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:SMS Generator SMS Generator.AmusingWhat's a Snollygoster? Even lexicographers are wrong sometimesThis is an amusing little story about ho…CultureI am very happy for these folks, who spent 20 or so years tweaking an insanely complex, co… AwesomeMelissa Terras Reports Her Success in Making Digital Humanities More InclusiveA pleasant little success story. “TEI” i…AcademiaSummer Project: Responsive Web DesignI…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Preschoolers Outsmart College Students In Figuring Out GadgetsThis is flexible, fluid thinking — child…PsychologySouthwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly, who testified unmasked at a Senate hearing on Wednesday…Kelly testified at the hearing that he b…BusinessAcademic study concludes that teaching kids to touch-type can make them better writersImproving students’ handwriting…

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:Busy with Midterm GradesPosted midterm grades for the most labor…AcademiaMy undergraduate connects the Leontes/Polixenes conflict in The Winter's Tale to a pro wre…Today’s class on The Winter’s Tale was…

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:Why Fears of Fake News Are OverhypedFacebook seems to have made changes that…CultureYour first test layout of medieval city streets will be your worst. #blender3d #medievalyo…Your first test layout of medieval city …DesignJust wrote the first ending to my…

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…