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:We Are Hopelessly Hooked [on our Gadgets]We check our phones 221 times a day—an a…CultureMTV VMAs: Will Smith Family's Reaction Was to Gaga, Not Miley (Video)I didn’t watch the show, but I did see t…BusinessToasty Warm Bed (designed by drunk AI neural net)AestheticsThirty Years Ago, the Challenger Crew Plunged Alive and Aware to Their DeathsThe…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Plans for the Little Known Confederate HelicopterThe possibilities of combining Civil War…DesignThe Physics Behind Traffic JamsIn between today’s various events, I das…CultureI think I smelled a hint of my mint toothpaste just now. Wishful thinking, or another sign…For the past 2 weeks I have slept a lot,…AcademiaCode 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:Each of these #retro #neovictorian #steampunk control panels takes me about an hour. #gree…AestheticsI've missed doing this! Another 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel goodness. #blender3d …AestheticsBurgh to…

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:In Purgatory's Shadow #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 14) Garak answers a coded …Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira helps Odo re-a…DramaBoston bombings: Social media spirals out of controlA thoughtful analysis. Problem-solver…CultureClose reading is hard to do in a state of…