This is the second post in my series of reading and interactive environments over at Jane Friedman’s blog. I. The role of reading in American society is changing. We need look no further for evidence than research studies aggregated in books such as The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupifies Young Americans and Jeopardizes […]
A few months back, I began writing up my thoughts and research regarding reading and interactive environments over at Jane Friedman’s blog. I promise very soon Jane that I will return to that endeavor. There’s more to say and my research has been parsed now. Until then, I’m re-posting my work. I. In August 2010, […]
I’m going to begin this little essay with the pitch: I’m working on a two-year research project that will examine how people read, extract what makes the experience pleasurable, and prototype how that experience can be re-created in a digital environment. There two reasons I’m doing this: I’ve returned to graduate school, both to update […]
Greetings: I appreciate you stopping by the home of my little project, So Far Appalachia: An American Mythology. Throughout the next few years, I’ll be building creating a multi-media, interactive book about my family, The Bakers of Manchester, Kentucky. We have a long, colorful history and I hope you enjoy reading about it. I’m also […]
September 11, 2001: The unimaginable happened. But I choose to remember that in that awfulness, we revealed ourselves to be capable of so much love.
I spent the day discussing art, creativity, storytelling, and life with my students. I am immersed within narratives right now, drinking in their spirits. It was during one of those slow moments that I had a conversation, one muddied with the human-ness of emotions and the personal strands that tether us with the ties that […]
When I teach the Introduction to Magazine Writing class, I make my students read many pieces from the National Magazine Awards. I switch the readings each semester, but one I keep is “The Things That Carried Him,” by Chris Jones. It’s a heart-breaking piece about everyone who comes in contact with an Indiana soldier as […]
Today would have been Gary Gygax’s birthday. Gygax, one of the co-creators of the game Dungeons & Dragons, inadvertently helped create the massive computer game industry that exists by inspiring three decades of future game designers. There’s been much written on the subject [you can read our chapter on the D&D Creation Myth], and there’s […]
The Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down just a bit ago, marking the end of the Shuttle Space Age in America. Throughout my life, Americans have gone to space regularly. Now that is over. As I dug through the Dungeons & Dreamers yesterday constructing a draft of the Second Edition introduction, I was struck by how […]
It’s been almost 10 years since we first started working on Dungeons & Dreamers, a fact that I hadn’t thought about until just now. Time flies. In the game world, not much has changed…and everything has changed. The timing is right, and John + I decided upon a basic framework for the Second Edition of […]
My former student – and The Invictus Writer – David Ake finally got me out to the shooting range today. It was a cold, dreary day but that hardly dampened our spirits. He’s an excellent teacher and an honor to his country. (He’s a veteran of the second Gulf War.) Here’s my first attempt to […]
Grades don’t matter. This is what I tell my students ever week throughout the school year. Education is about the process, I tell them as they roll their eyes, not the product. I implore them to focus on squeezing out every bit of knowledge from their assignments. I want them to attack uncertainty without fear […]