Playing to Learn

Advice from GameCareerGuide.com resembles what I tell my English literature majors about why they are expected to study and benefit from literary works that they might not choose to read for their own pleasure. (The same goes for students in my Video Game Culture and Theory course.) Before you begin down this path there is…

Tech trio seeks market for new game

Anna L. Mallory (Roanoke Times): The game, a takeoff on programs popular before the Internet and Nintendo, blends social-networking and choose-your-own adventure tools. It allows players to not only play games but also create and share their own adventures in user-submitted fictional lands. Mallory also includes some quotes from former Infocom Imp Steve Meretzky on…

After 10 Years of Blogs, the Future’s Brighter Than Ever

In Wired, Jenna Wortham focuses on what blogs typically look like to journalists. Blogs are re-shaping not just news and entertainment, but also publishing, politics and public relations. Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s most famous blogger, is widely credited with putting a human face on the giant company and facilitating an exchange between customer and corporation. Matt…

"Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news."

Filing this MetaFilter thread on movies about journalism. Similar:Journalism is doing just fine, thanks — it’s mass-media business models that are ailingHmm… I warn my freshmen not to use the…BusinessPost-Pandemic News: 7 Lessons We Can’t Afford to ForgetJournalists are often criticized for emp…CultureMount St. Mary's president fires two faculty members, one with tenureMount St. Mary’s…

Dear Urban Dictionary…

I’m misquoted on your December press page. What I wrote was When students are writing about some areas of popular culture, user-authored sites such as Wikipedia and Urbandictionary, or game databases like MobyGames are actually far more useful than academic sources (which take months or even years to appear).  http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink/banning-wikipedia-at-school-go/ But the quote appears as…

seagulls have no class…..

Blogged as a reference, for the next time I have to introduce students to semiotics (ytmnd.com). Similar:Dr. David von Schlichten honors the spectrum of motivations (not always financial) feature…Dr. David von Schlichten honors the spec…AcademiaMesmerizing Video of a Printer Terminal Running "Adventure" on a PDP-11/45After spending several days clicking but…AcademiaRip Van WinkleCertain it is, that…

"w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary – Yahoo! News

Yahoo | Reuters “w00t,” an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary. Similar:An interesting analysis of Trump's rhetorical strategy.In the Washington Post, Greg Sargent ana…CultureTeenage Usability (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)Teens often work on laptops with track p…CybercultureThe cultural implications of…

Spider Attacks Space Shuttle

Footage from a NASA camera, via CBS: Similar:Happy Easter 2019 Current_EventsRenata, Carolyn and Alex in a scene from this weekend's Pippin.CultureThe t-shirt many professors would enjoy wearing Inside Higher EdAcademiaRefreshing my memory of working with reel-to-reel tape as a radio news intern (c. 1989).HistoryChess robot grabs and breaks finger of seven-year-old opponent Last week, according…

Nobel winner blames cultural decline on "blogging and blugging"

Doris Lessing doesn’t like those silly bloggers one bit, as interpreted here via commentary from Ars Technica: Computers and the Internet and the television have wrought a revolution on ways of thinking and spending leisure time, and Lessing doesn’t believe that society as a whole has really thought through the implications of these changes. “And…