Just 23 percent of charter students scored proficient in language arts, compared with 31 percent in public schools overall. That’s a greater gap than had shown up in last year’s exams. In math, charter schools beat the public school average in each of the past two years — but not this year. On the new…
Morgan “Supersize Me” Spurlock spoke at Seton HIll in 2005 about the social damage caused by fast-food culture. (Morgan Spurlock autographed my hamburger wrapper.) The following article approaches the issue from another perspective. I, for one, scrupulously avoid buying a drink or fries, and always order a burger and salad from the McD’s value menu.…
One year ago today, NASA’s Curiosity rover touched down on the surface of Mars and began studying the planet. The rover may be lonely out there on its first birthday, but it won’t go entirely without celebration: NASA has repurposed Curiosity’s soil analysis system to play the tune of “Happy Birthday to You” out loud for…
I took my kids to a water park all day, and spent it completely off the grid. This is big news. The Washington Post Co. agreed Monday to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four…
I made a lot of impulse Kindle purchases during the phase when so many books were $9.99. I’ve never bought an iBook… whenever possible, I buy via Kindle instead, as a consumerist means of protesting Apple’s meddling with the price of books. US regulators have called for Apple to be forced to cancel certain e-book…
Businessman John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, has entered into an agreement to buy The Boston Globe for $70 million, a massive drop from its record $1.1 billion price two decades ago. Similar:How to be a Medieval Spectator (Intro to Toronto York Plays 2025)Unemployment rates for recent college grads: Overall, 5.8%;…
If I can get the English majors in my news writing class interested in the statistics unit, I’ll be very happy indeed. “When I first realized that I had signed up to be in what is essentially an English class with only accounting majors, I expected the conversation and discussion of the books we read…
You dont actually get hired by Amazon. Almost everyone is employed by a staffing service. First though, you have to kill an hour and a half of your time filling out an application online and taking insane personality test. Im not sure why they have such a lengthy test Ive filled out a lot of…
I can’t summon up actual nostalgia for the postal service. Telegrams were always a much a better plot device: “It’s a telegram from my Aunt Sadie, you know, the one I’ve never mentioned before but whose pet allergies would no doubt disrupt Junior’s new dog-walking business. It seems she’s in town, but she doesn’t say…
A very useful, concise summary of web-enabled wisdom. In my years working in technology, I have learned a few things. These lessons have become oft-repeated refrains when speaking to people, so I thought I’d collect them so I have a link to send folks when needed. 10 Rules of Internet – Anil Dash via @Historiator…
Last week, the Fox-afiliated KTVU fell for a prank, repeating offensive fake names for the pilots involved in the crash of Asiana Flight 214 last week. [S]even-year veteran KTVU producer Brad Belstock closed his @producerBB Twitter account after his last Friday tweet just moments after the names were read aloud on the air by Tori Campbell.…
Keep a local backup of anything important you’ve entrusted to online services. There’s no guarantee that, years from now, those services will honor the terms you agreed to. Backed by new investors, including singer Justin Timberlake, Myspace (after dropping the capital ‘S’) has been rebranded as a music-streaming service, with a new sleek interface, and…
Judge: Apple conspired to fix eBook prices. #ethics #books The Federal lawsuit claimed that Apple, led by then-CEO Steve Jobs and senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, conspired with HarperCollins, Hatchett, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster to drive e-book prices up from the $9.99 price point Amazon had established. –readwrite.com Similar:How to…
While I am uncomfortable with the whole “classroom as marketplace” metaphor, since it’s pretty much gamifying without the fun, I am nonetheless interested in this strategy for encouraging students to collaborate by having them attach a value to the artifacts they present to the class for sharing.. We shop for everything from apps to ideas.…
The search for what went right might take a hard look at the job market for our graduates. One recent survey, by the Web site payscale.com, paints a somewhat depressing picture of salaries, with humanities majors typically earning from $5,000 to $15,000 less than those with undergraduate professional degrees. Fifteen years after graduation, however, the…
While health science majors and engineers face much better job prospects, and while in the present economy even those prospects aren’t terribly good, the post-graduation employment rate of English and other humanities majors is not that different from computer science or economics — degrees that are generally considered more marketable. As of 2010-2011, the most…
Doing things correctly earns you points on an assignment, but English is one of those majors (I’d include the various arts on the shortlist) that encourages bold thinking, which leads to deeper learning. According to Steve Strauss, “Reading Chaucer, making sense of it, writing a term paper on it, and then being able to defend…
This essay is yet another reminder of how I must work harder to try to teach my students the long-term value of what they learn in my classes. Students are so focused on the present — this semester, this course, this assignment, this rubric, this grade — that an assignment that requires critical thinking skills…
Freelance writers have to be entrepreneurial, sometimes taking jobs that don’t really interest them (but pay well, or offer good exposure). Noah Davis does the numbers, laying out what he does and how much he gets paid. I pitched and wrote constantly. I submitted invoices to between six and 12 outlets a month. But while…
One of my most consistently rewarding professional tasks is recruiting good writers and helping them develop the managerial skills they need in order to be good editors. It’s faster and easier, in the short term, for experienced student journos to do all the work themselves, but far better in the long run to train up…