Mentoring skills, communication/listening, empathy, critical thinking define successful employees in Google self-study. (STEM knowlege? Not as important.)

A Google self-study found that its own most successful employees had soft skills, such as mentoring ability, empathy, and critical thinking and problem-solving. “Those traits sound more like what one gains as an English or theater major than as a programmer,” according to the Washington Post. [A]mong the eight most important qualities of Google’s top…

First page of a student’s Texture project. (This made me laugh.)

This clever freshman writing student created a project in Texture, which is designed for branching narratives (such as the Choose Your Own Adventure stories). In the next few screens, he put up nodes showing older and more recent writing samples, asked me to choose which one showed the better writing technique, and gave me feedback…

Commentary: What My Struggling Students Wanted Me to Understand

I haven’t taught a developmental course at SHU, but when I teach freshman writing, I often encounter students who struggle with the transition from high school to college writing. Those who were praised all their lives as good writers can tell good personal stories, and they can deploy accurate summaries of non-controversial, “correct” facts. I give…

PR Pop Quiz: Intro to Crisis Management

Pop quiz for public relations 101. Scenario 1: You run a wildly popular app that incorporates video with a live host. You learn that a reporter is writing a personality profile of your host. Do you offer some cheerful quotes and then make a note to get your host to sign a new contract that handles…

6 Problems with our School System

I spend a lot of time re-educating my students, assuring them that my job as a college professor is not to give them a checklist, and then award points for each item they ticked off correctly; nor is my job to teach to a test. Shortly after I started teaching in my current job, a…

Did you share Russian fake news? Facebook, apparently unable to insert items directly in our feeds, will make you jump through hoops to find out.

Did you share fake news from Russia during the US Presidential election? Grudgingly following up on a Congressional order, Facebook will permit you to jump through hoops to find out. Because Facebook apparently does not have the technology to insert items of its choosing directly in user feeds, the social media company has helpfully provided…

Controlling behavior of HQ CEO hijacks what should have been a puff piece about popular HQ host Scott Rogowsky

A few minutes ago I heard about HQ for the first time, through a friend’s Facebook post. An item or two down in my feed I saw a different FB friend had linked to this story. The Daily Beast describes a tense encounter with a CEO who calls a reporter, threatens to fire his own…

Last night I dreamed I was a stagehand during a metatheatrical number called “Butts in Seats.”

I saw Seton Hill’s production of The Drowsy Chaperone last night, which I loved. After I left the theater, I realized I left my hat under the seat, so I went back into the house for it. As I passed in front of the stage, Karen Glass and a line of black-clad theater technicians walked…

The Mere Presence of Your Smartphone Reduces Brain Power, Study Shows

The researchers found that participants with their phones in another room significantly outperformed those with their phones on the desk, and they also slightly outperformed those participants who had kept their phones in a pocket or bag. The findings suggest that the mere presence of one’s smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity and impairs cognitive functioning,…

In Which I Bow Before the Mistress of Teen Snark

The Girl: I’m sorry I’m being so… Me: Self-deprecating? The Girl: No! Me: Testy? The Girl: No… the term I was going for is “bitchily modest.”

Emotional Intelligence Needs a Rewrite

I’ve recently processed and absorbed my recognition of the “left brain vs right brain myth.” (One side of the brain may work harder on some tasks, but there’s no evidence to suggest that whether a person is logical or creative has anything to do with how that person’s brain hemispheres relate to each other.) The…

Anti-globalism Is Common Factor in Social Media Conspiracy Theories, says UW Prof

Fascinating academic effort to find a pattern in apparently random conspiracy theories that regularly pop up in our infostreams during social crises. Experts usually dismiss them because they are so wild and unlikely, and have thus failed to notice their impact. Starbird’s insight was to map the digital connections between all this buzzing on Twitter…

New Handout on Surviving Group Projects in College

I posted a new handout with tips on surviving group projects in college. Employers value applicants who can work in groups. Most college students say they hate group work, but in the real world, few people work alone. Your assigned partner for a class project may be slow to respond because he or she is dealing…

First Evidence That Social Bots Play a Major Role in Spreading Fake News

Shad and co say bots play a particularly significant role in the spread of fake news soon after it is published. What’s more, these bots are programmed to direct their tweets at influential users. “Automated accounts are particularly active in the early spreading phases of viral claims, and tend to target influential users,” say Shao…

5 Characteristics of Successful Work Groups (at Google)

Google’s internal study of work groups found that successful teams are made of reliable, engaged workers who feel psychologically safe to take risks. Keeping this in mind the next time I introduce a group project. We learned that there are five key dynamics that set successful teams apart from other teams at Google: Psychological safety:…

The Distracted Classroom: Transparency, Autonomy, and Pedagogy

I don’t ban technology in my classroom, even though I know some students can’t manage the potential distraction. (An early assignment in my freshman writing class demonstrates that multitasking is a lie — we can only pay attention to one thing at a time,,and though we can do something routine like fold laundry while also…

Mom’s Fears About Daughter Leaving For College Channeled Into Fight About Storage Bins

Impatiently scanning store shelves while tersely repeating requests for an inventory of clothing and other items that would be taken along, local mother Susan Vernon, 51, channeled her escalating fears regarding her daughter leaving for college later this month into a fight about storage bins, sources reported Saturday. —The Onion

You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you

We’re culturally programmed to admire people who stick to their principles. We want strong leaders, not wishy-washy ones. It’s funny to think of scientists marching in a rally shouting, “What do we want? Evidence-based change! When do we want it? After peer review!” This comic carefully walks through the way the brain accepts or rejects…

How cult leaders brainwash followers for total control

With each other as validation, we began to articulate the real, dismal and frightening story of life in The O, which had as its unlikely recruiting grounds the 1970s food co-ops of the US Midwest. After a dramatic exit, I wrote the memoir Inside Out (2002). The book was an effort to understand how I,…

Actors can’t play Hamlet as simply mad in world of mental health awareness, actor says

How does our 21st century understanding of mental health affect our understanding of Hamlet? As a teacher, I have for decades approached the play like this: If everyone in the audience agrees that Hamlet was sane or Hamlet was mad, then the production was a failure; Shakespeare’s text was ambiguous, and a good production should…

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