Open-source ed tech software wish-list
In response to the LTI App Bounty challenge issued yesterday by several LMS companies, here is my wish-list for software that has a simple function, does not yet exist, but should: A mashup of the Creative Commons search tool, Zotero, and simple image editing that would allow one to search for a CC-licensed/PD image, snag […]
Sherman’s style note: An algorithm is not personal
Style note to education beat reporters: an algorithm is not “personalization” of education, no matter how many people make the claim. As computerized algorithms currently exist, here are the things that an algorithm cannot identify in an educational context: An algorithm does not know when to pull a student aside at a quiet moment to ask […]
Semester debriefing
We’re at the end of the semester here at USF, and this is a short debriefing of the semester. My particular form of craziness this semester was teaching three courses while serving as department chair. Technically, I was teaching four sections of our undergraduate Schools and Society course, but two of them met in the […]
Paper deadlines and grace periods
For some years now, I have been giving undergraduate students a 24-hour “grace period” after the formal deadline for papers. If a student is trying to upload a paper five minutes before a deadline and the student loses her internet connection, I don’t need the hassle of making a decision on where to give extensions, […]
The MOOC poem (apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
There was a giant MOOC, based on a little book when MOOC hype was trending torrid, And when MOOCS were good, they were very, very good, But when they were bad they were horrid. Profs stood on their heads, “students” watching from bed, With nobody by for to hinder; Peer-graded squalor, plagiarized in the hollers, […]