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:Your second attempt at modeling #medievalyork fortifications in #blender3d will be better …Your second attempt at modeling #medieva…AestheticsKnee-jerk sharing of memes denigrates the truth.Trump never told People magazine that Re…CultureJournalism is now the second draft of historyThe unavoidable truth is that first draf…CultureStop sharing those unsourced memes about "be woke" and "God doesn't need soldiers"…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:An Experimental Autism Treatment Cost Me My MarriageInteresting essay challenging the notion…EssaysShakespeare’s Genius Is NonsenseJust as comedians generally don’t laugh …CultureThe reluctant wisdom of a science major in my freshman writing class.”There’s nothing left to say,” said a sc…AcademiaThe Outsiders Closing after Friday Night's ShowCurrent_EventsTo Learn More, This High-Schooler…

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:What gives you comfort? I collect lights. Some of these have magnets!!AmusingThe 1982 Tron Holiday SpecialSides: split. Gut: busted. Milk droplets…AmusingA student who had often been frustrated during my…

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:Another 10 sq cm section of a #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dart #designAestheticsThe “Other Side” Is Not Dumb.The song “No One Is Alone,” from the mus…CultureSarah Polley: ‘It took me years to see how responsible Terry Gilliam was for…

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…