Didn’t get enough “Scatman” in the 90s? Now you can potentially loop those “ski-ba-bop-ba-dop-bop’s” for-ever with The Infinite Jukebox, “for when your favorite song just isn’t long enough.” This web app uses “the Echo Nest analyzer to break the song into beats…but at every beat there’s a chance that we will jump to a different …
Selena Larson, writing for ReadWrite, hits the nail on the head in her post, “The Unbearable Sameness of Social Networks.” She shows screencaps of her profiles on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn, all of which have embraced the “cover photo” (to put it in FB language). Maybe this explains my recent disenchantment with social networking …
Throne, a London-based metal band, recent video for their song, “Tharsis Sleeps,” is a visually stunning stop motion masterpiece created entirely with embroidery. ::insert sound of record scratch:: Come again? Metal band…stop motion music video…embroidery. Yes, indeed! Here’s some of the mindblowing stats: “3,000 hand-drawn frames, 250 square metres of denim, 12 million stitches, 40 …
In the last couple of years there’s been a noticeable push for developing programming and computer science skills in childhood education. In a blog post on MiddleWeb: All About the Middle Grades, Mark Gerl, writes about his experience at Computer Science Education Week. His post gets at the interconnectedness of programming languages, gaming, and student …
This summer, MindShift has rolled out its Guide to Games and Learning, a multi-part series by Jordan Shapiro looking at the increasingly important role games and gaming have on learning, from literacy to math. In Part 1, “Tapping Into the Potential of Games and Uninhibited Play for Learning,” Shapiro writes, “All games facilitate some kind …
The world recently lost Yuri Kochiyama, human rights activist and survivor of U.S. sanctioned Japanese internment camps. In a recent blog post on Edutopia, José Vilson writes in her memory in reminding us that we all play a part in the betterment of the human experience. He writes, “We need to consistently talk about what …
On the heels of Michigan’s two largest universities announcing tuition hikes I felt it pertinent to remind us “7 in 10 Undergraduates Get Financial Aid” (Chronicle of Higher Education). Put into another statistic, that’s 71% (according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics). At Michigan State we have roughly 38,000 undergraduates …
That’s right, Tetris. The official title of this internet gem is “A Complete History of The Soviet Union Through The Eyes Of A Humble Worker, Arranged To The Melody of Tetris” by Chris Lincé. Tweet
Selena Larsen, writing for ReadWrite, takes Apple to task for the lack of diversity in choosing speakers for their annual Worldwide Developers Conference, often the site of many hardware and software launches. Larsen identifies this failure as a larger issue, “It’s indicative of a much broader diversity problem within the technology industry—especially in roles that are highly …
File this under Did You Know – Google Drive is arguably one of the most often used collaborative writing and filesharing tools across fields, disciplines, and industries. In January, Google introduced activity streams, making it easier to for you to track changes among multiple users. And for you track changes lovers, a la Microsoft Word, …
Have you heard of the storyella? What about twiterature? Been following #TwitterFiction? Or how about WRAC’s very own #endthisstory? Claire Armitstead, writing for The Guardian, asks “Has Twitter given birth to a new literary genre?” She notes that the key to successful Twitter fiction is connectivity; writers reaching to the past, to other users, then …
>In this article from The Next Web, Paul Sawers takes a look at “The Future of Cinemas” from a global perspective, investigating the question of just how much an impact streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon are having on their brick and mortar counterpart, the movie theater. He compares the introduction of VHS and DVDs …
We herald the invention of the telephone as a significant moment in human history, but consider the infrastructure that needed to come along with this. Gizmodo featured a group of photos from the Library of Congress showing the mass of telephone wires around New York City before folks figured out that burying them was probably a better …
The “radiovota,” a device created in the 1930s by Dr. Neil Monroe Hopkins, was the original like button. The radiovota sent yes or no feedback to radio stations. The downside, and why it didn’t become wildly popular, is that it took 7 hours for feedback to be sent to the station. That’s, like, time to …
Open Culture recently dug up a 1993 documentary on Foucault, titled Michel Foucault: Beyond Good and Evil. As described by Josh Jones, the documentary “explores the philosopher and his complex and controversial life through interviews with colleagues and biographers and re-enactments of Foucault’s storied exploits in the American counterculture.” Given how often Foucault appears on syllabi in …
In a blog post on Edutopia, Joe Hirsch asks, “can empathy feel its way back into the classroom?” To begin to answer this question Hirsch suggests considering cooperative learning in tomorrow’s lesson plan. Yes, tomorrow, like right now. Yet, instead of just throwing students in groups and hoping for cooperation, Hirsch recommends the jigsaw method, …
Beautiful and Free Vintage Posters by Casey Miles | Posted April 5th, 2014 I’m a sucker for vintage poster design, particularly old circus posters. Freevintageposters.com offers a collection of posters you’re welcome to download and print. The categories include something for just about everyone, for example: Advertising, Travel, Food Drink, Movies Theater, Circus Magic, Art …
PiratePad is a web-based collaborative writing tool, much like Google Docs. However, PiratePad doesn’t require a google account to use. I think too often we turn to Google for a collaborative writing space without considering the myriad of reasons some folks may not (choose to) have a google account (privacy, age, access speed, etc.). PiratePad …
Instructify.com is chock full of reviews and links to free resources for instructors. While the main demographic seems to be K-12 instructors, there are certainly tools here for college writing courses. The site is a bit clunky and silo-y, but the resources reviewed here are incredibly useful. With close to 1,500 posts there is surely …
You’re going to want to bookmark this post, or at least bookmark the resource – A free list of free online peer-reviewed feminist journals. Shoutout to HASTAC scholar Lori Beth De Hertogh and post commenters for putting the list together. Many of the journals listed here are relevant to rhetoric and writing – Harlot; Ada: …
Tiki-Toki is a free web-based timeline creator. But what does that mean exactly? The timelines you can create with Tiki-Toki move across the screen left to right, allowing the user to embed images, audio, video, and text. What I love most about this tool is the visual design elements that allow for the creation of …
Lifehacker recently reminded it’s readers that working near others can boost your productivity, which resonated with me. I’m a coffee shop fanatic. When I travel, especially for work and school, I don’t look for the coolest bar or world-renowned restaurants, I look for independent coffee shops. Places where the locals go to get some work …
Apartment Therapy recently asked, “Do You Still Blog?” With the proliferation of microblogging platforms like Twitter and Instagram, this seems a relevant question to consider. The impetus to document our lives remains, but for specifically blogging Apartment Therapy offers an overview of currently popular blogging platforms, some you’ve heard of like WordPress, and some you …
The typical, or maybe fantastical, writing set-up usually involves a desk, a chair, a clear surface, paper and pens (plural cause you’ll be burning through them), or maybe a laptop, no powercord of course, pristine. I don’t know anyone who writes like this. Most writing usually involves a cluttered desk stacked with books, papers, cups, …