Without deliberately planned, consciously modeled classroom use, it is understandable that students might fall back on their understanding of the blogs as an electronic version of the print-journal, a genre without interactive or collaborative potential. However, we contend blogs can impact the writing classroom effectively, if their integration and function are clearly structured and articulated.…
The board of Pixar Animation Studios, the digital animations company, is set to meet tomorrow to approve the company’s $7bn (£3.9bn) takeover by Disney. The all-share deal will make Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, around $3.5bn and the single largest shareholder in Disney. Jobs created Pixar in 1986 when he paid $10m for…
Dear fellow resident of my Pittsburgh area neighborhood, I rejoice in the knowledge that you are apparently pleased with the performance of the football team that serves our geographical area. By all means, feel free to celebrate. Have another beer or something. But please take your black-and-gold-mitten-clad hand off your car horn so I can…
You can have your “19 years-old,” or whatever you are. I love being 33, because I can look back on everything that I’ve done, and smile. I’ve done it all, baby, while you were in diapers, literally. […] You can have your crappy music, stupid scenes, cliques, fashions or whatever.. I’ve sooo outgrown that, like…
It has been twenty years since Christa McAuliffe reached for the stars. Her launch into the sky on the space shuttle, Challenger, literally became what she had previously anticipated as being, “The Ultimate Field Trip.” What truly prophetic words they were. —A Heavenly Legacy (Reeves Library) A good overview of the legacy of Christa McAuliffe. Similar:All…
Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose, California for an order to hand over the requested records. —Google Won’t Hand Over Files (Wired | AP) Similar:Uneasy Lies the Head — Tyrant: Shakespeare on…
But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we’ve decided not to allow comments for the time being. It’s a…
The result is a display that looks far more like ordinary paper than a liquid crystal display, because the pixels reflect ambient light rather than transmit light from behind. There’s no flicker, because the pixels are completely static (in an LCD or a cathode-ray tube display, by contrast, pixels need to be “refreshed” 60 times…
It is a small firm, which employs 16 people. But there is something that distinguishes Nutzwerk from other companies. Employees can be fired if they are caught complaining in the office. It may sound absurd, but employees have a clause in their contracts which states: “moaning and whinging at Nutzwerk is forbidden… except when accompanied…
—Randomized Garfield Garfield strips, chopped up and re-assembled randomly. Funnier than the originals. Via memepool. Similar:New Voices For The Voiceless: Synthetic Speech Gets An UpgradeWonderful, inspiring article that uses t…CultureThe daughter is doing another thing, this time in Galway, Ireland. AestheticsHow Zuckerberg’s Facebook is like Gutenberg’s printing pressHistorian Niall Ferguson notes that Sili…BooksJimmy Kimmel Reveals…
Participants should bring a sketchbook, journal or artist’s book created or in progress, to share online with a larger audience. Participants will learn a range of techniques for creating online books and walk through the process of setting up a free, online illustrated journal, using a digital camera, scanner and free online software. Participants will…
Life in South Korea revolves around education. Graduating from one of the country’s top three universities is a ticket to a good job and marriage. Thirteen of the 18 cabinet members attended Seoul National, the most prestigious. Students as young as 10 attend hagwon – cramming schools – until 11pm on weekdays and 8pm on…
We [the class] have been talking a lot about Lara Croft on my blog the past couple of days and this is due largely in part to the fact that she is the topic of my term paper. I posted two very distinct pictures of Croft on my blog in order to get a general…
Having suffered a heart attack back in September, Allen had asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor. “At no point are we not going to value the sanctity of life,” said prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon. “We would…
Revision 88 / Serial number 54892 Oval Office You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you. There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of…
Am I mad? Possibly. But, at one level these are just a bunch of “high-flown” questions that really only matter to artists and cynical bastards like me :D. At another level, these issues are critical to advancing the art (that’s right, art) of game design and making a game that Strongbad said were for “intellectual…
Franklin believed men were equal, in a certain way, but he was consistently reluctant to endorse Thomas Jefferson’s notion of human equality, informed by John Locke, that all men are equal in a state of nature, and he rejected the idea that all men are equally loved in the eyes of God. It was manifestly…
— The Carnival of Homeschooling: week 3 (Why Homeschool) Parents’ reasons for home schooling are as varied as their children. A post I wrote about video games is part of this carnival. In the blogosphere, a “carnival” is a collection of links, usually contributed by participants, and then publicized on the blogs of those participants. Usually…
Besides the most obvious danger — adult stalkers enticing teenagers into face-to-face meetings — Cole warned that personal information posted online can also be read by college admissions officers and future employers. “We are trying to figure out how do our school rules relate to this type of behavior,” Cole said. Some colleges have expelled…
He had a nervous breakdown, spent time in hospitals and had to submit to shock therapy. And in 1947, as if he were being punished for having invented television, his house in Maine burned to the ground. One wishes it could be said that this was the final indignity Farnsworth had to suffer, but it…