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:Today’s adulting was brought to you by a failed motor vehicle inspection. #notacarguy #win…The car shop wanted to charge over $300….ModdingCrazy-looking keyboards that never caught on As the typewriter become popular, it w…AestheticsHi, I’m the St Joe’s basement doorstop. Let me start…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Marching in a parade and watching a patriotic musicalHappy Independence Day, fellow Americans…CultureA Brazilian couple bought a deforested ranch and spent decades planting over 2 million tre…A Brazilian couple bought a deforested r…PersonalFinding downtime during orientation week is not a walk in the park. Except when the downti…PersonalMore…
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:Spit &…
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:Loved seeing A Comedy of Errors @setonhillLoved seeing A Comedy of Errors @setonhi…TweetsWhat kids do when Dad won't hand over the iPod So I’m not being selfish… this is …EducationRT @DDeClaudio: Who do you…
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:Angry 10yo Edits the Paper Heart She Gave Her MotherAestheticsAnne Of Green Gables Blond On Book CoverEr.. no. This is not Anne of Green Gable…BooksIt's a Didactic Day in the…
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:Now I can relax a bit. (But just a bit.)PersonalYounger friends, can you write or read cursive? I’m curious.CultureTell Me a Smart Story: On Podcasts, Videos, and Websites as Writing AssignmentsIt does take…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:How Facebook is killing comedy (and other indie content creators)Facebook has monetized access to online …BusinessInequity and BYODIf we are really wanting to help these k…CultureLooks like somebody’s webmaster accidentally preloaded a headline that would be easy to ed… Looks like somebody’s webmaster…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Is Superman the next Drudge? Clark Kent quits newspapers in latest issue Even Clark Kent can see through the wri…Current_EventsBlue Feed, Red FeedFacebook is designed to keep your attent…CultureAdam Savage’s 10 Commandments Of MakingAdam Savage took a few minutes today at …AestheticsUnity3D Maze Game TutorialWorkspace…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:No, this pie chart does not mean that anyone at CNBC believes the typical 25 year old earn…Tell me you didn’t click the link withou…BusinessDisaster (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 5) Picard…
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…