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:The Problem with Quotes on the InternetAmusingLong Live the LARPers — My daughter plays the antagonist in this award-winning 48 Hour Fi…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku7wzUtO…AestheticsMy understanding of biased polls is… (choose one) AmusingToasty Warm Bed (designed by drunk AI neural net)AestheticsMy Latest Classic Tales Online PurchaseJust finished listening to B. J. Harris …BooksThe Miller of the Dee; by James…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Preschoolers Outsmart College Students In Figuring Out GadgetsThis is flexible, fluid thinking — child…PsychologyThe Hubble spotted this smiley face in spaceReading each other’s facial expressions …AestheticsWhat Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2015?If the pre-1978 laws were still in effec…BooksCarnegie Science Center's Guitar ExhibitThis summer,…

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:Busy with Midterm GradesPosted midterm grades for the most labor…AcademiaThe Best Halloween Costume Is a Robot Halloween Costume – Atlantic MobileAwesome robot costume is awesome. The…AestheticsChillax, Wikipedia, and bridezilla…

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 St. Crispin's DayHere’s my rendition of the famous “band …CultureBoston bombings: Social media spirals out of controlA thoughtful analysis. Problem-solver…CultureFacebook is predicting the end of the written wordFacebook’s video push threatens the edit…BusinessUnnatural Selection (ST:TNG Rewatch Season 2,…

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…