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:In August 1999 I was blogging about Poohsticks Bridge, penmanship, Archimedes, and ebooksIn August 1999, I was blogging about …BooksPracticing my Unity3D design skills. Forgot to turn on gravity.https://youtu.be/PkxxiPAmTFg I’m brus…AmusingAmazon’s Tactics Confirm Its Critics’ Worst SuspicionsThis week, as part of a contract dispute…BooksLawsuit Against Warner/Chappell Music Claims Happy Birthday Belongs to Public Domain20 years…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Journalism by the Numbers (a pedagogical play in one scene) #math (Lights up on a college journa…CultureWhat It Takes To Change Your Brain's Patterns After Age 25Most of our brain’s patterns are solidif…HealthThe Teen Brain “Shuts Down” When It Hears Mom’s CriticismWired summarizes an egghead study for th…CultureThe…

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:How Not To Make Professional ContactsTowards the end of my year-long radio ne…AmusingStill More FaceTime FunI realize that video-chatting teenagers …MediaKing Oberon Midsummer Make-upMidsummer closes tonight, July 23. My da…CultureAt…

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…