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:Happy St. Crispin's DayHere’s my rendition of the famous “band …CultureMy 13yo and 18yo enthralled by WarGames.Wife likes movies. Son likes military th…CultureInteresting. How to manage the gap between what we need to say, and what the other person …Interesting. I don’t…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:How to lie with charts, by the @NYTimes I tend to defend journalism when sho…Current_EventsAcademic Writing BluesTwo days ago my problem was that I had n…AcademiaChess tournament.PersonalIf you care about things like acting, or people, go see "Orphans." I'm over…PersonalThere are many Star Wars references in Dani Girl,…
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:Hypertext as…
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:Proto iPads and Paper Coexist in Classic Star TrekRewatching the classic Trek episode “The…CybercultureHabits for happiness: tips for looking on the bright side of lifeHabits for happiness: tips for looking o…PersonalFormer student: "I remember…
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:What a fluke (great headline; great story)AmusingNational Headline Contest 2011Great headlines from winner David Bowman…AestheticsThoughtful Gestures Sometimes Speak Louder than WordsShe ended up waiting out the light cycle…AmusingThe Outsiders –…
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:My daughter who sometimes does things will be singing & swinging August 16 – 25 with @fron…My daughter who sometimes does things wi…CultureThis weekend… Would YOU trade a Hank Aaron rookie card for…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Making the Switch to GMail Our wonderful IT folks have set up a…CybercultureThe Feynman TechniqueTo master a topic, pretend you are teach…DesignZork: The Great Underground EmpireA blogger has started chronicling a jour…CybercultureA former student contacted me to share her thoughts.A few years ago,…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:In March, 2002, I was blogging about…In March, 2002, I was blogging about …BusinessWhat Does Children’s “Obsession” With Technology Tell Us About What They Really Need?Wise thoughts. When we look at children…CybercultureThe Tyranny of Now (Appreciation of Harold Innis)As a grad student at the University…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Journalism has become ground zero for the vocation crisis When scholars of journalism study the …BusinessA Fistful of Datas (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 8) Worf Trapped in Western S…Rewatching ST:TNG Silly…
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…