Archive for December, 2008

Blue Schools and Time Machines

image credit: jesse newman for TIME Here’s another entry for my List of Reasons Why I’m Justifiably Pissed About the Lack Of Time Machines: the Blue Man Group started an elementary school. And if you know anything about elementary school, then you’ll be up on the pertinent info regarding age restrictions for enrolled students. I [ READ MORE ]

Top 100 E-Learning Tools (And The Top 25 Free Ones)

Jane Hart over at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies has compiled some great lists for e-learning tools. The lists are geared more toward educators, but I think a decent majority of the items are relevant for students as well, especially grad students who spend their days walking that line between penniless student and [ READ MORE ]

The Wretched Planet Deferment

Is it better to be rejected by a college outright, or to receive a letter of deferment? Oooh, hard to say. On the one hand, you haven’t been denied entry to Shangri-La (yet), but you haven’t been asked to make yourself at home, either. And there’s the matter of being in limbo and not knowing [ READ MORE ]

Obama Chooses Arne Duncan For Secretary Of Education

Arne Duncan is the new education guy. In my reading up on him, he sounded neither super great nor overtly evil. He seemed a little in the middle. Every damn news article was sure to mention the basketball thing (he played professional basketball in Australia for a while after college, and these days plays pick-up [ READ MORE ]

Play Doh-Smeared Credentials

While I understand the need every parent has—on a weird, biological level—to do as much for their child as is feasible in order that said kid’s life path can be as smooth and highly elevated as is everly possible, I have never been able to be anywhere near fine with the insane pressure and bizarre [ READ MORE ]

Snow Day Productivity

Sometimes you have to just give up on getting any real work done. This was excruciatingly true yesterday and today, when Seattle had some “snow days,” (I use the term loosely). Seattle is a city with little or no annual snowfall, which means there’s not much by way of snow removal equipment. Also, Seattle is [ READ MORE ]

‘H’ Is For ‘Half-Measure Haggis’

ABC News reported that the public high schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan, have decided to give out “H” grades in lieu of a failing “F” grade. The “H” stands for “held,” and means the student has twelve weeks to do the work and fix the problem. Yale University professor of psychology and child psychiatry, Alan [ READ MORE ]

Letters of Recommendation

For any prospective college student (graduate student or undergrad) in the throes of the college application process, you might want to read this hilarious post by Tenured Radical, aka Claire B. Potter of Wesleyan University. It will give you insight into the application process from the letter-of-recommendation writer’s point of view, be they high school [ READ MORE ]

“Measuring Up 2008″

If you enjoy demoralizing statistical reports and analyses, please be sure to read “Measuring Up 2008.” It’s the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education’s biennial report on how the U.S. is doing educationally and it will make you want to stick your head in the sand and just wait this one out. I [ READ MORE ]

“Dance Your PhD”

If you can do an interpretive dance illustrating your PhD research on “Resolving Pathways of Functional Coupling in Human Hemoglobin Using Quantitative Low Temperature Isoelectric Focusing of Asymmetric Mutant Hybrids,” I’ll give you fifty bucks. I’m totally kidding, but Gonzo Scientist John Bohannon and the American Association for the Advancement of Science aren’t. They held [ READ MORE ]