Every six months or so it seems as if the entire Internet discovers for the first time that people are making data visualizations of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were popular in the early eighties. Computer scientist Christian Swinehart's stunning visualizations are only the most recent to capture the imagination of scores of… Continue reading A History of Choose Your Own Adventure Visualizations
Author: Mark Sample
The Open Source Professor (Screencast)
The folks at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) have posted an audio podcast of my recent Digital Dialogue presentation, "The Open Source Professor: Teaching, Research, and Transparency." As entertaining as it might be to hear me talk for thirty minutes, I thought it would be better to see the visuals that… Continue reading The Open Source Professor (Screencast)
Spring 2010 Course Descriptions
HNRS 353: Videogames in Critical Contexts T/R 1:30-2:45pm In this Honors Seminar we will study the history and cultural impact of videogames from a number of critical perspectives. As products of a complicated network of social, economic, and technological forces, videogames are dense cultural texts, deeply layered with multiple meanings. Whether we consider early arcade… Continue reading Spring 2010 Course Descriptions
My Talk for MITH: The Open Source Professor
I'm in the midst of preparing for my upcoming talk at the University of Maryland's Institute for Technology in the Humanities. The talk is October 27 and my title is The Open Source Professor: Teaching, Research, and Transparency. Here's the abstract, written by me, uncomfortably, in the 3rd person: What happens when the scholarship of… Continue reading My Talk for MITH: The Open Source Professor
Twitter is a Snark Valve
Last week I described the intensive role of social networking in my teaching. Although I explained how I track and archive my students' Twitter activity, I didn't describe what they actually do on Twitter. That's because I wasn't sure myself what they do. I mean, of course I've reading their tweets and sending my own,… Continue reading Twitter is a Snark Valve
Unthinking Television Screens
Last spring I participated in an interdisciplinary symposium called Unthinking Television: Visual Culture[s] Beyond the Console. I was an invited guest on a roundtable devoted to the vague idea of "Screen Life." I wasn't sure what that phrase meant at the time, and I still don't know. But I thought I'd go ahead and share… Continue reading Unthinking Television Screens
Reflections on a Technology-Driven Syllabus
I'm five weeks into the new semester, and it's time to consider how my ambitious technology-heavy Graphic Novel course is going. And I'm serious when I say it's technology-heavy: we're doing a blog, a wiki, Twitter, and rigorous Pecha Kucha presentations. About the only thing we're missing is a MMORPG. I plotted out the major… Continue reading Reflections on a Technology-Driven Syllabus
The Uncanny Valley of Action in Videogames
The agility afforded by blogging means nothing if you sit on your ideas for months or let half-written posts rot in your draft folder. That's a lesson I learned today when I discovered a host of recent references to Masahiro Mori's famous graph of the uncanny valley, mostly in reference to zombies (see posts by… Continue reading The Uncanny Valley of Action in Videogames
Pedagogy and the Class Blog
Julie Meloni over at Prof. Hacker has a good rundown of the kinds of questions a professor should think through when he or she integrates a blog into the classroom. I've been using blogs in my teaching for several years now, so I wanted to share a few ideas that have worked for me. I'm… Continue reading Pedagogy and the Class Blog
Followup on Public Teaching Evaluations
My previous post about making my teaching evaluations public generated some thoughtful commentary, both here and elsewhere. Brian Coxall's post on Prof. Hacker and the ensuing comments raised some key questions, and I've briefly responded there, saying: [Regarding who owns the rights to the evaluations] ...in my case I think that answer is easy: it’s… Continue reading Followup on Public Teaching Evaluations
Updates on David Foster Wallace review by Jay Murray Siskind
A few weeks ago I was interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education for a story about the fake David Foster Wallace review in Modernism/Modernity. The Chronicle story is online and at least for the first week, not behind a paywall. I was in Spain at the time, so for the interview I had to… Continue reading Updates on David Foster Wallace review by Jay Murray Siskind
Transparency, Teaching, and Taking My Evaluations Public
I recently wrote about why I'm making even the earliest scraps of my research public. It's a move, in theory, that most academics would not object to. Nobody is going to give me funny looks for suggesting we share our research problems. After all, scholarly collaboration is something we're almost all willing to profess a… Continue reading Transparency, Teaching, and Taking My Evaluations Public
On Hacking and Unpacking My (Zotero) Library
Many of my readers in the humanities already know about Zotero, the free open-source citation manager that works within Firefox and scares the hell out of Endnote's makers. If you are a student or professor and haven't tried Zotero, then you are missing out on an essential tool. I use it daily, both for my… Continue reading On Hacking and Unpacking My (Zotero) Library
Electronic Literature is a Foreign Land
One of the more brilliant works of electronic literature I savor teaching is Brian Kim Stefan's Star Wars, One Letter at a Time, which is exactly what it sounds like. Aside what's going on in the piece itself (which deserves its own separate blog post), what I enjoy is the almost violent reaction it provokes… Continue reading Electronic Literature is a Foreign Land
The truth behind Jay Murray Siskind’s review of David Foster Wallace
And finally, the wink and nod I've been looking for. Laurence Rainey, the editor of Modernism/Modernity, and Nicole Devarenne, the former managing editor of Modernism/Modernity, sent me this open letter today: An Open Letter to Mark Sample, We appreciate your recent remarks concerning a review essay about David Foster Wallace, one that appeared in late… Continue reading The truth behind Jay Murray Siskind’s review of David Foster Wallace