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:Unearthing a Long Ignored African Writing System, One Researcher Finds African History, by…Not only is this a fantastic story about…AcademiaMy third time seeing @shu.pippin. I'll be back tomorrow for closing night.PersonalFriend I hadn't seen for about 20 years delivers a vintage nerdy…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:I played hooky from work to see Wild Robot with my familyI played hooky to go see Wild Robot this…AestheticsThat should be the top "Under 800" prize, but the plaque has an extra zero. #chessPeter spent the day at a chess tournamen…GamesSpent the morning in a socially distanced…
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:Simon Newman…
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 …AcademiaCarolyn Gombell Is Not a Real Person: #JusticeforCarolyn Is a Campaign Against Twitter Ref…Fascinating use of…
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:A #neovictorian #steampunk ship-of-the-line needs a dramatic flag and a conveniently locat…AestheticsTrektacular Google DoodleAmusingThe girl as Gimli, Legolas, Aragorn and Thorin. #proudofthegirl #notentirelysurewhy #still…AestheticsStar Wars: The Last Jedi abuse blamed…
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 crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…AestheticsYou cannot serve both…PersonalFair use prevails as Supreme Court rejects Google Books copyright caseFair use is a concept baked…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Blade Runner | Typeset In The FutureThis is nerd heaven — a deep analysis o…AestheticsVerification HandbookOne of journalism’s most treasured clich…Current_EventsAnd the girl has succeeded in getting me to wear t…And the girl has succeeded in getting me…TweetsMaking the Switch to GMail Our…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Pioneering Harvard Blog Site Wrapping It UpI still use blogs.setonhill.edu, which I…AcademiaMaking a journalism game to teach myself ChoiceScriptMe: (Making a journalism game to teach m…AcademiaMy son showed me #PacificRim.My son showed me #PacificRim. Liked the …CybercultureThe dawn of the post-literate societyThe world of print…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Lego goes steampunkBe still, my nerdy heart. Steampunk —…AestheticsRequiem for the NewsroomWhen I worked at a radio news station in…CultureMy 4Cs StoryI chaired a session on Friday, and gave …AcademiaYesterday it was 298…
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…