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:Trials and Tribble-ations #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 6) Trivial Time Travel…Rewatching ST:DS9 Strait-laced time c…AmusingMy second greenscreen test.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d-LPwKQ…CybercultureIn July, 2002, I was blogging about military close reading, weblogs in journalism, UX evan…In July, 2002, I was blogging about …CybercultureThis morning I awoke to YouTube’s live footage of crowds circling a mosque in Mecca.…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Your Brain Does Not Work Like a ComputerThe brain-as-computer is a powerful meme…HealthSnowfall at the White House (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour, Jan 7) Tweeted by W…My social media feed was full of people …AestheticsNASA Confirms That Curiosity Found An Ancient Martian Stream Last year, NASA…

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:Coming of Age (TNG Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 18)Rewatching ST:TNG A character-heavy e…MediaSo many dials to polish. More workstations. #steampunk #neovictorian #design #aesthetics #… AestheticsAnother 10 sq cm of…

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:When Perception Trumps Reality: Republicans aren't nearly as rich as Democrats estimate. D…Democrats wildly over-estimate the perce…AcademiaTuxedo Pooh Reads Oscar Wilde I spent an hour on this. Below is the …AestheticsAdam Bard shaves off half his hair and beard…