Google fonts are amazing. It’s a huge library of free, open-licensed fonts that give web designers a huge new palette to work with, going beyond the same old tired “web safe” fonts. (Look around! I use them extensively on TedCurran.net. Nice, huh?) They’re hosted on Google’s servers and can be added to your website or blog with a single line… Read more →
I was recently asked to email a friend-of-a-friend, a librarian who was asked to do some Instructional Design in Canvas LMS. I’m reprinting my response in case it can benefit any other education/information professionals who are just getting started designing courses in an online setting. Welcome to the world of Instructional Design! Don’t feel bad that you don’t come from… Read more →
Each country has its own ruling class. In capitalist countries, the rulers own the means of production and employ workers. The capitalist class is also called the bourgeoisie. Means of production are what it takes to produce goods. Raw materials, satellite networks, machinery, ships and factories are examples. Workers own nothing but their ability to sell their labor for a… Read more →
I came across this quoted text when reading the manual for Handbrake, a great open source DVD transcoding tool, and realized how relevant the wisdom continues to be… There’s this old geek proverb: The Law of Software Development and Envelopment at MIT: Every program in development at MIT expands until it can read mail. It also goes by the name… Read more →
I have a speculative explanation for the death of Google Reader. I remember in 2010 when Eric Schmidt was having high-level talks with news outlets, trying to help them envision a new model to maintain the value of their content. Schmidt even penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, describing the year 2015, when people would be paying a subscription fee… Read more →
Today I went to my very first hackathon at UC Berkeley. In 8 hours we had to create a working HTML5 prototype of a smartphone app that would help middle school and high school kids (especially from underserved populations) get good information about college and start to develop an identity as “college material”. Our app, called Picture Yourself in College, helps students… Read more →
In trying to boil down the secrets of being a good computer user, I came up with this simple Internet Mantra– please share it with your technophobic friends… “I am unique but my tech problems are not. Someone has had this problem before me, solved it, and posted the answer online. I need only to find it.“
Response to The Trouble with Online College, NY Times I think this article is right on the money about the challenges of online learning– namely that most students wash out and that there is not enough support for struggling learners. I’d like to propose some solutions. See– somewhere in the public excitement over MOOCs is the implicit promise that we… Read more →
Since coming to the realization that we should all be writing for the web and not for paper, I’ve been trying to figure out a new way of working in Markdown that totally circumvents desktop authoring programs like Microsoft Office altogether and lets you produce web-native content. This helps me get out of thinking of my content as either a… Read more →
This week I had a taste of fear and regret when I thought I left my laptop on the bus. I spent a whole work day freaking out, trying to secure my sensitive data and recover my valuable files. I am writing a reflection on those terrible hours to share what a godsend cloud services can be when you lose… Read more →
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