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:Too Short a Season (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 15) When an old admiral youthens, shows…Rewatching ST:TNG. I was underwhelmed…HistoryAwesome Modular TablesMaura 331, where I’ll spend 6 hours a we…AcademiaMeet the guys who tape Trump's papers back togetherI tell this old newsroom…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:There are many Star Wars references in Dani Girl, so I made this tribute to Tom Jung's 197…CultureIn March, 2002, I was blogging about…In March, 2002, I was blogging about …BusinessShall we dance? The girl tries on her ball gown for The King and I. Her featured show…
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 Hidden…
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…TweetsRT @JordanFor: One of the counters from the Civil…RT @JordanFor: One of the counters from …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:Empok Nor #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 24) Horror-themed visit to derelict Ca…Rewatching ST:DS9 Dax, Worf and Kira ar…EthicsPracticing with materials and geometry. The lamps and chair require hundreds…
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:I have two scenes in a horror film. My head appears in a third scene.During Fall Break, I filmed my scenes fo…AestheticsFamily outing to the Pittsburgh National AviaryPersonalMaking the Switch to GMail Our…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:An English professor tries to help ChatGPT write and revise a sonnetShortly after my online AmLit survey beg…AcademiaPost Gazette Corrects Headline of Seton Hill iPad FollowupEveryone makes mistakes. As a student jo…AcademiaText Adventure Geeks Rejoice: Major Inform7 UpdateI have final grades, an annual…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:This image of Mark Zuckerberg says so much about our futureA billionaire superman with a rictus gri…Business5 Fun Ways to Help Your Kids Learn Math OnlineMy son has finally found a math textbook…CybercultureStapler jam during a midterm exam.My years of watching MacGyver definitely…AcademiaRecent SHU journo…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:This Is What Summer Vacation Is For: Designing a Steampunk Airsloop with Blender 3DSummer vacation means if I am telling my…Aesthetics#AugustWilson #CenturyCycle Three week intensive course (whew!) All the students did very …PersonalAll…
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…