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Following from an earlier Bb post, here are some of my other requests for the Bb developers to consider: Survey: This is clearly just a modified “quiz” module. For instructors, the interface is confusing: “Create quiz question now” and for users it is scary: “Are you sure you want to take this assessment now?”. It [...]

A very common complaint among computing students is that they hate programming. Say what? It is a fundamental of so many computing jobs, so there is something wrong… Programming should not be taught via lectures and should not be assessed via written examinations. Sure, there are practical issues with this when you have large classes. [...]

No point trying to fight religious fundamentalism (the so-called War on Terror) with religious fundamentalism. But that’s what Dubya is doing. The Americans are still debating evolution and some schools require… ninth-grade students to hear a brief statement about ID [intelligent design] before biology classes on evolution (from a report in eSchool News). Intelligent design [...]

How should we improve teachers who are, errr, not very good at what they do…? I don’t think Arnie has the right approach: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign posted a form on its Web site asking Californians for stories about inferior teachers to support the ballot initiative to lengthen teachers’ probationary period. (from “Schwarzenegger seeks ‘bad [...]

There have been some comments on the post √16 – how many answers? According to the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Mathematics, the notation √a is used to denote quite specifically the non-negative root of a Yet another example of how math notation is our enemy…

This is cool – a graphical view of bloggers’ moods for the last 48 hours: Moodteller, from University of Amsterdam. It only applies to those using LiveJournal (there are currently about 2.5 million active LiveJournal users with 22500 posts per hour). Most of the graphs have one peak per day and one trough – not [...]

I just finished watching a brilliant Canadian movie, H20. It was intelligent, well-written, well-directed and very thought-provoking. A conspiracy involves the son of a recently-assassinated Canadian prime minister. A group of businessmen attempts to change the political landscape of the whole of North America. The bargaining chip? Water. Full of mystery and danger, the movie [...]

by Bitter, GG and Pierson, M (©2005, Pearson Education) Summary Review Using Technology in the Classroom has been around for a while (first edition 1984, revised every 5 years or so). The book appears to be aimed at an undergraduate teacher-trainee level, with advice on how to select software & Internet resources and how to [...]

I attended a “Blackboard Day” yesterday. Product developers and other Bb people from the US (George Calvert, Melissa Anderson, Chris Etesse and Zach Johnson) and Australia (David Wilson & Janette Ring, an academic) spoke about latest Bb developments – App Pack 3, Bb 7, Backpack and Caliper. Because of stricter US laws on promising goods [...]

IBM has an interesting offer to financially back employees who want to leave the company to become math and science teachers as reported in eSchool News (article no longer available). They are doing this to help improve the level of math, science and technology in US schools. Sorry to be cynical, but depending on what [...]