A Facebook App for Every Occasion … Even Recruiting

From Inside Higher Ed, an article about a Facebook app designed for college recruiters: The solution they came up with essentially offers a series of “challenges” to students interested in SUNY Plattsburgh. Each challenge requires them to upload video or photographic evidence that they fulfilled their mission, so to speak — anything from attending a…

Please Use This Door

More cruel jokes to play on literal-minded people. Similar:The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityMore than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent the…Stapler jam during a midterm exam.The Tyranny of Now (Appreciation of Harold Innis)Is AI making us less…

U.S. Spies Use Custom Videogames to Learn How to Think

Wired: The U.S. Army Intelligence Center is using a custom game to train interrogators, or “human collectors,” as they are euphemistically known. Known by the staggering title of Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Tactical Proficiency Trainer Human Intelligence Control Cell, the simulation was designed by General Dynamics from the shooter Far Cry. The Army game features…

Professors Gone Paperless

Inside Higher Ed: 1998 was the last time that John Gallaugher, an associate professor of information systems at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, used a traditional print textbook. He assigned it to his graduate-level introductory course in information systems. The book cost about $150. He also assigned supplemental reading — trade press articles, online…

Sonnet Exercise

I’ve been making an extra effort this year to create some new worksheets designed to teach basic, stand-alone concepts in my Introduction to Literary Study class. Here’s a new worksheet to help students write a sonnet.  Below is the part they’re actually supposed to submit… after that I’ve included the text that explains the assignment.…

Desire2Learn Patent-Information Blog

Blackboard, a company that sells popular course-management software, recently won a $3.1 settlement against Desire2Learn.  According to Slashdot, Blackboard has been granted a patent that covers a single person having multiple roles in an LMS: for example, a TA might be a student in one class and an instructor in another. You wouldn’t think something…

Seton Hill University – Google Maps

I just noticed that Google Maps has added Greensburg to its street view service. How long has this been available?  Here’s a look up Seton Hill’s lovely sycamore-lined driveway.View Larger Map Similar:This morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in Mecca. For m…My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at…

Lego Timeline

The Lego brick system was patented 50 years ago today. Gizmodo offers this timeline. Similar:By Inferno's Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 15) Dominion / Cardassian edg…In Purgatory's Shadow #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 14) Garak's answers a code…My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Jesus…

Wikipedia's Technological Obscurification: Three ways Wikipedia keeps 99% of the population from participating

The special coding Wikipedia has developed for its user-edited pages is powerful. Some shortcuts are simple and elegeant — you just put [[square brackets]] around words to make them into links, and clicking on the link will automatically either take you to an existing page, or let you create a new one. But as Wikipedia…

Amazon's Kindle eBook Reader

Gamers with Jobs reviews Amazon’s Kindle. Now that Jess has finished vampire romance novel number 324, I spend some quality time goofing around with the Kindle. It’s surprisingly easy to get non-Amazon material on it. I just plug it in to the USB cable which perpetually hangs off the back of my laptop, and it…

Police urged to drop photofits for caricature

Guardian (UK): Police forces should issue comical caricatures of the criminals they are hunting instead of standard photofits, according to a team of scientists who found that cartoon-like faces are better at jolting people’s memories. Similar:By Inferno's Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 15) Dominion / Cardassian edg…In Purgatory's Shadow #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season…