Weekly Web Harvest (weekly)
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New Weapon in Day Laborers’ Fight Against Wage Theft: A Smartphone App – The New York Times
“After three years of planning, an immigrant rights group in Jackson Heights is set to start a smartphone app for day laborers, a new digital tool with many uses: Workers will be able to rate employers (think Yelp or Uber), log their hours and wages, take pictures of job sites and help identify, down to the color and make of a car, employers with a history of withholding wages. They will also be able to send instant alerts to other workers. The advocacy group will safeguard the information and work with lawyers to negotiate payment.”
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MacHeist » 10 amazing Mac programs $49
MacHeist » Bundle Purchase a bundle of 10 award-winning Mac apps for just $49 (over 85% off) and have 25% donated to a charity of your choice. If you’ve got a Mac there is some great software in this deal plus the karma points for charity. Delicious Library (I’ve always wanted this one- I even tried to get my library to use it instead of our district database) and NewsFire. I’m also excited to try FotoMagico (really interesting looking presentation software) and iClip4. It’s going to be one of my Christmas presents.
Weekly Web Harvest (weekly)
Les Leftovers: The great Medieval water myth “The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason: it’s not true. “ tags: weekly truth lies reality history water A Cynic’s Glossary – Futility Closet “EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. HABIT, n. A shackle for the free. HERS, pron. His. IMMIGRANT, n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another. IMPUNITY, n. Wealth. OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.” tags: weekly definitions dictionary words language The Dangers of Certainty: A Lesson From Auschwitz – NYTimes.com “Dr. Bronowski thought that the uncertainty principle should therefore be called the principle of tolerance. Pursuing knowledge means accepting uncertainty. Heisenberg’s principle has the consequence that no physical events can ultimately be described with absolute certainty or with “zero tolerance,” as it were. The more we know, the less certain we are. In the everyday world, we do not just accept a lack […]
Suffering Massive MOOC Creep
Image by David Kernohan animation by Michael Branson Smith. I’m attending ELI 2014. MOOC seems to be synonymous with any online or blended “educational” offering regardless of size or openness. That’s a pretty open definition. Massive Massive (or massively) is a strange word to ignore. It is the first letter after all. It seems important to differentiate between online courses which have lots of participants and courses which use massive participation to change course possibilities. If a student can’t tellPress releases don’t count. if they’re the only student in the course or if there are 5,000Number picked as a random big number. I’m not sure when a class moves from regular to big to massive. I imagine it depends. other students, you just have an online course. Please retract your media statements before the old school online learning people burn you in effigy. If you take your 5,000 students and break them down so they are in “normal” sized cohorts that proceed independently, congratulations you have several online courses. Please call your mom and tell her you might have overstated your MOOC street cred. If having 5,000 students actually hurts your students, you have an online mess. Punish yourself by reading YouTube comments until you lose hope in humanity. Massiveness should matter, otherwise what’s the point? It needs to be […]