Inefficient Technology

Alvin Trusty recently pointed out the inefficiencies of synchronous chat rooms in online courses. The social protocol of the chat room does not always lend itself well to serious discussions. In a chat, people are constantly entering and leaving. Some people try to monopolize the conversation by responding to every comment made. Others take the [...]

Posted on February 22nd, 2007 by John Schinker
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Grammar Girl

Last year, I started listening to The Word Nerds podcast. This show examines a particular aspect of our language and culture in each episode. If you know the difference between a mondegreen and a portmanteau, this is the kind of thing you would like. I found it interesting for a while, but after a few [...]

Posted on February 16th, 2007 by John Schinker
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Collaborative Projects

Over at TechnoSpud, Jennifer Wagner has been coordinating collaborative projects for nearly a decade. She started by collecting data for a science project, and reasoned that she could use the Internet to collect data from students all over the world. Eight years later, she’s coordinating five projects a year, involving hundreds of classrooms and thousands [...]

Posted on February 14th, 2007 by John Schinker
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Optical Illusions

I love optical illusions. It’s a lot of fun to see how we can play tricks on our minds by exploiting our understanding of how our brains interpret what we see. Most of the time, I can see right through the illusions. We’ve seen the impossible trident, the Rubin vase, the Penrose Triangle, and the [...]

Posted on February 12th, 2007 by John Schinker
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Thought I Heard a Red-Winged Blackbird

Maybe not. It was just the Sound and Video Catalog at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macaulay Library. Despite the fact that there aren’t any cheetahs, the catalog does have an impressive collection of animal recordings, some of which date back half a century or more. Many also have video. As you’d expect from a [...]

Posted on February 8th, 2007 by John Schinker
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