Many professors will spend countless hours putting together elaborate and voluminous course packets of photocopies for classroom use (I used to be one of them). And now, it is more frequent for technologically minded teachers to file-share large numbers of PDFs through password protected sites on campus. This is so wrong it hurts. We are…
When blogging was young, enthusiasts rode high, with posts quickly skyrocketing to the top of Google’s search results for any given topic, fueled by generous links from fellow bloggers. In 2002, a search for “Mark” ranked Web developer Mark Pilgrim above author Mark Twain. That phenomenon was part of what made blogging so exciting. No…
Via The FPP — first-person painter! I wish the creator hadn’t chosen to go eerie with the mood, that seems like cheating a little… it’s so easy to go scary. Still, it’s beautiful And it’s an XNA-developed title. Interesting. The Unfinished Swan – Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo. Similar:100 Word ChallengeIt is…
Thanks, Mike, for pointing out this one, which is a close second to “Translate Server Error.” The English is clear enough to lorry drivers – but the Welsh reads “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.” When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road…
The Christian Science Monitor plans major changes in April 2009 that are expected to make it the first newspaper with a national audience to shift from a daily print format to an online publication that is updated continuously each day. CSM This paper doesn’t offer the typical flighty, bloggy online chatter that tends to dilute…
Some award-winning sports journalism. Filing it away for future reference. Similar:What Deathbed Visions Teach Us About LivingThis is not only powerful material for t…AwesomeBoosting the Signal: Peaceful Protesters in Baltimore are the NormVideo of people throwing rocks or burnin…CultureSeton Hill graduates its last "New Media Journalism" major this year.The English program is not going anywher…AcademiaNever…
A researcher who studies World of Warcraft likens leading in-game raiding parties to teaching a class. Raiding has taught me that being a good teacher requires laying down strict guidelines while simultaneously demonstrating real care for your students. The stronger the ties of trust and respect between teacher and student, the more weight they will…
One of my freshmen recently submitted a paper about how to overcome writer’s block. It reminded me of this story, which I came across many years ago and was able to find again fairly quickly with Google. Fun stuff. The purpose of this sentence (which can also serve as a paragraph) is to speculate that…
Contrary to popular belief, electronic data has proven to be much more ephemeral than books, journals or pieces of plastic art. After all, when was the last time you opened a WordPerfect file or tried to read an 8-inch floppy disk? “Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution…
From Wired: Similar:New Video Game's Second-Person Shooter Mode Features Someone Just Describing Game To YouI’m introducing text adventure games to …AmusingMany things in the world are awful right now but my latest section of a #neovictorian them…AestheticsMake Video Horizontal Again For confessionals or tapdance routi…AcademiaThe Little Girl from the 1981 LEGO Ad is All Grown…
My colleague David Stanley links to this article. Many people, especially academic experts, have argued that Wikipedia’s articles can’t be trusted, because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted. Nevertheless, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. The reason is that Wikipedia’s community of more than seven million…
Police say she illegally accessed log-in details of the man playing her husband, and killed off his character. The woman, a piano teacher, is in jail in Sapporo waiting to learn if she faces charges of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating data. (BBC) Thanks for the link, Robert. Similar:Emily Dickinson Manuscript for "The Chariot"A…
My six-year-old daughter is in the next room, playing with her hand-made paper dolls. A few minutes ago, I heard her tones get a little deeper, and as I listened, I heard, “I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.” Then I heard the rustle of another paper doll, and my daughter said, again in…
Jim Munroe, a Toronto indie new media author whose work I’ve been following for some time, recently published this useful article on building an audience. Of course he mentions self-published print zines and blogs, but he also mentions another subject I’ve been introducing my students to this term… 6. TEXT ADVENTURE VIDEOGAMESAnyone out there play…
Blogging this to assign for my students to read when the current unit is over. Not surprisingly, the Web serves the first function of a local paper exceptionally well. They deliver information instantly, and articles can be updated and corrected in real time. What is surprising, though, is the unfortunate and neglected condition of most…
My provost just sent this link to me and some faculty from computer science and theater, all of whom I’ve already spoken with, very informally, about some kind of collaboration. Game design has helped rekindle interest in computer science and become a hot new major at more than 200 schools across the country, according to…
I logged onto Yahoo and found that my profile had been changed. The first of Yahoo’s “Top Questions” is “What happened to my profile?” but the link just goes to the aggressively cheerful “Welcome to the Profiles Tutorials!” page, which does not actually answer the question. Another question is “What happened to my alias profile?“,…
A few weeks ago, my editors were bummed when I pointed out that an unusually large number of typos had slipped through the proofreading net and popped up in the headlines. For the most recent issue, the headlines were fine, but I found three typos in bylines. So the student paper isn’t perfect. Even Homer…
Via Karissa: Mr. McCarraher defended his client by revealing his ingenious trump card- the victim’s Facebook page. On that page was a picture of her at a fancy dress party. She was smiling. Here are some of the lawyer’s touching words in describing the victim: “What we have is a person who has post traumatic…
Teaching: Midterm Grades (w00t!) LA100 (14 Oct) EL200 (16 Oct) EL236 (16 Oct) EL405 (16 Oct) Administration/Advising Submit two recommendations (Oct 15) Program Review Executive Summary (Draft Oct 17; awaiting reviews) Advising Grids Internal proposal for a summer outreach project Research Submit co-authored article (been sitting on it for months) Finish article for anthology (probably…