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…
Do you have what it takes to create a LiveJournal? Well, ask yourself this question: Are you able to put words together? Not in complete, grammatical sentences, mind you. Are you able to take a word and another word and place them one after each other? Then you’re set! —Lore Sjöberg —You and Your LiveJournal…
New media have always met with suspicion: As The Economist editorialized a while back, a “neophobic” tendency dates from antiquity, with Plato’s argument in the “Phaedrus” that the relatively newfangled medium of writing corrupted the memory-building powers of oral culture. Of course sometimes the new is bad. Yet the critics of video games are not…
The robot in the classroom, which displays a live picture of Achim, provides what its inventors call “telepresence”: It gives the boy an actual presence in the classroom, recognized by teachers and classmates. It can move from class to class on its four-wheel base and even stop at the lockers for a between-periods chat. “The…
The JRTC has been offering this sort of training since 1993. But in the past three years, with the US embroiled in its most complex conflict since the Vietnam War, Pentagon planners have dramatically improved the simulation. The 4,000 guardsmen here for these late-winter exercises will encounter 500 soldiers from the 509th, 500 support staff,…
IRobot Chief Executive Colin Angle said one group of soldiers even named its robot “Scooby Doo” and grieved when it was blown up after completing 35 successful missions defusing improvised explosive devices. “Please fix Scooby Doo because he saved my life,” a soldier told repair technicians, according to Angle‘saccount at last week’s Future in Review…
Even though I had to use many strategies to sell semiconductors in Silicon Valley, it was nothing compared to the brain power I’ve had to use to teach a subject to college students well. A decade ago, I found advertising challenging. Dreaming up new ways to sell a product or service to corporate executives was…
Unlike the villagers in the fable about the boy who cried wolf, educated American consumers always seem to have the time, the money, and the credulity to pay to hear one more time that we are just about to run out of everything, thanks to population growth. […] Troubled as the world may be today,…
Worried that I would not like him, my victim had used his humor to engage me, to make me laugh, to join in his witty barbs, and because I did like him, I had joined in. But we were not on equal footing and my comments contained a much more powerful threat because I did…
The system’s software goes beyond tracking simple emotions like sadness and anger to estimate complex mental states like agreeing, disagreeing, thinking, confused, concentrating and interested. The goal is to put this mental state inference engine on a wearable platform and use it to augment or enhance social interactions, said Rana el Kaliouby, a postdoctoral researcher…
He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. —Robert Frost —Birches (Bartleby) When I was…
As children, we spend much of our time in imaginary worlds, substituting toys and make-believe for the real surroundings that we are just beginning to explore and understand. As we play, we learn. And as we grow, our play gets more complicated. We add rules and goals. The result is something we call games. Now…
Using Genre to Help Students Envision Themselves as Writers (CCCC 2006 Chicago — Day 2) I volunteered to chair this session, so I wasn’t taking copious notes, just jotting down possible discussion prompts. Scott Whiddon, Louisiana State University, “From Cellblock to Center: Literacy, Identity and the Angolite.” The Angolite is an award-winning news magazine produced by…
“Oh, no,” I exclaimed several years ago, when a student in a composition class stepped out afterwards to explain that she had been absent because her grandmother had died. “Another dead grandmother!” The girl immediately burst into tears. Of course I wished I was dead. The student’s grandmother really had died. Or else her granddaughter…
No, not Nachos, Naches. That’s yiddish for…naches. Ok no good English translation (as usual). Not quite pride. More like a feeling of ease or peace for the spirit. Something that makes you go, “..ahhh…” Though it’s usually meant as pride. Specifically, the pride you get from one of your kids when they do something good.…
“We also wanted your cubicle to give you a little shred of dignity and recognition and acknowledge you exist because you’re probably not getting that from your co-workers or your boss. So we’ve built in a mechanical flower that’s acoustically activated. When you’re gone, it’s wilted. But when you come in, it’s acoustically activated and…
Student Reaction to Google Placement (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) While preparing for my Intro to Literary Study class, I thought that, since I introduced the “Claim, Data, Warrant” concept last week when I was very sick, I’d better revisit the topic to make sure the presentation was effective. I Googled claim data warrant (without quotation marks) and…
The reason for this is egocentrism, or the difficulty some people have detaching themselves from their own perspective, says Epley. In other words, people aren’t that good at imagining how a message might be understood from another person’s perspective. —Stephen Leahy —The Secret Cause of Flame Wars (Wired) Similar:This morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage…
“It says here under your ‘Date Needed” column that you need these on February 7th. I have them scheduled to arrive on February 8th.” He then continued, “But your document is unclear because you did not fill out the “Date Used” column as well. If you had put February 7th in the “Date Used” colum,…
“We often hear the assertion that rising faculty salaries drive the cost of tuition,” he says, but data over 25 years show that is not the case. “One of the several sources behind rising tuition rates is investment in technology.” Facebook is not the sole source for those woes. However, it is a Janus-faced symbol…