Dennis G. Jerz, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, is a new media practitioner and digital humanities scholar. He has maintained “Jerz's Literacy Weblog” since 1999. He is an associate professor in the Humanities Division at Seton Hill University, a small liberal arts school near Pittsburgh. He teaches courses in game studies, digital storytelling, new media, journalism, literature, and writing. His professional publications include a study of the Fortran source code for William Crowther's original “Colossal Cave Adventure” (thought to be lost for 30 years) and a computer simulation of the York Corpus Christi Cycle (a 20-hour medieval religious pageant). He also edited The Inform Beginner's Guide, a guide to the programming language Inform 6. He has published papers on the history of blogs, teaching with weblogs, and theatrical representations of technology in American literature. I am grateful to my colleagues at Seton Hill University, for the chance to teach such a broad range of subjects; to my students, for their willingness to take risks and make new mistakes along with me; to the team at Packt Publishing, for their patience and guidance; to my parents, for providing my siblings and me with a series of personal computers (TI-99/4A; Atari 800; Commodore 64) and a work table in the basement; but most of all to my wife Leigh and the two amazing children we have the privilege of homeschooling.
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