It’s lunchtime at Cheers bar and there are no customers. Diane is a waiter in the bar. She says, “I think if nobody minds I’ll have my lunch now. I got some lovely roast beef today for a sandwich.” She notices Carla, her co-worker, who is pregnant. “I’m sorry, Carla. If it bothers you I…More
Category Archives: Film and media
What ever happened to autostereograms?
I recall the craze in the 1990s for Magic Eye posters and books. People would gaze and squint at these multicoloured, seemingly random, patterns to discern 3d images of dolphins, elephants, temples, and spaceships. The method of display was a variation on what I experienced as a child, as I gazed at my bedroom wallpaper…More
Pandi noir
Pandemic and panic look a bit the same. A pandemic is a characteristic shared by everyone, in this case a disease or its threat. Panic pertains to Pan, the god of wild nature. To panic is to go wild. According to etymonline.com pan can be taken to mean “all” in both cases – i.e. all…More
Offensive media
Television started to make its way into people’s homes in the 1950s. There were very few channels. Audiences shared roughly the same news, commentary and entertainment outlets. By most accounts such unitary media sources helped reinforce social habits and opinions. Amongst its many effects, mass media tended to put citizens on the same page, with…More
The twist
“Now … every story ever told can be broken down into three distinct parts: the beginning, the middle … and the twist.” That’s a line spoken by the actor Jack Black in the kid-friendly horror film Goosebumps (2015). He’s actually playing R.L. Stine, the author of the popular book series on which the film is…More
Enter title here
Titles matter. I stumbled across an interesting web site with advice about titling your talks. The advice also applies to headings for essays, articles, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. Olivier Mitchell writes that in order to create a title “that gets people flocking to your session,” it ought to do at least one of the following (1)…More
Evaluating the flipped classroom
Here’s an evaluation to conclude my documentation of the flipped classroom experiment. There were four main sources of data for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the course and our application of the flipped classroom model: (1) reflections by the teaching staff, (2) attendance records taken in class using attendance software and engagement monitoring via the VLE (virtual…More
Flipped classroom 101
What is a lecture? In the 1980s with Jacques Derrida’s radical hermeneutics in full flow, we read about and practiced the lec(ri)ture, an inversion of the lecturing format — the insertion of laughter (ri) into the standard, conventional idea that knowledge could be delivered by talking to a group of people sitting in front of you. Scholar of English literature Gregory Ulmer asserted…More
Rich media overload
We are all filmmakers now, thanks to smartphones that record HD video, and editors such as Apple’s iMovie for cropping, combining and processing videos while out in the field. The short video below was recorded in the space of about ten minutes, edited while on a train journey, then uploaded to Vimeo when I returned to the hotel’s wifi…More
Vertigo on a stick
Rooftoppers are those reckless photographers and video makers who scale tall buildings. It’s important in these images that the photographer is in the frame, as evidence that they were there. The vertiginous effect is enhanced by the use of a handheld monopod camera extension known as a “selfie stick.” So climbers hold their cameras about a metre…More