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:Twitter, Fix Your Cropping AlgorithmWhen given the chance to crop four diffe…CybercultureThe Chicago Tribune Has Made the Best Internet Mistake of the DayEvery second is a deadline, every instan…AmusingText Games in a New Era of StoriesClever NYT writer cleverly notices a gen…CultureSTEM Needs a New LetterCreativity alone does not foster innovat…ArtAll the world’s an appA…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Alice in Quantumland: A Charming Illustrated Allegory of Quantum Mechanics by a CERN Physi…Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Qua…AestheticsCDC: Vaccinated people can resume activities without a mask or physical distance (with som…CDC: “Fully vaccinated people can resume…AwesomeHow Exactly Do You Catch Covid-19? There Is a Growing ConsensusFrom…

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…

MSNBC Airs Un-Edited Sandy Hook Father’s Testimony After Critics Complain

NBC aired doctored versions of a 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case, which led to an apology and several people losing their jobs in April. On Monday, MSNBC aired a video that seemed to show a grief-stricken man being heckled by pro-gun lobbyists while talking about his recently murdered son. via The Hollywood Reporter Similar:Mechanical innards for…

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:Enjoyed watching "Queen of Katwe" (Ugandan girl chess prodigy movie)I enjoyed watching this chess-themed com…Culture‘Snow White’ gets a new musical There’s a buzz of excitement this week…CultureBlood Oath (#StarTrek…

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:My 13yo and 18yo enthralled by WarGames.Wife likes movies. Son likes military th…CultureIn April, 2002, I was blogging about an autistic person's guide to asking a girl on a date…In April, 2002, I was blogging about …BooksAn overnight traffic…