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:Here I am sketching spaceships like I’m 12 again. I feel like re-reading the novelization …AestheticsColossal Cave: The Board Game by Arthur O'DwyerThe kids and I enjoy nerdy board games. …CultureOedipus Tyrannos (Oedipus Rex) — Brief IntroductionMy first lecture screencasts for my…
I’m a happy, responsible, and no-longer-obligated-for-jury-duty citizen. Similar:Topics in Am Lit: August Wilson — Online J-Term course starts Dec 16.PersonalThe press lobby is going feral—ignore it Given that they need to write multiple…CultureStage Right's production of 'Secret Garden' is heart-tugging showIn the Stage Right production, the role …Current_EventsCarolyn appears as homeschooled teenager "Carolyn." Free holiday…
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:Shattered Mirror…
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:I asked my geekling whether she was ready for bed…I asked my #geekling whether she was rea…Amusing10 Rules of Internet – Anil DashA very useful, concise summary of web-en…BusinessTweet: Came around the corner 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:Former student: "I remember sometimes being annoyed with all of our blogging assignments, …A third alum in the last few weeks has c…AcademiaMy Review of the Charlottesville Tryout of "A Few Good…
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:R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Artistic Prosperity TrailerWe rehearsed and recorded a Zoom recordi…ArtThat 'Useless' Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech's Hottest TicketWhat kind of boss hires a thwarted actre…AcademiaMy precious is fifteen. PersonalThe first…
RT @mykidcancode: Managing Your Preschooler’s Fascination with Apps – bit.ly/lv1ZyR #parenting #technology Similar:4 Skills to Help You Stand Out In Any Job InterviewAn employer will never ask you to write …BusinessChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth PreservingMany are wailing that this technology sp…AcademiaThe Little Professor: How to write an essay about teaching that will not be…
Not kidding — 254,460 spam comments in my trash folder! Similar:Snap's share price sinks, trades just above IPO priceNASDAQ.com throws shade via Reuters: Sn…BusinessFacebook is predicting the end of the written wordFacebook’s video push threatens the edit…BusinessCarolyn Gombell Is Not a Real Person: #JusticeforCarolyn Is a Campaign Against Twitter Ref…Fascinating use of social media. To…
“Bach is not for the weak of mind.” — Miss Renee, my kids’ piano teacher. “I’m in trouble.” — Peter, my son. Similar:Why ‘Cats’ the Movie Fails So FlamboyantlyI can’t seem to get into superhero movie…AestheticsTime Squared (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 13)Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…PersonalBabylon 5 redefined TV science fiction, so why…
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…