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 Last Jedi: Oh, the Feels.No spoilers here. (I managed to avoid al…MediaAnalysis | The ‘Kellyanne Conway on the couch’ controversy is so incredibly dumbOne photo from the event shows her scrol…CultureSkin of Evil (TNG Rewatch, Season 1 Episode 23)My rewatch reflection…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Just in case you can’t find the tweet that Trump, who got trolled for making a rookie erro…This is how the President of the United …PersonalAn afternoon with Ben Franklin. CultureBloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs broke the story of Hope Hicks's COVID-19 InfectionThose darned reporters. Always publishin…Current_EventsStunning writing in this…
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:Time’s Arrow,…
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:How hate and misinformation go viral: A case study of a Trump retweetOn Sunday night, President Donald Trump …AcademiaMy Minecraft-obsessed tween made this blocky foam pig at art camp. Next up: Stage Right summer…
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:The Outsiders — four sold-out weekday matinees; four more performances this weekend So proud of my talented, hard-working …BooksPlaying with depth of field (blurring details that are closer than and…
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:Coming of Age (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 18)Rewatching ST:TNG A character-heavy e…MediaMeme alleging Trump said “Africans Are Lazy, Good at Sex, Theft” is a hoax I’ve seen this meme shared by severa…EthicsYeet…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:My meeting was cancelled, so I spent the morning assembling a cabinet for a Little Free Li…AcademiaFacebook Finally Rolls Out 'Disputed News' Tag Everyone Will DisputeAnybody seen a post tagged this way? If …Current_EventsIn March 2000, I was blogging about Palm V computers…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Vintage TV News Coverage of Pac-ManVintage TV news coverage of Pac-Man. …CybercultureStudy confirms that ending your texts with a period is terrible.Language evolves, so oldsters like me sh…CybercultureAstronaut Luca Parmitano describes near-drowning experience in spaceWith water already obscuring his vision,…Current_EventsStapler jam during a midterm exam.My…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Part II of the Mon Valley Medium was a powerful experience. Funny and painful. @thepublicp…CultureThat should be the top "Under 800" prize, but the plaque has an extra zero. #chessPeter spent the day…
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…