Twittering a tale

by | Monday, September 01, 2008

My favorite short short story is by Hemmingway. It is all of six words long – but boy, does it pack a punch.

It goes, “For sale, baby shoes, never used.” Wow!

It turns out that such short stories are not merely a novelty. The advent of Twitter and microblogging, with its limitations on how many characters can be typed at a time, are increasingly being used to create stories.

This article by Ryan Paul in Ars Technica (Byte-sized stories: Twittering a tiny tale) attempts to list some of them. These are excellent examples of how constraints can actual foster creativity.

Topics related to this post: Art | Creativity | Design | Fiction | Fun | Good | Bad Design | Stories

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Jared Diamond on creativity, innovation and wealth

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To understand the significance of April 2, 2011, I have to go back 28 years, back to the summer of 1983. I had just finished 10th grade, and that summer I took a trip to the hills of North India, as a part of a social work volunteer effort. I remember sleeping on the...

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Educators as Designers

Educators as Designers

How might we? Three words, and a question mark. At one level it is a simple question—leaving open what it is that we might do. But at another level its openness is its strength. Because inherent within it is a call to action, a discomfort with the way things are, and...

Good teaching is good design

Good teaching is good design

I just came across Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design and was immediately struck by how closely they paralleled what is essential for good teaching. All one has to do is replace the word "design" with "teaching" and I think we get 10 pretty...

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TPACK (wiki + image) update

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CEP917 wins MSU-ATT Award

CEP917 (Knowledge Media Design) a course I co-taught with Danah Henriksen, in the fall semester 2012, received the First Place (in the Blended Course category) in the 2013 MSU-AT&T Instructional Technology Awards Competition. I would be remiss if I didn't mention...

Deck chairs on the Titanic

I just got back from a faculty meeting where we discussed what would be some possible new hires in the area of Educational Technology & Educational Psychology. At the same time (as we were discussing this) the House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion plan to...

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