Category: Instructional
-
The Student Debt Crisis and Self-Directed Learning for Free
Mindy Fetterman and Barbara Hansen analyze debt burdens on younger generations. Although the percentage of people ages 22 to 29 with debt has declined, their total debt is up 10%, to an average $16,120 as of Aug. 1, compared with five years earlier, Experian’s analysis found. Every type of debt — from credit cards to…
-
Second Life Videostream Notes
A few random notes about the talk (by the way, I’m adding to this same post after I post it once–the talk has started). Last night I reacquainted myself with how to use SL (it’s been a while). Wow, it’s easy to forget all this information if it’s not fresh on your brain. Wow,…
-
SLURL’s, etc
Call me extremely backward, but nobody told me that they now have URL’s to teleport players to specific Second Life locations. That is extremely useful for people without the time to immerse themselves in gameplay. I mentioned a few days ago that I’ll be giving a video presentation on ebooks in a while. Not only…
-
Friday May 11, 10am – 12pm: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling
(I’ll be giving a video lecture in mid May with the Greater Houston Education Collaboration Group. You can view it online afterwards if you wish. I’ll provide more details later, but here’s the lecture description for now. The URL for the talk will be here. ) Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling (Friday May 11, 10am…
-
Collaborative Textbooks: the Challenges
Two resources for free ebooks/textbooks: The Assayer , an online catalog of textbooks, and stingyscholar, blog dedicated to “how to get university-caliber educational materials on the cheap”. Assayer founder Ben Crowell published a nice piece on the emerging infrastructure to support free/low-cost textbooks. Crowell is a professor of physics and astronomy who has published several…
-
High school SAT scores and Wishful Thinking
In the same article previously cited: Yet consider what must happen at a school like Yale, where 17,735 applications came in last year. After all have been opened and put in files with the students’ SAT scores written on the front, they are read in descending order. Obviously, other factors will be considered, and some…
-
Intelligent Design Calls Itself Science
Cog at Abstract Factory on the Intelligent Design (ID) Controversy: ID calls itself science. ID calls itself science. ID calls itself science. And therefore, ID must be judged by the criteria of science, not philosophy or theology. And as science, ID is absolutely the pits. It is a fundamentally non-scientific argument that calls itself scientific…
-
Textbooks for Free!
Free Sound, a source of open source sound effects (for video, audio, etc). Unclear how big this library currently is. Anna Weinberg writes about college bookstore prices a new study conducted by the Government Accountability Office… released today reveals that the average college student spends nearly $900 a year on textbooks and supplies, and that…
-
Headfirst/Creating Passionate Users Weblog
Today I discovered two very insightful weblogs by veterans in the technical publishing industry. First Joseph B. Wikert from Wrox has a weblog about publishing trends called Average Joe. I’ll be catching up on his posts over time. Also, a great User Experience group weblog called Creating Passionate Users by some programmers/usability people who wrote…
-
Roy Peter Clark on Writing
Will Durant writes: “Civilization is a stream with banks.. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story…
-
What Writing Classes Do Not Teach Us
After reading Dan Green’s thoughts on Stanley Fish’s thought experiment, I started recalling my own writing undergraduate classes (none of which I received an A in). A professor of mine once lamented about how lack of direct experience prevented students from writing convincingly. He once suggested (half in jest, obviously) that all students be required…
-
Moodle to the Rescue
In a nice Ask Slashdot forum on open source alternatives to blackboard class management software , many point to moodle, a php-mysql solution.
-
Unlikely Geniuses
John Taylor Gatto writes about the school system vs. the nontraditional learner I’ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us. I didn’t want to accept that notion–far from it–my own training in two elite universities taught me that intelligence and talent distributed themselves economically over…
-
Wink Animation Programs.
Wink, a tool for creating animated tutorial. Renders as swf, pdf, html. Available for free on windows as well as linux. Apparently with some limited ability to create sound.
-
Bass Ackwards
Dave Astels on Why Your Code Sucks. OK, so you decide to add tests to your code. That typically isn’t so easy. The odds are that your code wasn’t designed and/or implemented to be easily testable. That means you will have to make changes to it to make it testable… without breaking any of it…