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:Schiller schools internet on correct Apple device plurals, but Cook says "iPad Pros"”Siri, is the world ready for Apple pod …CybercultureQuebec teen discovers ancient Mayan ruins by studying the starsThis sounds like the plot of a Young Ind…CultureThe Trouble With Online EducationI’ve taught an online “Video Game Cultur…AcademiaIn September 1999 I was blogging about Tom…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:ALL ABOUT 'ARCHIE' – Jason Robert BrownA few years ago, my daughter got to perf…CultureWe don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.A chemist celebrates the liberal arts. …AcademiaMy 13yo homeschooler had no idea how to open a little milk carton. I…

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:The black chair is down to 18¢ per ounce? Shut up and take my money, Amazon!PersonalMars Curiosity rover sings 'Happy Birthday,' dares Earth to collect royalties  One year ago…

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:Lego goes steampunkBe still, my nerdy heart. Steampunk —…AestheticsAmLit Rescue — Scratch GameA student in my “American Literature: 19…AcademiaWe are cruel. We always have been. The Internet did not make us soWe didn’t start the flame war. Scandalou…CultureHas life…

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…