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:Canadian teen's short film captures Spring 2020Not graphic, but emotionally powerful. …CultureMeet the 12-year-old boy who makes games instead of going to schoolTurning on the anti-clickbait filter: Ho…CultureThe Challenger disaster, Jan. 28, 1986On this day in 1986, the Challenger spac…EducationI actually don't mind Canvas — it just happens to be the course management system I…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely movingFascinating article about how the extrem…CultureFormer Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh sentenced to 3 years for ‘Healthy Holly’ children’s …Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, w…BooksWhat Do Happy Teens Do? Hint: It doesn't involve their phones.I was surprised to see how…

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…

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. Similar:“Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand. That I might touch that cheek!” #pptplaytime Rome…CultureI just looked up the context for the bald guy dropping the chili. I…

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…