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:Winners Chosen in Annual Shakespeare Monologue and Scene ContestMichael Henninger took this wonderful ph…BooksPrime Stage Theatre Makes A Statement With Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” For Carolyn Jerz, who plays Viol…CultureThis morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Enjoying more live theater.CultureIs this why oldsters love nostalgia? I’m 50. I’m in my office casually sharp…CultureAmazing show. Young lovers, a witty (but often stupid) servant, speeches, rants, exaggerat… PersonalRussian trolls 'spreading discord' over vaccine safety onlineThe good news is that there are fewer Am…CybercultureSpring 2022 Final Grades: Submitted.PersonalDragging…
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:NASA reconnects…
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:Judge: Apple conspired to fix eBook prices.Judge: Apple conspired to fix eBook pric…BooksRT @DDeClaudio: Who do you think controls the news…RT @DDeClaudio: Who do you think control…TweetsClassroom collaboration marketplaceWhile I am uncomfortable with the…
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:Hyperbole and a Half: The Alot is Better Than You at EverythingThe Alot is an imaginary creature that I…AmusingPAC-MAN: The Untold Story of How We Really Played the GameA fascinating…
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:You cannot serve both…PersonalYour Brain Does Not Work Like a ComputerThe brain-as-computer is a powerful meme…HealthIt's been a Dwarf Fortress afternoon. AwesomeNews report from 1981 about the Internet.A human interest story about an…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:A new study says young Americans have a broad definition of newsI expect that many of my students will b…CultureOne Man's Mission To Keep AOL's Legacy Alive”Hi. I’m Jason Scott, and I am trying to…CybercultureBuzzFeed plagiarism, deleted posts: Jonah Peretti explains.In 2012 my…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:In Defense Of Metaphors In Science WritingWe live in an elegant universe. The c…CultureDefend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C StandardsThe DRM proposals at the W3C exist for a…BusinessHow One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s LifeA PR professional should have known bett…BusinessDo…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Facebook paid Teen Vogue to run a fake article praising Facebook for "helping ensure the i… After FB crowed about this sup…BusinessThe Linda Lindas sing "Racist Sexist Boy" — my new favorite punk…
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…