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:Katie Couric Gun Documentary Undermined By Manipulative Editing : NPRInterviewer Katie Couric asks a group of…CultureNerdling spots typo in space exploration textbook.PersonalJumpsuit for a female mechanic in my #neovictorian #steampunk project. #blender3d #unity3dAestheticsBrother Stuck in the BathroomThe girl posted this story on…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:The girl will be dancing as the Gold Fairy in Laurel Ballet's Sleeping Beauty tonight… PersonalSolitaire ChessSpent a relaxing evening in playing soli…AmusingSpot of sunlight seems to be sliding down an escalator. View t…Aesthetics#SHUConvocation is about to begin @setonhilluniversityPersonalMore #steampunk control panels. Recessed workstations with fold-down keyboards. #blender3d…PersonalCarolyn,…
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:The Pentagon…
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:In Defense Of Metaphors In Science WritingWe live in an elegant universe. The c…CultureRT @DDeClaudio: Who do you think controls the news…RT @DDeClaudio: Who do you think control…TweetsJury Duty UpdateI’m a happy, responsible, and…
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:Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship EverI’ve felt a bit like this guy the last f…CultureI absolutely adored Spock. Loving Dad was much more complicated.A great father-son…
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:Video Tips for Students: Don't do what I'm doing! You can't see my eyes, the background i…You might have been asked to submit a sh…AcademiaAmazing birthday cake, created by Jane Eyre herself, Karen…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:Hello, there, mini.Hello, there, mini. Let’s restore you fr…TweetsBias Check! Consult different sources for a fuller picture.BusinessWhat It Means If You're A 'Paragraph Texter'A very fluffy article that does a good j…CultureBother (a minor Turnitin.com grademark bug)That whole thing should be a link…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:We are in a golden age for journalismMost handwringing about the state of jou…BusinessToday's annoying adventures of adulting: fixing the bathroom ceiling fan.Not fun, but done. ModdingFacebook Axes “Trending” SidebarFacebook is discontinuing the “trending”…BusinessWhat If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?This sounds a lot…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Tales from the Antiquities Theft Task ForceA shot of Kim Kardashian leaning ag…AestheticsIs this Wonka's factory, or the presidential picnic @setonhilluniversity ? PersonalEven in the U.S., Chinese Students May Have Tiananmen ‘Amnesia’But now that he…
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…