Some resources for interactive fiction.
Versu, a sophisticated new system. First books based on Jane Austen.
Twine, a simple and elegant way to create or author branching narratives (or branching lessons.) Creates a single web page of hyperlinked passages. Free and well-supported.
Twine Support materials.
Inform7 is a more complex solution.
The National Council on Teacher Quality has completed a study of our teacher training programs. There will be some quibbling, but the facts speak for themselves. Here's what their press kit has to say:
Executive Summary
For now, the evaluations provide clear and convincing evidence, based on a
four-star rating system, that a vast majority of teacher preparation programs
do not give aspiring teachers adequate return on their investment of time and
tuition dollars. These are among the most alarming findings:
In Less than 10 percent of rated programs earn three stars or more. Only four
programs, all secondary, earn four stars: Lipscomb and Vanderbilt, both in
Tennessee; Ohio State University; and Furman University in South Carolina.
Only one institution, Ohio State, earns more than three stars for both an
elementary (3½ stars) and a secondary (4 stars) program.
It is far too easy to get into a teacher preparation program. Just over a
quarter of programs restrict admissions to students in the top half of their
class, compared with the highest-performing countries, which limit entry to
the top third.
Fewer than one in nine elementary programs and just over one-third of high
school programs are preparing candidates in content at the level necessary
to teach the new Common Core State Standards now being implemented in
classrooms in 45 states and the District of Columbia.
The “reading wars” are far from over. Three out of four elementary teacher
preparation programs still are not teaching the methods of reading instruction
that could substantially lower the number of children who never become
proficient readers, from 30 percent to under 10 percent. Instead, the teacher
candidate is all too often told to develop his or her “own unique approach”
to teaching reading.
Just 7 percent of programs ensure that their student teachers will have
uniformly strong experiences, such as only allowing them to be placed in
classrooms taught by teachers who are themselves effective, not just willing
volunteers.
I came across John Brown's speech at his sentencing. His main
point is that he never intended any violence but only the covert aiding of
slaves. What was his account of how the dead died I wonder. He also praised the proceedings and the witnesses against him who "for the most part" spoke honestly and truthfully. But he repeated the claim never to have intended the violence and deaths or that he ever called for a slave uprising or for anyone to follow him, for that matter.
I read aloud Kennedy's inaugural speech (it was one of the
options for training Dragon Naturally Speaking to recognize my way of speaking,) and can only say WOW. I don't dismiss as "boob bait for bubba" his
rejection of the idea that rights come from the State and his invocation of God
as the source of our rights. He was, after all, our first Catholic President. The WASPs and the Catholics agreed on the transcendent, so both could preach that old time American religion of individual rights. It wasn't just Kennedy's anti-Communism, though that is there in the speech too. Kennedy says the idea is the very essence of this country; in modern parlance, that idea is what makes us who we are. It is our identity insofar as we are Americans. And just as in Lincoln's day, we dedicate ourselves to the protection and furtherance of the idea of freedom.
I learned from an excellent lecturer that the Republican Party was formed on one major goal and mission, which united enough groups and factions to form a truly National Party after the collapse of the Whigs which split apart over the issue of slavery on geographical lines, with the Southern Whigs going one way and the Northern Whigs another. The modern Republican Party was founded to support the one mission that could unite a large number in the north: that slavery must not be allowed in the new territories acquired by conquest from Mexico. I wish the Republicans would return to their founding mission: "No further expansion of slavery" and invite a debate about what that would mean nowadays.
The NY Times rushes to the defense of Rolling Stone. Note the name calling ("hypervntilated") and the specious comparison of an ordinary news shot of Hitler with the ginned up shock magnet the magazine actually used.
Well, anyone looking at the image will have to grant that it is what the trades call a glamour shot. It is one thing to defend freedom of the press. It is another to throw common sense out the window in denial when folks are outraged.The drumbeat became so feverish that Walgreens, CVS and a few other stores have refused to sell the magazine.
The mayor of Boston hyperventilated that it “rewards a terrorist with celebrity treatment.”
Here is a photo of Zimmerman's great grandfather.
The "narrative" = FAIL.
Screencasts can be very effective ways to communicate. Even a format as simple as a series of images and a voice-over (with or without the annoying background musice) can be powerful
This combination is free and available for Windows and Mac. If you want to add a voice-over to your screencast, you will need a microphone for the computer as well. Of course, you need a quiet room to make the audio. That's it. You are now a big producer! For free!. Remember: there is no privacy on the web. Period. But this is a great tool to have for free.
Here is an excellent quick screencast about Jing and Screencast.com by Peter WebExplorations. Once you have Jing installed, this tutorial will take you through the steps.
Patient wakes from dead as doctors prepare to remove her organs. Yikes.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/patient-wakes-doctors-remove-organs/story?id=19609438#.Ud36aDuvnoL
I usually leave my bottles with nickel deposits curbside for the Boy Scout drive, which happens now and then. Today though, I decided to return some at the "Redemption Center." It was my first experience with an automated system that rejected more of my bottles than it accepted and took close to thirty seconds for each bottle. So I left and tried the Supermarket. Same horror. Eventually, I just left the four or five dollars worth of bottles for whoever would have the patience to use the system. From now on, I will just toss the bottles into the (a. recycle bin b. woods) and eat the nickel. Who gets it?
Judging by the number of shoppers I see clogging the cashier aisles at compared with the empty bottle return facility (and I say "the facility" advisedly), many others are making the same choice. I doubt they are littering, but many I am sure cannot be bothered. Is anyone measuring? Does anyone care?
And the Sierra Club wants MORE bottles to be covered? Who gets the nickels?
From the brilliant Spengler (David P. Goldman) in an essay arguing that starvation is what toppled Morsi:
Read the whole thingNo one should mourn the Brotherhood, a totalitarian organization with a Nazi past and an extreme anti-Semitic ideology.
The notion that this band of Jew-hating jihadi thugs might become the vehicle for a transition to a functioning Muslim democracy was perhaps the stupidest notion to circulate in Washington in living memory.