Free cloze test generator

There were a lot of spammy hits out there, so here you go, semantic web: I just found a free cloze test generator that I rather like. It doesn’t seem to be able to save an interactive test, or score the test automatically, but it’s still a time-saver. I’ll be using as part of a close…

Challenging the lecture-homework paradigm

While discussion has always been a big part of my pedagogy, I very much enjoyed this item from an engineering professor about what happened when he pushed the lecture out of class time, and spent what used to be a lecture period as a lab. In my American Lit class, I’m not planning to record…

Study Says Brain Trauma Can Mimic A.L.S.

The mind boggles… Lou Gehrig might not have had Lou Gehrig’s disease. —NY Times Similar:Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?Not a day goes by without The Girl remin…BooksIt's “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” 111th birthdayInteresting introduction to the history …Books'Atari Dump' Will Be Excavated, After Nearly 30 YearsThe New Mexico landfill or “Atari Dump” …AmusingCheckmate. Crushed…

U.S.S. Requin Tour

Similar:Why the trial by ordeal was actually an effective test of guiltHow could an ordeal-administering priest…CultureThe Miracle Worker opens tomorrow.PersonalPlans for the Little Known Confederate HelicopterThe possibilities of combining Civil War…DesignHow Bill Gates pulled off the swift Common Core revolutionWhile I appreciate the efficiency of uni…CultureI'm amused by the quirky way the "Thin Bread Crust"…

Two Tips for Deliberate Practice

So, you’re an office worker who sends tons of email? Take one hour, read this article on writing effective emails, and then rewrite your last ten emails according to those guidelines. Forever after you’ll be a better emailer.–Stubbleblog Similar:"The Nightmare of Prince Prezelsky"Leigh, Peter, Carolyn and I had fun reco…AmusingBias Check! Consult different sources for…

Why Does College Cost So Much?

Our technology story rests on three strong pillars. First, like many personal services, including much of health care, the law and banking, higher education remains essentially an artisanal industry. These are industries in which technological progress has not reduced the number of labor hours needed to “produce” the service. By contrast, labor productivity in basic…

Yahoo! mail no longer serves mobile version for my iPad

The very efficient mobile phone version of Yahoo! Mail, m.yahoo.com/mail, no longer works for my iPad. A purple screen with a spinning animation just hangs. What gives? The full web version is way too busy for a touchscreen. Similar:The Game (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 6) Cadet Crusher vs Fun Risian GadgetRewatching ST:TNG Cadet…

College Undergrads Study Ineffectively on Computers, Study Finds: Students Transfer Bad Study Habits from Paper to Screen

[A] new study indicates that computers alone can’t keep students from falling into their same weak study habits from their ink-and-paper days…. The research, published in The Journal of Educational Psychology, found that students tend to study on computers as they would with traditional texts: They mindlessly over-copy long passages verbatim, take incomplete or linear…

GET LAMP Sonnet Review

A skillful exercise, this sonnet blog. Such parser game nostalgia warms my heart. You might be int’rested in Graham Nelson’s Command-line Shakespeare remix, The Tempest. Similar:The Liminal Classroom”What,” I asked, “are we to make of Plat…AcademiaDeSantis-backed bill would make it easier to sue news mediaAmerican law protects the free speech an…CultureCaptain Gearheart inspects progress on…

Contextualizing Student Experiences with iPads in Academe: A Collaborative Exploration of What We Expected, and What Surprised Us So Far (proposal)

Here’s the proposal for an in-house “Teaching and Learning Seminar” I’ll be presenting October 13: There is no scholarship on the academic use of iPads, because people like us — who have just begun teaching and advising and facilitating with iPads — haven’t published it yet. We can, of course, draw on related academic inquiry…

Twenty-Six Old Characters, The (1947)

Sheaffer Pen celebrates the art of writing, highlighting (predictably) the technological advances of the fountain pen. (Thanks to Ryan Trauman, who posted this on techrhet.) Near the climax of Death of a Salesman, Biff confesses that he has totally blown a business opportunity because he stole a big-shot’s fountain pen. When I first read the…

Bushy Run Battlefield Re-Enactment

The volunteers at the Busy Run Battlefield (in southwestern Pennsylvania) put on a fantastic event today, commemorating the high point of Pontiac’s War (the last major unified attempt of the native Americans to oppose British colonization in the aftermath of the French and Indian War). The event continues tomorrow, with a very engaging series of…

LAMP: TAKEN

There was no leaflet in my mailbox this morning, but I did find something much better — a copy of Jason Scott’s text adventure game documentary.My commemorative coin… Similar:The Most Lamentable and Excellent Text Adventure of Hamlet, Prince of DenmarkUpdate, July 2015 — the link to the ori…AmusingDigital Storytelling: an Efficient and Engaging Learning ActivityA…