At times knowledge brings merely an enlightened impotence or paralysis. One may know exactly what to do but lack the wherewithal to act. (Winner “Mythinformation” 594) Janet H. Murray, in her work Hamlet on the Holodeck, discusses the future of narrative within digital environments, and she suggests the importance of “author” to narrative in particular [...]
Archive | Online
RSS feed for this sectionStuff I do online with new media, technology, and digital culture.
Writing Excellent Blog Entries
Lloyd Lemons links to B. L. Ochman’s “How to Write Killer Blog Posts and More Compelling Comments” on her What’s Next Blog. Ochman’s advice is some of the best I’ve read lately, suggesting the deliberate nature of blogging and stressing audience expectations. I can’t follow all of her advice all of the time, like limiting [...]
Blogging in Primary Education
Prototype points to Stephen Downes’ “Educational Blogging” on Educause Review. It looks at the yet unspoiled attitudes of primary schoolers on blogging and the Internet. One student states: The blogs give us a chance to communicate between us and motivate us to write more. When we publish on our blog, people from the entire world [...]
Strindberg and Helium
There are really no words to describe Strindberg and Helium. I nearly fell off my chair laughing when I first saw these Flash shorts. I’d describe it, but it’s better if you just look for yourself. If you’re unfamiliar with August Strindberg, I recommend Miss Julie: “No! To be happy for — two days, a [...]
New Media Wiki
Via Kairos News: it seems that the wiki idea is already well used by the academy. For instance, the M/Cyclopedia of New Media, maintained by students at Australia’s Queensland Institute of Technology, shows how this collaborative technology can be used successfully for eduction. Along these lines, I discovered Drupal, a content-management system that seems to [...]
Blogging Advice
Since my students are using a blog this semester, I have posted a couple of entries that might be useful to others: “How to Blog” and “How to Comment.” These are by no means meant to be definitive, but are just general guidelines about blogging as well as specifics meant just for my students. In [...]
Wikipedia Problems
An excellent article by one of the founders of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, “Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism” addresses some of the problems that he sees with the growing popularity of Wikipedia. Specifically, he points out the lack of credibility that many perceive in this open source intellectualism, the dominance of “difficult people,” and an [...]
