, “Dressing Up in Style: The Return of the Figurative in Composition Pedagogy” This was one of the most enjoyable 4Cs panels I’ve attended, mostly because it reminded me that I got…
Katie Retzinger, “Immediacy, Desire, and the Other: MMORPGS and Constructions of Identity” Mathew S.S. Johnson “The World is Subject: Gamers as Potential for Change” Phill Alexander: “Running with the Bulls: The Race Rhetoric of the Tauren in World of Warcraft” The study of games and composition have long overlapped in the areas of popular culture…
Pamela Gay, “The Blogitorial: An Alternative ? Genre for Writing” Derek Boczkowski, “When Writing (and Teaching) Goes Public: Blogging and the Wall-less Classroom” Michael J. Faris, “What’s in a ‘Zine? A Public Ancestry of Blogs” What follows are my rough notes, lightly edited. I’ve inserted my own thoughts in square brackets. Similar:Updated a handout on…
Michael Williamson, “Validity and Bias in Writing Assessment” Les Perelman, “The Five Paragraph Essay Makes People Stupid and Machines Smart” Brian Huot: “How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the 5-Paragraph Essay” Nancy Glaser, “One of Many Myths: Does the Five-Paragraph Essay Sink or Swim in Large-Scale Writing Assessments.” Edward White, Respondent. (White recently…