As citizens of a highly technological culture, our students see (and often use) technologies as a daily experience. Because of their proliferation, these technologies become are often taken for granted and unexplored. This lesson plan asks students to pay attention to these technologies explicitly. In this activity, students brainstorm lists of their interactions with technology,…
So, why do you want to study literature, knowing what you now know?” I wondered if studying a century of cynicism had altered their motives in the slightest. They were all considering graduate school, but their answers had little to do with what I knew they would need to write in their application essays. Sitting…
In an online advertising market increasingly dependent on the Net’s ability to precision- target ads, MySpace offers no sure way to hit the bull’s-eye. Google decides which ads to show based on search terms and page content. By contrast, a typical MySpace pageview doesn’t offer much of a clue about anything. What conclusions can you…
Dunn, now 40, grew up in suburban New Jersey where most of her friends dreamed of marrying their high-school sweethearts and settling down. She, however, was obsessed with music, and one day in 1989 walked into the offices of Rolling Stone. Despite a bad perm and a lack of street cred, her detailed knowledge of…
The best students will learn, retain and understand the material they are taught in class no matter how it is presented. However, there are many students in the class who do not have the attention span to concentrate for the whole lesson, who get distracted or do not do the required reading because they are…
Mouse potatoes joined couch potatoes, google officially became a verb and drama queens finally found the limelight on Thursday when they crossed over from popular culture to mainstream English language. —Jill Serjeant —Mouse Potatoes and googling go mainstream (Reuters) Similar:How 15 minutes I spent with a laptop in 1991 created 2 FT jobs and a promotionIn…
Jerz > Writing > Grammar and Syntax > Active and Passive Verbs Introduction Active verbs form more efficient and more powerful sentences than passive verbs. This document will teach you why and how to prefer active verbs. The subject of an active voice sentence performs the action of the verb: “I throw the ball.” The subject of a passive voice…
Looking at the last two semesters taught by the author before the text adventure game and the most recent two semesters, every measure of student satisfaction is better. The only measure that might be troubling is perceived student workload. This project is very large. Even with high-level architectural design and many useful snippets of code…
The interactive fiction concept might be spreading. Next year, HarperCollins plans to release Pretty Little Mistakes, a 600-page Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-type novel for adults by Heather McElhatton. Depending on the decisions made by the reader, the main character’s options include becoming an actress, an art thief, a cult member, or a murderer. —Aman Batheja —Choose-your-own-adventure novels making…
I was a huge fan of Lucasarts’ adventure games (Loom, The Monkey Islands and so on), and the fact that they were primarily word driven. There were graphics – and what graphics! – but for the most part they presented the player with an interesting dichotomy – nothing ever really happened, but you were responsible…
So which is more sacred? The right to have your dog crap where it pleases? Or the right to privacy? You be the judge. —Puppy Poo Girl (Japundit) I think we’ve all fantasized about somehow “getting back” at people who are rude or inconsiderate in public. Did the young woman in question lose her right to…
—The Information Machine (YouTube) A fascinating vintage piece of rhetoric. It skips a bit in the opening, but settles down quickly. The images of room-sized computers and stacks of punch cards made me swoon. The narrator’s patient voice and the final image — of a rose fading into a heart — show an concerted effort to…
“Had you entered any village on Earth in around 3,000 B.C., the first person you would have met would probably be your ancestor,” Hein marveled. It also means that all of us have ancestors of every color and creed. Every Palestinian suicide bomber has Jews in his past. Every Sunni Muslim in Iraq is descended…
Nowadays, when I sit down to read a book it is so hard to like it. I have forced myself to stare at a page for as long as it takes before I could grasp what I was reading. My attention span for slow paced readings and a teacher standing at the front of the…
Murphy is launching PayPerPost.com, which will automate such hookups between advertisers and bloggers and thus codify a new frontier of product placement. Advertisers pay to post details about their “opportunity,” specifying, among other things, how they want bloggers to write about, say, a new shoe, if they want photos to be included, and whether they’ll…
A look at the documented deaths at Disney’s two theme parks in Florida and California since 1989: —Boy, 12, dies after riding Disney World roller coaster (Herald Today.com) Thanks for the link, Rosemary. Considering the number of people who go through the park, it’s not suprirsing that people die when they happen to be there. Similar:How…
Adorno once wrote “it would be barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz”. Based on what we previously described, it seems that it would definitively be barbaric to create videogames about Auschwitz. However, if we could find a kind of environment where actions are irreversible, some of the main obstacles for designing “serious” videogames would disappear.…
The former vice president’s movie — replete with the prospect of a flooded New York City, an inundated Florida, more and nastier hurricanes, worsening droughts, retreating glaciers and disappearing ice sheets — mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from…
A Jacksonville man says he was duped and robbed by two girls after attempting to meet with a woman he met on the internet. —Teenage Girls Rob Man they Met on MySpace (WOAI.com) I’m uncomfortable with the hype that presents the internet as dangerous (as opposed to the predictablity and passivity of TV). Even this “man…
This semester, I presented my undergraduates with a challenging course. I expected them to participate in class and keep up with assignments. I told them straight out that if they were not to come prepared, stay home. I did not coddle them. The best students thrived on the regimen. The lazy students of course hated…