We’re back from vacation, and since it’s a holiday (and since my RSS reader is full to bursting with unchecked updates) I thought I’d pass along some choice links today in lieu of a real post.
- PowerSet used its impressive natural language processing technology to parse out the now-infamous response from Miss Teen South Carolina on the question of why 1/5 of Americans can’t locate the USA on a map. You MUST see the sentence diagram it generated. Hint: You’ll need a wide-screen monitor and lots of patience. [Hat tip: Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization, and Social Media.]
- Rudbeckia Hirta is wondering, as I am, why we don’t use simpler and more familiar technology to manage our courses instead of going with expensive, poorly implemented, and hard-to-use “solutions” like Blackboard. She’s thinking Facebook.
- Scott Young, guest-blogging at Zen Habits, offers up some advice on how to learn more and study less. A lot of folks would be satisfied with just “study less”, I think. There’s a link to a free e-book of Scott’s on the same kind of topic.
Some people have links on the grill on Labor Day; I’ve got ‘em on the blog.
Filed under: Education, Educational technology, Technology
I read Rudbeckia’s blog as well and saw her post on the Blackboard/facebook issue. I find that Blackboard is a very effective tool, depending the requirements of the project. For her purposes, it seemed like overkill. She did the smart thing and kept it simple – I wish that mindset was more common.
I disagree
Can you give more info?
Miss Teen South Carolina answered that question badly, but she’s still got her looks to fall back on…