Happiness: The Hottest College Course
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008My colleague, Gary Woodill, thinks I’m getting all Oprah-like by reading books about happiness. I’ve been trying to convince him that positive psychology, the study of happiness, is just as legitimate as the study schizophrenia, depression, and other psychological ailments. So far, Gary’s unconvinced.
What should help convince my doubting colleague is that students in more […]
In Praise of Unusual Courses
Thursday, April 10th, 2008I’ve taken a number of unusual courses in my academic life.
A college I attended offered a course titled “Introduction to Welding,” which sounded like a good way to get three credits. I really enjoyed it. Getting metal pieces to stick together was great fun, and the risk that the gas tanks might explode provided the […]
School Board Proposes Limitations on Homework
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008If their legs were long enough to reach the pedals of their parents’ cars, young children would be emptying their piggy banks for gas money and immediately relocating to Toronto, Ontario.
Why the move? The Toronto District School Board, the largest public school board in Canada, is proposing to eliminate homework for kindergarten children and ban […]
The Rubber Room
Thursday, March 13th, 2008National Public Radio recently aired an excellent This American Life episode called Human Resources. The first part of this documentary featured a story called “The Rubber Room,” which focused on a surreal situation in the NY City Public School System.
The rubber room is a place where hundreds of teachers facing disciplinary hearings for real, imagined, […]
How One High School is Preparing Students for a Career in Science
Thursday, January 31st, 2008If the program at my daughter’s school is representative, high school education in 2008 is light years ahead of what it was back when I was a teenager. Nearing the end of grade eight, she needs to decide which of two science streams she’ll be entering next year. What’s most exciting is that one of […]
OpenCourseware Consortium Provides Free Online Courses from Hundreds of Universities
Thursday, January 17th, 2008My last post was about MIT’s OpenCourseware Project, which contains more than 2,000 free online courses on a wide range of subjects, including architecture, urban studies, athletics, physics, and much much more.
Zooming out to get a broader view gives you a sense of just how big the universe of free courseware is. MIT is just […]
Free MIT Online Courses Getting a Million Hits Per Month
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008It’s been seven years since the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched its OpenCourseware project. The goal of the initiative has been to:
“…advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship to best serve the world.”
Since then, this repository has grown to include more than 2,000 free online courses. The site […]
Learning to calculate the area and circumference of an irregular shape
Monday, April 23rd, 2007My 13-year old daughter was doing very well in her grade seven enriched math class until her teacher fell ill for a month and was replaced with a substitute teacher. A couple of below average showings on math tests convinced the two of us that it might make sense to sit down together for an […]
