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:Humans are being hired to make AI slop look less sloppy The illustrations clients bring to her…ArtThe dark future of American space exploration: NASA's golden age is about to come to a thu…I remember, as a kid, being thrilled by …CultureWe Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now | History &…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:All About Soap — Why Washing Your Hands Fights the CoronavirusPeople typically think of soap as gentle…CultureOne wild place. (Sunday.)  NatureTime Might Only Exist in Your Head. And Everyone Else'sTired brain can’t quite process this Wir…NatureScientists Trace Society's Myths to Primordial OriginsAncient cultures from Africa to Asia to…

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:Enjoying some sibling nerdtime with Lego The Hobbit.GamesLego-Building Tween Refers to "The Hobbit" TextMy daughter, having just received a hand…AestheticsTelling Trump’s Story to Children: For Book Publishers, It’s TrickyThis…

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:Desk blotters, with procedural leather and wood materials by Blendermada. #blender3dAestheticsLove Online”The exchange of love letters was centra…CultureImportant University of Virginia Messages Regarding Sexual AssaultUniversity of Virginia president takes a…AcademiaPreteen Acting Scene Version 2 – YouTubeI had a free…

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…