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:The secret history of “Y’all”: The murky origins of a legendary Southern slang wordThe Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is u…CultureOn my fantasy #steampunk cruiser, every uniform is a parade dress uniform. #Blender3D #ble… The first few weeks of Jun…AestheticsRhinoceros in Love (World…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:These buildings are so much better than my first try about a month ago, and good enough fo…These buildings are so much better than …PersonalSpring office cleaning thoughts: 1) I used to print a lot. 2) I have enough tote bags. I used to print a lot. I…
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:One of…
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:Classroom collaboration marketplaceWhile I am uncomfortable with the whole …BusinessHello, there, mini.Hello, there, mini. Let’s restore you fr…TweetsHabits for happiness: tips for looking on the bright side of lifeHabits for happiness: tips for looking…
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:Chain of Command, Parts 1 & 2 (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episodes 10 & 11) When Pi…Rewatching ST:TNG Picard is relieved …EthicsVisiting my parents. Admiring their original Hallmark Enterprise…
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:The Importance of Writing Skills in Tech-Related FieldsGood writing skills are valuable, even i…AcademiaAn Excerpt from Mechanisms [2]: 'Professor RAMAC'Among the attractions at the 1958 World’…BooksMy son showed me Seven Samurai. I had…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Unity3D Maze Game TutorialWorkspace for an in-progress Unity3D tut…AcademiaDon't Be a Sucker (antifascist film from 1945)https://youtu.be/CXm3WxU–fM?si=E1BHac8J…CultureThe CRAFT of News Writing (Clear, Relevant, Accurate, Fair, Timely)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwEZPWSE…CultureYou come very close to successfully combining argument and explication here… I recently came across a box of old…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Why Were Old Video Games So Pixelated?I get all my news online now, but I grew…AestheticsWhy Audiences Hate Hard News—And Love Pretending OtherwiseA reminder that polls that ask people to…CultureStarship Mine (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 18) Picard out-thinks thieves rai…Rewatching ST:TNG Picard plays…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Carolyn and her friend Travis on Twin Day at summer camp.PersonalOde to Huckleberry Finn, Dec’d(Inspired by Emmeline Grangerford, Dec’d…CultureHow exactly do bridges bridge? How do rivers rive? How much detail does my model…
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…