Students might be surprised to know how nervous some experienced teachers can be at the prospect of a new class. I have taught at least 40 classes, but I still find teaching stressful, particularly after the summer break or a sabbatical. As the first day approaches, I’ll begin to worry: Will my voice tremble? Will…
Since I started using computers, they’ve become almost a million times more powerful. Although big computers can be alienating, their evolution generally leads to a better user experience…. Although the bigger, newer mainframe had an actual CRT screen, it also had obscure commands and horrible usability. Worst of all, it was highly alienating because you…
At the bottom of each entry in this site’s blog, I use </30> to designated the end of the it. In my own way, it’s a nod to the tradition of ending newspaper stories (and occasionally broadcast and magazine pieces) with – 30 -. While no one’s sure why 30 was used as an end sign, there…
3.5 million for heaven. 3.9 million for hell. 9.4 million for Florida. —Bruce Stockler —On the Web, in the Heart (New York Times) An extremely interesting example of using rhetoric to organize data. Similar:Apple faces threat of legal action over ‘in app’ paymentsI haven’t taken the plunge and installed…BusinessI'm just getting around to watching this speech…
The artists will reverse engineer Mystery House, the first graphical adventure game; reimplement it in a modern, free language for interactive fiction development; and make a kit freely available to the public so that others may modify Mystery House Taken Over as they see fit. The artists will create their own modified versions and commission…
The Associated Press story from January this year breathlessly reports that: “U.S. soldiers in Iraq are killing themselves at an unusually high rate, despite the work of special teams sent to help troops deal with combat stress.” You have to scan a lot lower in the story to read the following: “[T]he military has documented…
A Requiem for the Bookmark: Refresh That, Favor This From time to time, when teaching students about the Internet, I catch myself telling students to “hit reload” or suggesting that they “bookmark that.” These are Netscape-era terms, and while Internet Explorer is dominant now, I can’t seem to unlearn those terms. It’s a simple matter…
If you?re curious about how much you think like a leader versus thinking like a manager, answer the following fifteen True or False questions. Then follow the link at the bottom of the page to see the answers and a brief discussion of each question. —Are You A Leader? Part I: The Leadership Self Test (Schuler…
You can choose to fight evil alone, or you can join a gang of good guys. As humiliating as it might be, you could become a sidekick apprentice to characters with more developed skills. So far, the player community is welcoming; there aren’t many foul-mouthed teens and crabby veterans. Newbie-friendly areas exist, and subscribers so…
Flames shot up around a 21-year-old college student whose cell phone rang while he was pumping gas. —Phone Ignites Gas Station Fire (http://www.cbsnews.com) I’m glad the guy wasn’t hurt. If we could rig up something similar in classrooms and theatres, I bet people would remember to shut off their ringers. The graphic shows what looks like…
What does one do with a blog? Here are links to some of my favorite recent postings that highlight part of what I do with my blog. Teaching Plagiarism Roundup In honor of Mike Arnzen’s unmasking of a plagiarist, here are a few recent blog entries on academic dishonesty. Circle Games and Cyberpunk In order…
—Playing with ‘Web Album Generator’Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I’ve got a huge backlog of digital images that I’ve wanted to post online… I’m using Web Album Generator, which automates the navigation and the thumbnail. Now making a collection of images is a lot less fiddly — though I wish it offered some way to add a…
But the surprise for Xbox was Advent Rising from Majesco, a super-stylish “Star Wars”-meets-“The Matrix” action adventure, which is being written by sci-fi author Orson Scott Card, best known for the “Ender’s Game” series of novels. When writers of his caliber want to work on videogames, it’s more proof that electronic entertainment is no passing…
Movable Mena?Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Six hundred trackbacks, and Six Apart backtracks… partly. Similar:‘You deserve that’: Commissioner’s wife arrested after dumping soda over a reporter’s head It was supposed to be a county…Current_EventsCarolyn made it to the next round of the 2017 PPT Shakespeare Monologue contest. Finals ar…CultureCNN fires Chris CuomoThis is what an ethical news…
You are a student. That should be enough to depress you in these tough economic Liberal dominated times, but you are troubled by a weightier burden – ITEC802. What you though would be a nice little romp in the woods has turned out to be tougher than finding weapons of mass distruction. You want your…
First, words have rules. The mansion of the Word Wizard has many rules. The game of Ad Verbum also has rules. Much of the problem-solving and puzzle-unpuzzling of the text is in recognizing the rules in play and using them to get out of sticky situations. In fact, the player (via text) and adventurer (via…
These games aren’t much fun to play, even if you are a Bush supporter. Nevertheless, it’s significant that a major political party now sees games as a useful campaigning tool. Presumably, the RNC thinks Tax Invaders will get Bush’s economic policy across to “the kids”. But it’s hard to say for certain because, so far,…
WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your software, not fight it. —WordPress Well, that’s enough MT freakout for today. Still waiting to hear back form SixApart. Similar:Narrative, Creativity,…
Here‘sthe dilemma and confusion. Asking students to conform to a print based logic in an electronic world is not teaching anyone to think on one‘sown. Indeed, this kind of pedagogy translates into a continual academic stubbornness, a refusal to recognize the communication shifts we have experienced and are experiencing currently. Telling students to write according…
mmmmmmm Free beer….. GULP GULP GULP.. mmm MORE free beer GULP GULP GULP… (footstep) (footstep) (footstep) “HEY! stop blocking the bathroom door man, i gotta pee… What do you mean its $25 to use the bathroom!!! This is an OUTRAGE!!!” —Re:Good example of why open source != free (Slashdot) Movable Type isn’t an open source product,…