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:Liberal Arts Leaders: The 50 Best Professors Who BlogIt’s polite to say “thank you” when some…AcademiaYou're Doing It for the Exposure!! The Oatmeal on working for “exposure…BusinessQuotations: Integrating them in MLA-Style PapersI touched up an older handout on citing …AcademiaThe ballroom of…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Leveling up my skills in #blender3D. Using invisible shapes to cut holes …DesignPolice Department, Fire Department Tell Different Versions of Same Richmond IncidentA Richmond police official and a fire of…Current_EventsPater Noster Passenger ElevatorsSome 50 years ago, my father took me to …AmusingLet's talk about books, old sport.BooksAnniePersonalSpring 2023…
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:How professors…
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:Hello, there, mini.Hello, there, mini. Let’s restore you fr…TweetsHabits for happiness: tips for looking on the bright side of lifeHabits for happiness: tips for looking o…PersonalFormer student: "I remember sometimes being annoyed with all…
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:Another 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dartAestheticsAll three shows have been sold out for over a month. Opens tomorrow.DramaThe Price (ST:TNG Rewatch Season Three, Episode 7) Master…
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:The Emma Watson nude pictures hoax shames our ‘news’ cultureDid you hear that a shady group of antis…CultureHow important is the look 'n' feel of your website?”The look ‘n’ feel of your website…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:COVID-19 Cases (Useful Breakdown by Country, State, Population) A few interesting bits I found interes…Current_EventsIntagrate Lite Plugin ProblemsI’ve been using the Intagrate Lite Wordp…TechnologyGender and Language — Revisiting Advice I Posted in 1998When I was in college and active in a Ca…CultureIn June,…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:The Decline of Wikipedia: Even As More People Than Ever Rely on It, Fewer People Create ItI’m getting ready to introduce my freshm…CybercultureWhat Do People Do on Mobile Devices? (Infographic)A handful of vignettes communicating the…BusinessMaking Interactive Fiction Mainstream: ReadersJon Ingold describes the gamelike storyt…AestheticsKhan Academy…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Carolyn and her friend Travis on Twin Day at summer camp.PersonalIf you want to work with words, then journalism courses are very practical options.AcademiaMy View: What will you do with an English degree?…
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…