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:Spot of sunlight seems to be sliding down an escalator.   View t…AestheticsIn October, 2002, I was blogging about stupid space explosions, the superiority complex, w…In October, 2002, I was blogging about …CybercultureInfrared photo confirms Munch wrote "madman" inscription first noticed in 1904“Kan kun være malet af en gal Mand!” (“C…Aesthetics50 Years Ago: The World in…

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works

Beatrice the Biologist: How the Brain Works. Similar:Trainer and Sea Lion Tango: "He Had It Coming" (Cell Block Tango, from Chicago) AestheticsBackground for Trump's remarkable pivot to a pro-mask stance; via right-leaning Forbes and…Background for Trump’s remarkable pivot …CultureEnjoying a peaceful fall moment while it's possible. Taking these moments as they come. AestheticsIntimations of MortalityPlato,…

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:Star Wars Han Solo in Carbonite Silicon Ice Tray  Star Wars Han Solo in Carbonit…AestheticsUnion siege cannon, printing press, and "From Slavery to Freedom" were the highl…PersonalSomeone I know…

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:Non-Euclidean Doom, where the value of pi is not 3.14159Weirdly beautiful. Wonderful bit of game…CybercultureIf Google+ Heads to the Grave, at Least It’ll Have DirectionForced Google+ integration in Google Rea…BusinessHow Zuckerberg’s Facebook is like Gutenberg’s printing pressHistorian Niall Ferguson…