I think Mark Bauerlein might need a Quantitative Literacy course. He might possibly also need a dictionary to look up the meaning of “paradox”. From today’s Chronicle article “Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers”: Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, cites the reading and writing scores in the National… Continue reading

This clip, from Boing Boing, is pretty incredible. Various educational organizations are currently in Washington requesting an DMCA exemption to rip DVDs so they can take clips for classroom use. The MPAA responded, apparently, with a video on how to camcord a screen, which they see as the preferred method for teachers to use. This… Continue reading

There’s this cello layering thing going around, which is neat because of the layering the player accomplishes with foot pedals and an Mac. It’s worth noting, though, that people in rock and roll have been doing this for decades with devices gated up in all sorts of crazy configurations. It’s pretty common now to rock… Continue reading

To start with, the article is misnamed: Mainstream Gen Y isn’t Buying Into Web 2.0 uses the term Gen Y interchangeably with statistics on the 18-24 demographic. If we take the standard 1982 starting point of Gen Y, the oldest in the cohort are 27, not 24. The 18-24 bracket is used because that is… Continue reading

Network thinking: Rep. David Obey (D-WI) included the pandemic preparation funding in the [stimulus] package because he believed “that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse.” vs. Non-network thinking: SENATOR COLLINS (on why she stripped pandemic flu funding from the stimulus bill): There’s funding… Continue reading

Mark Penn writing on bloggers in the WSJ today: Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their… Continue reading

My T-Mobile G1 broke last night — I knocked it off the table and the screen cracked. I was oddly apathetic about it. The touch screen web phones receive a lot of hype because they address a set of problems faced by the frequent business travelers that write the gadget press. During conferences, for instance,… Continue reading

Well, I was waiting to digest this more but since Stephen and Alex have started processing it already, I thought I might make an initial stab at some thoughts on the Hacking Education roundtable. And maybe give a bit of aid and comfort to Alex as well. First things first — the conference was a… Continue reading

I know at least some of the experts quoted in this Daily Mail article are worth listening to, as they join the video games and social networks are making our kids stupid chorus (alarmist title of the week: “Social websites harm children’s brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist”). But there’s a lot in… Continue reading

There’s a lengthy article in yesterday’s NYT talking about California’s new “post-partisan primary” law:  One outgrowth of California’s budget agreement may have set the table for something the state does often and well: force a national re-examination of a public policy issue, in this case ridding state capitals of partisan gridlock. In approving the budget early… Continue reading