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:In March 2000, I was blogging about Palm V computers for the Navy, NCAA banning online jou…In March 2000, I was blogging about …AcademiaMy 13yo homeschooler had no idea how to open a little milk carton. I had to show her.CultureRebooting “Rossum’s Universal Robots” for the 21st century“It is over three hours long, and it…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Jerz Family Tin Can Robot Warshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIBQkobPW…PersonalDonald Trump tests positive for Covid-19. CNN: "A nightmare scenario for the White House." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdXL…Current_EventsNASA confirms the best-ever evidence for water on MarsMars is the only [other] place where we …Current_Events1 small shirt for a man, 1 giant leap backward for women: ColumnIdea…

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 Hitchhiker's Guide…

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:Another delightful section of a #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #design #aesthetics #…AestheticsI am happy with how this turned out. My mother told me about this story when I was…

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:Babel (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 5) Virus Garbles Everyone's SpeechRewatching ST:DS9 Overworked O’Brien …DesignOn the Trail of the Memex: Vannevar Bush, Weblogs and the Google Galaxy”Hypertext as mediated by the Web browse…CybercultureThe Girl's Obsession with Scottish History…

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…