July 2011
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San Diego State To Roll Out New Wave of Classroom Clickers
San Diego State To Roll Out New Wave of Classroom Clickers A reminder that with Classroom Response Systems reliability is more important than extra functions. Continue reading
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Just Breathe
Just Breathe Ze Frank is still one of the coolest people on the planet. That is all. Continue reading
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The Wrath Against Khan: Why Some Educators Are Questioning Khan Academy
The Wrath Against Khan: Why Some Educators Are Questioning Khan Academy Nice commentary on the Khan backlash, both from Downes and Audrey. The problem is that Khan solves the simple part of the problem (wonderfully well); but it seems like some people are making much broader claims of impact. Why do people think that a Continue reading
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And let’s face it, Google isn’t making us stupider, it’s simply making us realise that omniscience is actually slightly boring.
And let’s face it, Google isn’t making us stupider, it’s simply making us realise that omniscience is actually slightly boring.Douglas Coupland, here. I’d add that omniscience is not only boring, but also not nearly as useful as one would have thought. Continue reading
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CINAC: Correlation is not a Cause
CINAC: Correlation is not a Cause Sue Blackmore on the one thing everyone should have in their cognitive toolkit that they don’t currently…..CINAC (Correlation is not a Cause). One reason for this lack is that CINAC can be surprisingly difficult to grasp. I learned just how difficult when teaching experimental design to nurses, physiotherapists and Continue reading
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Penile Length Leads to Little Economic Growth
Penile Length Leads to Little Economic Growth Probably not going to use this one in my Stat Lit class, but it is a shame. It’s obviously a good example why identifying probable mechanism is important. Less obviously it’s a great example of cherry picking — if you click through to the paper it is the Continue reading
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On the Death of Borders
Scott Leslie asked me a great question a year ago that I never forgot. In the middle of a discussion about the decline of newspapers and it’s relation to the impending implosion of higher ed he asked me, since I was defending institutional relevance, to name one case where an entrenched industry made changes and Continue reading
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Why Reform Through Institutional Abolition Won’t Work
From Lawyer, Guns, and Money: So to sum up–being right about policy is often irrelevant unless you have a mass movement of people behind you ready to engage in collective action to see those policies enacted. And I don’t think left neo-liberals often understand that. This is why I get so outraged when, for example, Continue reading
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Zombie Pseudoscience: 8 Glasses a Day
For those wondering, this blog covers two main things — stuff important to instructional design, and stuff important to my statistical literacy class. Here’s something on the latter… Somewhere, somebody, probably employed by a bottled water company, said we should all get eight glasses of water eight times a day. Coffee doesn’t count, the water Continue reading
Hapgood 