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:Texas lawyer trapped by cat filter on Zoom call, informs judge he is not a catA Texas lawyer accidentally left a kitte…AmusingI just finished "Beyond Eyes" and I think there's something in my eye.My 20yo son, who plays a lot of Star War…AestheticsNeuroscientist Explores the Ethical Quandries of a Digital AfterlifeNow imagine the resources required…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Secret Mouthwash Dance Exposed as FraudRecently, while getting the kids ready f…AmusingAncient Sea Rise Tale Told Accurately for 10,000 Years”It’s quite gobsmacking to think that a …CultureExperience: I let a baby bird nest in my hair for 84 days He was abandoned by his flock, his nes…EmpathyNo, the…

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:I rather like my camera. Bought a new zoom lens a few months ago.PersonalIn February 2000, I was blogging about "The Heist" (Sorrels); the "Instant Muse Poetry Gen… In…

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:Your first #blender3d retractable #steampunk landing wheels will be your worst. But you ha…Your first #blender3d retractable #steam…AestheticsNo focus, no fights, and a bad back – 16 ways technology has ruined my lifeInsightful, funny list. (This guy is a…

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…