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:Battle of Agincourt — 600 Year Anniversary of Henry V's "St. Crispin's Day Speech"Sure, Marty McFly Day is interesting and…CultureReport: Many U.S. Schools Can’t Afford Mannequins, Human Urine For Art Classes“It’s sad, but my students don’t even ha…AestheticsIs your child texting about recursive acronym palindromes? Is your child texting about recursive …AmusingTrying Out the Zaggmate Keyboard/Case…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Superman Comic about Sympathy and HopeJust in case someone out there could use…AestheticsOpinion | Defiant, Now Infected: Trump Is a Morality TaleFrom Frank Bruni, NYT It’s a measure …Current_EventsWhy won't the University of Maryland talk about the chocolate milk/concussion study it was…I took note of this University of…

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:Musician uses computer algorithm to compose every melody possible in C, releases them for …  A lawyer and hobbyist musician…AmusingThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – About the game30th…

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:Multiple Choice = GoogleNo big surprises here, but this blog pos…AcademiaOn my fantasy #steampunk capital ship, every uniform is a full dress uniform. #blender3d #…AestheticsDetails on the disappearance of the Utah monolith Mr. Bernards, 34, of Edwards, Colo., w…ArtDon't…

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…