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:Imagine, if you will, a Shakespeare course / Propos'd in blank verse like the Bard would w…Verses Proposing a New Course: “Shakespe…AcademiaGoogle Stops Scanning Student Gmail Accounts for Ads Google said Wednesday that it stoppe…AcademiaThe Evolution of 'Star Trek'(Infographic) | Space.comThe first 45 years of Star Trek (in an a…DesignAnnie — Cabinet TomorrowMy 10yo daughter Carolyn played Annie…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Dani Girl (Oct 1-3, 2015) at the Geyer Performing Arts CenterVinnie Tresco, Carolyn Jerz, Matthew Hom…CultureI'm glad President Trump was right about the coronavirus vaccine In May, NBC published a “Fact Check” c…Current_EventsComment: Why women taking their husband's name could be about biologyI’m somewhat interested in the topic,…

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:The Distracted Classroom:…

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:Airport retro video games collect spare coins in SwedenFliers arriving at Swedens two biggest a…AestheticsWho is the more dramatic — my extroverted tween or my philosophical teen?Stoked from a…

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:Happy memories of PC games I played with my son (now 19) sitting on my lap.While doing some spring cleaning around …CultureOmaha schoolgirl dresses as a different historical figure each day Voilà, she is Billie Holiday, in a b…AestheticsLearn…

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…