The MOOC Honeymoon is Over: Three Takeaways from the Coursera Calamity

The honeymoon with MOOCs is over. The reality check has finally arrived which was inevitable. MOOCs will not solve all the woes of higher education. It is unfortunate it had to be a class on how to design an online course; it was the Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application [FOE] offered through Coursera…

How Patriotic

Similar:Captain, the Fake News Detectors are Offline! Slate has a good article about Willi…CybercultureIn September, 2000, I was blogging about PICK UP AX, Bellamy's Looking Backward, WB Yeats,…In September 2000, I was blogging about …BusinessOklahoma Was Never Really O.K. (Frank Rich, Vulture)”Oklahoma! was greeted as jingoistic ent…AestheticsIs this why oldsters love nostalgia? I’m 50. I’m…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Pompeii artifacts at the Carnegie Science Center The lighting was very low, so the phot…AestheticsWhy Study Humanities? What I Tell Engineering FreshmenScience writer Jon Horgan writes: We li…AcademiaSnowfall at the White House (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour, Jan 7) Tweeted by W…My social media feed was…

A Wealth of Words

People with similar vocabulary sizes may vary significantly in their talent and in the depth of their understanding. Nonetheless, there’s no better index to accumulated knowledge and general competence than the size of a person’s vocabulary. Simply put: knowing more words makes you smarter. And between 1962 and the present, a big segment of the…

MSNBC Airs Un-Edited Sandy Hook Father’s Testimony After Critics Complain

NBC aired doctored versions of a 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case, which led to an apology and several people losing their jobs in April. On Monday, MSNBC aired a video that seemed to show a grief-stricken man being heckled by pro-gun lobbyists while talking about his recently murdered son. via The Hollywood Reporter Similar:Progress (#StarTrek #DS9…

Pinkalicious — “Buzz Off”

My daughter plays the Bumblebee in “Buzz Off,” which both ended Act I and opened Act II in last weekend’s Stage Right! production of Pinkalicious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gr6jlrndSU Similar:How PatrioticAmusing8 Questions for 'Star Trek' Superfans Restoring Galileo ShuttlecraftThis nerd’s geek heart grew three sizes …AestheticsYour first #blender3d retractable #steampunk landing wheels will be your worst. But you…

Make Games in the Classroom with Inform 7

I’ll blog pretty much anything that has to do with Inform 7. Text-based games, or interactive fiction, have continued to evolve since the days of Zork. Many works can be powerful for play in the classroom: Emily Short’s “interactive epistolary” First Draft of the Revolution, Andrew Plotkin’s physics-grounded Dual Transform, Peter Nepstad’s historically grounded 1893: A…

Almost Flat Design

Apple, Google and Microsoft have very different design aesthetics. Almost Flat Design | Matthew Moore Design. Similar:Anti-Semitic Times Square Elmo admits to Girl Scout extortion attemptThe headline made me click the link, and…EthicsWhen the art director was too cheap to buy the graphic designer a protractor.AestheticsHeart of Glory (TNG Rewatch, Season 1 Episode 20)Rewatching Star…

Why You Never Truly Leave High School

It’s also abundantly, poignantly clear that during puberty, kids have absolutely no clue how to assess character or read the behavior of others. In 2005, the sociologist Koji Ueno looked at one of the largest samples of adolescents in the United States, and found that only 37 percent of their friendships were reciprocal—meaning that when…

Surviving the Next Apocalypse: a Modest Curriculum

Obviously, given this surge in student demand, we need to make survivalist education another distinctive feature of our educational mission, and we must scramble to build institutional capacity in “apocalypse preparedness.” The admissions office already has brochures: “Where would you send your child: someplace that prepares them for a 20th-century job, or a community that…