Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Category: Education

  • Deletions

    I may have blogger’s block. Over the past three weeks I have deleted thirteen posts. I really want to blog about our new vendor, Desire2Learn. At the same time I do not want to be perceived as hurting the growing relationship we have with this company. None of the posts are about them. I just…

  • One of Many

    The Learning Management System (LMS) has been a despised technology by some ever since I started working with one, WebCT, in 1999. At the time it was deemed crappy technology that had to improve or die. So today in 2012, about 13 years later, I have to roll my eyes at the pundits writing about…

  • TED Talk: You Fell Through the Cracks

    There was a time when my secret project, the thing that brought me in to work ever day and probably why I stayed till 8pm, was attempting to end the error_log from have anyone ever hitting the 404 page. It was after making the 404 page funny. Only no one got the joke. If the below…

  • Interactive Archives

    My jaw dropped at the end of this blog post Cloud Hosting and Academic Research. There is a value in keeping significant old systems around, even if they no longer have active user bases.  A cloud hosting model seems so right to me–it’s scalable and robust. It just makes sense. But the hosting costs are…

  • Are We Information Junkies?

    Catherine who I follow on Twitter retweeted about agreeing with this blog post: Last night while sitting at a pub with some friends, the topic of information came up. My friend Tom, in particular, had a few interesting things to say about it. I asked him if he thought that constantly being tapped into the stream of information that…

  • Should CS Be Required?

    Each of the nearly 2,000 freshmen entering Georgia Institute of Technology each year must take a computer science course regardless of their major, says Charles Isbell, associate dean for academic affairs at the school’s College of Computing… Similar to traditional general education requirements such as philosophy or world history, the purpose of each courses is to turn out…

  • Georgians Lottery Suckers

    A CNN article on the $640 million lottery jackpot tonight revealed something interesting. According to data crunched by Bloomberg, Georgia residents are the biggest “suckers.” They spend an average of $471 per year on the lottery, or 1% of their average income, while receiving a payout of 63 cents on the dollar. Yeah, but I got some…

  • TED: How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries

    Adam Savage holds the position of my favorite story teller. Part of it might be that he speeds his rate of talking up to the edge of where I think he is about to stumble, but he does not. It lends to sensing his excitement. He talks about Feynman and Eratosthenes here. If the above video…

  • TEDxBloomington: The happy secret to better work

    When we are happier, our brains work better. Part of this could be viewing stresses as opportunities. If the above video does not load, then try The happy secret to better work.