God forbid we manage to think about the phone as a learning device. I guarantee you that none of the sponsors of the bill have ever typed “define insipid” (or any other word, for that matter) into a text message on their phone and sent it to 46645? (Try it sometime.) I know I mention…
Star Wars. It’s the backbone of geek DNA, even more essential than an intricate knowledge of Linux or the inability to get a date. And now, 30 years after an independent filmmaker blew us away with the exploits of a Cinnabon-coifed princess, a wide-eyed farm boy, a scruffy-looking nerf herder and the baddest throat-crushing villain…
—Poems About Fathers (Poetry Foundation) Having a father and being a father, I found this page interesting. When my own daughter is a teenager, I might not like “Fifteen” as much as I do now. Similar:1,000-pound rosary sends heavy message: PrayThe rosary that retired quarry worker Be…AestheticsThe Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure BooksI didn’t…
Take the role of the FDA inspectors in a world of increasingly numerous food imports and increasingly unmanagable risk. Your charge: try to protect the country from contaminants in foreign food imports using extremely limited resources. The first in Persuasive Games newsgame publication relationship with The New York Times, in which our editorial games are…
Are you a skilled programmer or Web developer? Are you interested in applying your talents to the challenge of creating a better-informed society? Do you want to learn how to find, analyze and present socially relevant information that engages media audiences? Do you see possibilities for applying technology as a way to connect people and…
Tools for Teaching Basic Programming Concepts Alice and Scratch. Filing for future reference. Similar:Sam Shepard Giggles, Doesn't GoogleI wrote my undergraduate honors thesis o…CybercultureRefreshing my memory of working with reel-to-reel tape as a radio news intern (c. 1989).HistoryI MacGyvered myself a heat sinkI’m getting ready to record about 18hrs …DesignThe Harry Potter Decision, as text…
Will you, won’t you… Blackwell’s Quadrille (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) “Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?” — Lewis Carroll’s “Lobster Quadrille” I just tried to order an examination copy of a book from Blackwell Publishing, and when I got what looked like an error message on the final screen (or…
—Shakespeare hates your emo poems (Threadless) Interesting cultural phenomenon… sell a T-shirt, then create a website that lets customers upload photos of themselves wearing the T-shirt. The result turns the rebellious and snarky T-shirt designs into the uniforms of conformist consumer zombies. Similar:Kairos: Open Since 1996As a plucky new faculty member I wrote a…AcademiaJerz Family Tin…
—The civil war in four minutes (YouTube) Similar:Sobering data; stunning visualization.This NYT story on the effects of race on…CultureWhy Did Dial-Up Modems Make So Much Noise?Screeeech . . . hisss . . . squaawk. The…CyberculturePerchance to Dream: LARPing Hamlet at Castle ElsinoreThis is the concept of Inside Hamlet, an…CultureThe secret life of a public library security…
Modern interactive fiction, much more than its technically limited earlier counterparts, displays an incredible range of literary influences, tributes and styles. For Sherwin’s part, science fiction is an inspiration, but the greater part of his text adventures’ efficacy comes from the unique and anarchic style of his characters’ dialogue. “I have been greatly influenced by…
Though Ferguson couldn’t figure out how to make his 1938 scenario work, there was a better expert who could: His 13-year-old son, who was a whiz at strategy games. Rather than rush out to attack Germany, his son carefully set up robust trade agreements with France first to make sure the country felt diplomatically obligated…
—Deleted Scenes (StarTrekHistory.com) An awesome collection of painstakingly-restored still shots and script excerpts, from scenes that were filmed but never aired. Similar:First Stanford code poetry slam reveals the literary side of computer codeLeslie Wu, a doctoral student in compute…AestheticsPositive Feedback on a Blogging AssignmentA former student who is now excelling in…AcademiaI just installed the "Old Layout…
—A Fair(y) Use Tale (YouTube) Amazing demonstration of creative repurposing of Disney’s copyrighted material. Similar:The Neutral Zone (ST:TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 25)Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…CultureWonderfully Detailed Tribute to 1970s British TV Show Space: 1999″A middle aged geek” puts it well: “Utte…AestheticsRebooting “Rossum’s Universal Robots” for the 21st century“It is over three hours long,…
Open source software makes podcasting easy — too easy. Listening to a playlist of first-timer podcasts can leave your ears ringing from sudden changes in playback volume. The problem is audio mastering. Recording sound is simple, but mastering that sound — compressing volume differences, maintaining a decibel ceiling, and similar operations — is anything but.…
Really, though, Xbox Live is just an online simulacrum of a middle-school cafeteria. The crudeness is coming from the kids, not being inflicted on them. If anything, the over-25s we met were an excellent influence. They tended to be polite and mellow and demonstrated good sportsmanship?like saying “good game” after they’d eviscerated me with various…
—Classic Sesame Street – Ernie (almost) repairs the TV (YouTube) My sister sent me this clip, which was one of our favorites when we were kids. (Still is today, now that you mention it… though the production values were notably simpler back then.) Thanks, Rosemary. Similar:Lawsuit Against Warner/Chappell Music Claims Happy Birthday Belongs to Public Domain20…
We know that pro-am journalism can work only if people are persuaded to give their time, lend their knowledge, pool their intelligence. Those are donations, but not of money. Often they are more critical than money. To succeed in this, we have to persuade several hundred people to donate good work to one big story…
We should be jumping for joy every time a student plagiarizes, because that means our existence as teachers of composition is validated, as we have something to teach them – citation, research, the need for critical thinking. We should get down on our knees and thank the Internet for making it easier to plagiarize, because…
“As for my own point of view, I see creative writing not so much as a form of self-expression (or in the case of problem students, acting out), but of learning to express one’s ‘otherness,’ in the sense of being able to use one’s imagination to devise stories or poems out of, as Keats called…
Using games to entice, entertain, and engage introductory programmers has been successful; many of the approaches, however, use graphical programming. This either requires a complex game engine or toolkit for students to program or a lot of additional effort for students to get the game looking the way they want. Taking a page from the…