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 Review of the Charlottesville Tryout of "A Few Good Men" 30 Years AgoA librarian at the University of Virgini…CultureHow Russia’s Disinformation Apparatus Ran Aground in UkraineSkillful propagandists always leverage p…CultureAnother 10sq cm section of a #neovictorian control panel for a personal…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:The girl rehearsing as Babette in Stage Right's Beauty and the BeastCarolyn rehearses with Nick Lenz. Her sh…Current_EventsParallel structure in writing: Use it!These comic panels cover the issue well….HumanitiesFive myths about daylight saving timeNo, Daylight Saving Time was not created…BusinessProgress.PersonalAnd the girl has succeeded in getting me to…
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:About that…
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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:Westmoreland County Air Show 2012 (Photos)Traffic leaving the Arnold Palmer Region…AestheticsUndergrad Danielle Sidoti Nails an Oral Interpretation/Analysis of "Barbie Doll" by Marge …In my online “American Literature” class…AestheticsI don't usually…
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:How to Annoy Your Parents (Smurfs, Tweety, Jar-Jar and Ewoks) http://www.youtube.com/wat…AmusingA Successful Failure: The TI-99/4A Turns 40My family had one of these when I was 12…AwesomeThe Most Toys (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Video-Game Violence Is Now a Partisan IssueScholar and essayist Ian Bogost traces t…CultureThe girl's modern dance choreography workshopAestheticsRIP Flash: Why HTML5 Will Finally Take Over Video and Web in 2014I am not a fan of Adobe Flash, which is …BusinessJuly 7, 1936: Get…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:This image of Mark Zuckerberg says so much about our futureA billionaire superman with a rictus gri…BusinessWe are the product that Facebook has been testingUp to now, I refrained from posting anyt…BusinessBoston Herald Guild Members Boycotting Twitter After Reporter SuspendedMembers of the Herald’s editorial guild …Current_EventsActually,…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Stunning picture of my daughterAestheticsThe daughter is working hard as a dancer and Flaemchen understudy. @frontporchtheatricalsCultureTake my feedback if you want to pass.As my students in a compressed online co…AcademiaTrump administration gave Courage…
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…