Real vs. fake issues in “blogs vs. term papers”
New York Times reporter Matt Richtel positioned Cathy Davidson against William Fitzhugh in this weekend’s Blogs vs. Term Papers article. Currently a Duke University humanities professor, Davidson has experimented with a variety of writing forms she expects from students in her course. As the founding editor of the Concord Review, a journal publishing history essays by high […]
iBooks Author: a tool for testing proofs of concept?
Yesterday morning, Rick Perry quit the presidential race and endorsed iBooks Author. Er, no, something else. Oh, yes: Apple unveiled the iBooks Author program that is an easier (if not frictionless) tool for creating ebooks for iBooks, and (not coincidentally), partnerships with the big three text publishers to sell more stuff to schools. There are […]
Brief note on Apple’s “GarageBand for ebooks” and accessibility
This is what can happen when you’re at the end of a long day and idly respond to the news on Twitter: you get quoted in a Wired piece about Apple’s anticipated announcement this week of … something ebooksy, very possibly a tool to compose electronic texts in much simpler ways than is possible now. Or […]
Teaching humans who cheat on rationality
In the past year, for diversion I’ve read some books intended for a general audience written by psychologists–several of my department colleagues would find these watered down from research journals, but I can justify the brain candy: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow Antonio Demasi, Self Comes to Mind Claude Steele, Whistling Vivaldi Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, […]
Myside bias in deciding “what to think” about research results–(S)extrapolation II
This morning, the New York Times carried a column by Nicholas Kristof talking about the import of the Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff paper; later, Kevin Carey wrote a blog entry telling us what to think about the study. ((Yes, he used “what to think” in the entry title. Carey’s mind-control machinery isn’t working tonight, at […]