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:Why We’ll Never Live in SpaceAs much as I love escapist science ficti…BusinessThe End of Print JournalismThe future of print remains what? Try to…BusinessShe was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested…Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blu…CybercultureFilmmakers Find Section of Destroyed Space Shuttle Challenger on Ocean…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Obamacare's broken website cost more than LinkedIn, Spotify combinedMuch of the criticism of Healthcare.gov …CultureSocial Distancing: Because the Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the FewEmpathyWearing A Mask Is A Sign Of Mutual Respect During The Coronavirus PandemicShortly after my region ended their lock…BusinessThe coronavirus is…

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:In Pittsburgh, science gets playfulImagine: sharing a secret with a friend …AestheticsWest Side Story (One-Minute Preview)From Mrs. Lovett two weeks ago to Maria …AestheticsCheerful scene from @pictclassictheatre Jane Eyre…

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:Pop song lyrics use more negative words ("hate", "sorrow") than 50 years agoThe use of words related to negative emo…EmpathyTeaching myself the #Unity3D game engine. Each step requires a lot of focused attention. I… Teaching myself the #Unity3D game…

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…