education

Two weeks ago the Danish government started a pilot program allowing college students to use Internet during exams (see the news article here). They are planning on extending the program to all of schools in the country by 2011. At first look this seems like a simple policy change. However, when I read the news article it seemed to me more than this.  Read More »

Video games are fun and addictive. I cannot argue against this. I have my own troubled past with them. When I was in college I wasted enormous amounts of time playing games. Later, this interest with games became a professional interest and I began graduate school with the hope of doing research on how computer games can be used for educational purposes. Ironically, the graduate school experience entirely transformed my perspective about video games. As I learned more about human cognition, I realized that video game playing might have some long-term unwanted effects.  Read More »

Telenovelas, first dates, and fertile ground -- everyone has their own relationship with this defined, yet far from settled, medium. Justin Hall, often considered the first blogger, probably had no clue what he was on to when he first started coding his diary into HTML. The personal journal remains one of the most popular forms of individual blogging, but political, technical, l and news aggregate blogs have entirely reshaped the boundaries and potentials of self-publishing.

So what then is an academic blog? And what does it mean to be an "academic blogger"? Definitions are problematic. When I look through my blog subscriptions in Google Reader for some model to follow, the topics and purposes are as divergent as the titles.  Read More »