Games and game technology are poised to transform the way we educate and train students at all levels. Education and information, skill training, even political and religious beliefs can be communicated via video games. But these games and repurposed game technology, collectively called “serious games,” have yet to be fully embraced by educators. It’s not…
—All Time 100 Novels (Time) I’ve read thirty of these, which is embarrassing for an English professor, but when I remind myself that my literary specialty is plays, I feel less guilty. Plenty of contemporary ones I’ve heard of but never got to. Especially because of the confusing “all time” in the title, I wonder why…
Currently I work a very WIDE room for my freshman composition class. I’d estimate it’s about four seats deep and ten seats wide. When I lead a standard class discussion, I have to march the length of the room — from the door to the window at the far end — and project my voice…
As of October 2005, Technorati is now tracking 19.6 Million weblogs The total number of weblogs tracked continues to double about every 5 months The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago, with no signs of letup in growth About 70,000 new weblogs are created every day About…
A. A suburban teenager’s online diary, bursting with angst-y Goth poetry and “creative” grammar. B. An alternative news source that can break stories the mainstream media won’t touch. C. A scholarly notebook, where a professor reviews books, brags about student accomplishments, and posts occasional cat pictures. D. A list of web addresses, often focusing on…
Subject: The expository lecture as the principal means of instruction. Inciter: The expository lecture is simply a talking textbook that has endured too long since the invention of printing. Subject: The student-selected curriculum. Inciter: According to the interest theory of value, the value of academic subjects is not intrinsic. It is bestowed on them by…
You’ll not only be able to watch every film, but also every TV program, news show, documentary, music video, and video blog, and all of it will be playable wherever you go. Great, you think: Thousands of channels, millions of choices, and still nothing worth watching. Nevertheless, “nonlinear TV”—watching the tube on our schedule, not…
“But I do know that it’s true,” said the author of The Book of Virtues, “that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible…
I like the two-tiered set of goals described by my colleague Cynthia, a professor of psychology. “I approached my sabbatical with two sets of expectations: the must-do project and the wish-I-could-do projects,” she said. “I accomplished the former, but didn’t get to the latter, unfortunately.” I happen to know that, if I set low goals,…
Some weblogs are really just private diaries intended only for a handful of family members and close friends. Usability guidelines generally don’t apply to such sites, because the readers’ prior knowledge and motivation are incomparably greater than those of third-party users. When you want to reach new readers who aren’t your mother, however, usability becomes…
Links are now devalued. Page-rank is under attack and the attackers are winning. It won’t be long before Google itself is infested. Tim Bray is right, below, it’s time for Google to get on top of this. They’re both the victimizer and the victim. The spammers found a huge hole in Page-rank. You could drive…
So for instance, shows like Law and Order, CSI, and all their different versions can fetch more than 1mm dollars per episode. Most other shows fall in mid six figure price ranges and can go as low as 50k to 75k for hit reality shows like Survivor. The reality shows go for far less because…
One of the key characters in this film is Toby (played by Toby Froud). Froud is a midget who has been given a Muppet head to wear. And although the head is a good special-effects construction, I kept wanting to see real eyes and real expressions. The effects didn’t add anything. —Roger Ebert —Labyrinth (rogerebert.com) Er,…
“It’s important to emphasize story and emotion and character. This is one of the things that games don’t do,” Spielberg said. “Currently, what games do is they give you the entire story in the run-up to the actual game play from level to level. You get to see a movie, and you’re supposed to remember…
—Teaching Carnival II is here! (Scribblingwoman) A great collection of teaching links, highlighting what teachers who happen to blog are saying about their work. Similar:Techno-greebles. Geometrically these are identical plain cubes, with custom shaders that s…DesignThe woman yelling at a cat is probably not facilitating a nuanced, evidence-based intellec…AcademiaYou're not going to believe what I'm about…
The industry and the market are bewitched by the idea of more pixels and polys. Higher visual quality is fair enough, but why is it equated with better stabs at photo-realism? What’s the point of aesthetics at all? If they don’t matter, how come E3 can sucker-smack a “wow” or two out of so many…
The Internet is now teeming with some 15 million blogs. Although the medium first drew mainstream attention with commentary on high-profile events such as the presidential election, many now use it to chronicle intensely personal experiences, venting confessions in front of millions of strangers who can write back. Nearly half of bloggers consider it a…
Audience members, mostly senior-level editors and writers for women’s magazines, joined the panelists in voicing many familiar complaints about the industry: too many skinny models, even more emaciated feature stories, and too much advertiser influence on editorial content. Laurie Abraham, executive editor of Elle magazine, however, had something else on her mind. The worst thing…
Jack: So …. [pause] Jack: So he won then. [pause] Jill: Yes. Jack: Yes. [longer pause] Jack: He waited long enough. Jill: Yes. Jack: Yes … he did. [pause] Jill: Yes, he certainly waited long enough. Jack: Words. [pause] Jill: What? Jack: Words, in conversion, he was good at that. [pause] Jill: Yes … he…
Fuzzmail records the act of writing and lets you send it as an email. Dynamic changes, typoes, pauses and writeovers are captured and communicated. We created fuzzmail because we wanted a more emotionally expressive alternative to email, so that an emailed love letter does not have to look the same as a business letter. —Fuzzmail (fuzzmail.org)…