United We Sit On The Couch With a Corona And A Microwaved Burrito From Seven-11:
April 18th, 2002
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Pick from a menu of patriotic slogans.
Archive
Archive for April, 2002
Let’s Roll™:
April 17th, 2002
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Blogrolling.com is an excellent good tool that I’m going to implement on this blog as soon as I have a few free minutes. [link via Evhead] UPDATE: The links to the left are now brought to you via Blogrolling.com. I’ve “downgraded” my opinion of Blogrolling.com from “excellent” to good. The idea is excellent, but the execution is average. The workflow of their editing interface is clunky and I don’t like the fact that it puts that silly “by blogrolling.com” at the bottom of the list. I’d be happy to voluntarily link to their site, like I do for Blogger (see, they just got another link) and all the other tools I use on Ten Reasons Why, but I don’t much like my blogroll mucked up by their advertising.
Design for Stupid People:
April 17th, 2002
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No, not “how to teach stupid people to design, but “how to design for stupid people. In other words, keep it simple, stupid.
Resource Discovery Network:
April 17th, 2002
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“The Resource Discovery Network is a free Internet service dedicated to providing effective access to high quality Internet resources for the learning, teaching and research community.” [Link via Online Learning Daily] Another resource that’s directed more at K12 (and, unfortunately, not free) is NetTrekker, which has teachers index and summarize educationally useful websites, ranks them, and cross-reference them by state educational standards.
The Average Online Learner:
April 17th, 2002
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This study compared a set of students taking the same community college course on campus in a traditional classroom with a group taking the same course online via the same college. [link via Online Learning News Blog] Interesting conclusions, like
“Online learners at this community college had several distinguishing characteristics. The online learners were predominately visual learners and spent, on the average, an hour more per week on classwork than did their traditional student counterparts. There also more women than there are men taking online classes. The online learners at this community college were primarily married or divorced and had children living at home…the average online student is a woman, 34 years old, employed part-time, and has previous college credits”
However, it appears that the researchers didn’t make any attempt to study (or at least control for) the tools used to deliver the online learning (or, for that matter, the face-to-face learning).
Best TV Moment of 2002:
April 16th, 2002
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Ozzy Osbourne looks at the Lawrence Welk-style bubbles that are to be part of his stage show and says to his wife, “Bubbles! I can’t have ****ing bubbles, Sharon! I’m the Prince of ****ing Darkness!”
The Osbournes is the best new show on television. Today’s Washington Post compares Ozzy to Ozzie (of Ozzie and Harriet fame, that is) nailing precisely why The Osbournes is so good: it fits perfectly with the formula of every other family sitcom since the original Ozzie.
Think the IRS will accept this excuse?
April 16th, 2002
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Dutch teen closes Washington, D.C. banks. On tax day, no less. That explains why my branch was closed. D’oh!
Winona Ryder vs. Sheryl Crow:
April 15th, 2002
Even though my attempt to marry Sheryl Crow never took off, Anthony wants to mary Winona Ryder.
Ya know, assuming Sheryl and me don’t work out, I’d marry Winona Ryder, despite the whole shoplifting fiasco. ‘Nona, honey, if you’re reading this — I’m way better husband material than Anthony.
Free Curricula License.
April 15th, 2002
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The FCL is nearing completion — version 0.9.9 [link via Open Source Schools].
Personally, I still don’t get what value the FCL provides that the Open Publication License hasn’t already done better.
All that the Open Source Education Foundation (page doesn’t render correctly in IE6 for Windows) has to say in response to their own FAQ question, “What benefits does the FCL have over other licenses?” is “The FCL was created by members of the Open Source Education Foundation, the OpenSchooling project, and OzoneFarm for the purpose of writing curricula for schools, be it a book or another type of information resource.”
Lame explanation, since (1) their main contention seems to be “It’s more beneficial because it was made by us” and (2) OpenContent was created by David Wiley, a respected and well-published Ph.D in instructional technology, specifically for the circulation of teaching materials.
I don’t question the FCL author’s intent; I’m sure it’s honorable. Their execution simpy isn’t as good as Wiley’s. Why muddy the waters with another license when you can’t even reasonably come up with an explanation as to why it is more valuable, or at least different from the existing, satisfactory licenses?
Yech. Something smells rotten.
April 15th, 2002
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Researchers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (nice place, I’ve been there) have found that linkrot is rampant in online educational materials.