Standardized testing rewards standardized thinking, while excluding creativity, resilience & other “soft” skills. I have started gong out of my way to remind students in my classes that I am not comparing their papers to a “correct answer” in the back of my book — I want them to learn a habit of mind that…
It’s a good day when one’s nerdiness is an asset to a colleague. Similar:My Encounter with EpochTimes.comPeter and I spoke to a reporter from Epo…AestheticsYou're not going to believe what I'm about to tell youWe’re culturally programmed to admire pe…CultureSorry, not sorry. I don't want such friends. Back in 2003, shortly after I moved …CultureHow…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:"You work for the @CollegeBoard?" the bright-eyed teen behind the fast food counter asks. …”Unsweetened tea. And can you use this c…AcademiaTrying something a bit different for today's 10 sq cm of #steampunk #blender3d control pan…AestheticsGiven a chance to explain his support for a YouTuber who warns about…
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…
Penn and Teller are involved with this story. Worth a read. The only record of the game’s existence was a handful of review copies that had been sent out to journalists in the weeks before the publisher went bust, in 1995. The game remained a curious rumor until September, 2005, when Frank Cifaldi, a freelance…
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:Meet octobot,…
RT @spj_tweets: How TV could suffer the fate of newspapers: @alanmutter shares the second installment of his two-part blog – http://t.co/l… Similar:I'm no longer surprised, but still want to document.This is really noteworthy. Today the Pre…Current_EventsAnd the girl has succeeded in getting me to wear t…And the girl has succeeded in getting me…TweetsMaybe I'll just…
RT @DepressedDarth: Dear J.J. Abrams, If the new Star Wars is bad, you will forever be known as Jar Jar Abrams. Sincerely, Star Wars fans Similar:My #Blender3D set design for a Zoom-based production of Rossum's Universal Robots, which I…I’ve loved this 1920s play for almost 30…AestheticsCharles Schulz's Letter About Democracy, Discovered 50 Years Later |…
I really like MailChimp’s “Social” plugin, which not only publishes a WordPress blog entry to Twitter and Facebook, but also collects responses from Twitter and Facebook users and collects them as WordPress comments. Today I installed a different plugin, Twitter Tools, which is really just a single tool — it lets you create a WordPress…
Habits for happiness: tips for looking on the bright side of life. At bedtime, in order to avoid a nightly litany of complaints, I ask my glass-is-half-empty-and-I-hate-the-pirate-glass-and-there’s-a-bug-in-it tween to list three good things, two neutral things, and one sad thing about her day. Sometimes if she needs to share more than one sad thing, I…
While researching my obligations for #juryduty Thursday, I came across this “Juror’s Creed.” The gender-specific reference to men, the instruction to reflect upon the virtues of democracy, and the instruction to respect the judge’s education all hint at a historical context for the creed. Institutions never put their creeds into writing unless they feel those…
Spent a productive work day doing nothing but optimizing my blog. Added a very nice plugin for displaying thumbnails of related posts. Similar:Meet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureSupport the arts in your community!PersonalCarolyn and Nick in Beauty and the BeastAestheticsMy student journos are meming…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Bureaucrats Put the Squeeze on College NewspapersFew school newspapers are financially in…AcademiaFeeling Like an Impostor at 49I reminded my Shakespeare students that …AcademiaWhat Does the Demise of Cursive Mean?Are you aware that our children aren’t b…CultureMy laptop hard drive is full & my…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:What is a CRT and Why Don't We Use Them Anymore?I remember when I started seeing politic…AestheticsAnd Now for This Breaking News Report “Police have cornered the suspect wh…AmusingIn April 2000, I was blogging about HTML frames, the future of reading, grammar, Kairos, a…In April…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Daughter doing a thing. Interviewing the Pittsburgh Dance Council’s Randall Miller for Bur… AcademiaToo Short a Season (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 15) When an old admiral youthens, shows…Rewatching ST:TNG. I was underwhelmed…HistoryThe…
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 researchers found that each singer’s heartbeat was linked to the song’s melody – i.e. the speed and structure of the music. They also found that when the choir sang together, their heart rates tended to increase and decrease at similar times. “As soon as the singing begins, (the hearts) start following each other,” Vickhoff…
We live in an elegant universe. The cosmos is like a string symphony. Genes are selfish. There is an endless battle between thermodynamics and gravity. Do you love these statements, or hate them? The reading world gets pretty divided over whether or not it’s okay to apply metaphors and similes to descriptive science writing. It…
Literature majors and students otherwise drawn to literature courses can be an introverted bunch. Students overall can at times resist course projects that fall outside the expected parameters of a given discipline. Yet my class proved my assumptions wrong. Many of the students were nervous, to be sure, but overall they seemed to enjoy the…
Let’s start at the end point: what you’re doing right now. You are pulling information from a network onto a screen, enhancing your embodied experience with a communication web filled with people and machines. You do this by pointing and clicking, tapping a few commands, organizing your thoughts into symbols that can be read and…