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:Horrifying deepfake tricks employee into giving away $25 millionNo names in this single-source anecdote …BusinessAngel One (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 13) Sexist Amazon chief flips Riker leitmotif, t…Rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generatio…AmusingIn October 2001, I was blogging about nothing, apostrophes, the anthrax scare, and Boilerp…In October 2001, I was blogging about …AmusingFacebook Announces…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Now Is the Perfect Time to Memorize a PoemPowerful writing, by Matthew Schneier. …AestheticsHow The Language Of Special Education Is EvolvingThe words we use and the ways we refer t…CultureSocial Distancing: Because the Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the FewEmpathyRobot competition requires science, innovation and…

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. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gr6jlrndSU Similar:World Trade Center Literary and Cultural Reflections (first posted September 11, 2001) Not knowing what else to do, in the nu…AestheticsWhat would holidays be without Dickens' beloved 'Christmas Carol?'It…

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:Making movie magic with my dueling gut-shot daughterAestheticsWriting Tips for Critical Thinking  Critical Thinking Matters Pers…AcademiaA lost generation of news consumers? Survey shows how teenagers dislike the news mediaMore than half of the teens surveyed bel…CultureCrime coverage on Fox…