Greg Linch's Commonplace Book

"He expects students to familiarize themselves with the information beforehand so that class time can..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:05:05 -0400

“He expects students to familiarize themselves with the information beforehand so that class time can be spent helping them understand what the information means.”

- Rethinking the Way College Students Are Taught

"“Imagine two students sitting next to one another, Mary and John. Mary has the right answer because..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 18:04:02 -0400

“

“Imagine two students sitting next to one another, Mary and John. Mary has the right answer because she understands it. John does not. Mary’s more likely, on average, to convince John than the other way around because she has the right reasoning.”

But here’s the irony. “Mary is more likely to convince John than professor Mazur in front of the class,” Mazur says.

“She’s only recently learned it and still has some feeling for the conceptual difficulties that she has whereas professor Mazur learned [the idea] such a long time ago that he can no longer understand why somebody has difficulty grasping it.”

”

- Rethinking the Way College Students Are Taught

Inception Music Comparison (by Cameron Whitehouse) It’s...

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:56:00 -0400

Inception Music Comparison (by Cameron Whitehouse)

It’s been a while since I first saw this, but this time I did some searching to find this LAT post with the following quote (emphasis in bold is mine):

“If you were to see this movie a second time,” Zimmer said, “you realize the last note you hear in the movie is the first note in the movie. It’s a Möbius band. But the next thing you hear over the logos is actually telling a story. You realize that the elements that we’ve extracted from the Piaf song are the way you get from one dream level to the next. When the movie starts, some action has already happened.”

I wonder what Hofstadter would have to say about this…

"If you look at what’s happening in the introductory classes, even at the best schools, the classes..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:40:48 -0400

““If you look at what’s happening in the introductory classes, even at the best schools, the classes only seem to be really working for about 10 percent of the students,” he says. “And I think all the evidence indicates that these 10 percent are the 10 percent of students that would learn it even without the instructor. They essentially learn it on their own.””

- What Drives College Students to Learn? | MindShift

"Students have to be active in developing their knowledge,” says Hestenes. “They can’t passively..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:40:48 -0400

““Students have to be active in developing their knowledge,” says Hestenes. “They can’t passively assimilate it.””

- What Drives College Students to Learn? | MindShift

"“I think what many students in their introductory physics courses do is they retain their intuitive..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:40:47 -0400

“

“I think what many students in their introductory physics courses do is they retain their intuitive notions,” says Mazur. They memorize what the professor tells them and “parrot it back” on the exam but they never really connect what they are learning to what they already think about how the physical world works.

The way he really learned physics was to teach himself.

“I am what I am not because of my education but probably in spite of it,” he says.

”

- What Drives College Students to Learn? | MindShift

"he explains how imagination provides the lights and colors in a darkened world. “Much that I no..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 21:10:58 -0400

“he explains how imagination provides the lights and colors in a darkened world. “Much that I no longer see,” he says, “I don’t have to see.””

- William Zinsser, Author of ‘On Writing Well,’ at His Work - NYTimes.com

What Do You LOVE? (Outside of Journalism)

Wed, 01 May 2013 23:12:06 -0400

ona13suggestionbox:

Description
As journalists, we usually tell other people’s stories. But we want to hear stories about what our fellow journalists are interested in beyond their work.

Where do you look for inspiration outside of news? Let’s step back and reflect on these passions. Let’s talk about what we love outside of the newsroom and how those interests can better inform our work.

Read More

An #ona13 session proposal from Katie Zhu and me!

"Science is a philosophy, it’s questioning the world around you,” she said. “It’s not just a..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:12:14 -0400

““Science is a philosophy, it’s questioning the world around you,” she said. “It’s not just a collection of knowledge. Every child is born a scientist. We’re all born with this curiosity about the world and that’s what schools should emphasize.””

- Robots, biofuel, whiz kids at the White House Science Fair - The Washington Post

"Heather Champ, who worked with me on Flickr, once said that “what you tolerate defines your..."

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:40:08 -0400

“Heather Champ, who worked with me on Flickr, once said that “what you tolerate defines your community.” As she put it in Flickr’s guidelines: “Don’t be creepy. You know the guy. Don’t be that guy.” We befriended each of the first 20,000 users to cultivate camaraderie.”

- Perfect Strangers: The Generosities and the Pitfalls of Virtual Communities | Wired Magazine | Wired.com

"You might also ask “What is reality?” Perhaps it’s not the nature of the object that was changing..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:07:54 -0400

“You might also ask “What is reality?” Perhaps it’s not the nature of the object that was changing but the definition of what an object was a la quantum mechanics and relativity theory.”

- Inventing Abstraction at MOMA - The Huffington Post

"readers should not define reading as the act of divining an author’s intents. Readers are..."

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 23:57:20 -0400

“readers should not define reading as the act of divining an author’s intents. Readers are co-creators of a fiction, and should be empowered.”

- Questions about The Fault in Our Stars (SPOILERS!)

via Brigid Slipka from Snarkmarket Seminar week on Worldbuilding led by Matt Thompson

"A master theoretician more often than a masterful poet, Mallarmé pushed boundaries in writing. His..."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:34:38 -0400

“A master theoretician more often than a masterful poet, Mallarmé pushed boundaries in writing. His most famous poem, “Un Coup de dés” (1897), incontrovertibly enlarged the possibility of the page, freeing words from the puritan stocks of line and stanza, and putting them back into orbit. It is a method that would inspire Apollinaire’s Calligrammes, the open-field poetics of Charles Olson and the post-war American avant-garde, and the Concrete Poetry of Brazil in the 1950s, among many others, including, perhaps, hypertext.”

- Friday Pick: “The Poems In Verse,” By Stephane Mallarme « B O D Y

The Mathematical Regularities Underlying Both Biological and...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:02:55 -0400

The Mathematical Regularities Underlying Both Biological and Social Systems (by santafeinst)

"Time and time again, implementing my ideas has forced me to understand them better. A common..."

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:07:28 -0400

“Time and time again, implementing my ideas has forced me to understand them better. A common scenario is that something that sounded reasonable on paper suddenly feels unwieldy when you must implement it.”

- Why I still program

"By producing arenas in which players can act out stories and invent their own, games allow for a..."

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:01:00 -0400

“By producing arenas in which players can act out stories and invent their own, games allow for a degree of empathy and connectedness that, in my mind, will one day exceed film.”

- Little Big Metaphor: On the Promise of Video Games | Scrawled in Wax

"even given radical differences between games that attempt veracity and those that eschew it entirely..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:07:43 -0400

“even given radical differences between games that attempt veracity and those that eschew it entirely for the abstract, their mechanics are surprisingly similar, and similarly different from literature and film: make a world, give it rules, give the player some goals and aims, and then ask the player to progress through that world using a system of challenge and reward.”

- Little Big Metaphor: On the Promise of Video Games | Scrawled in Wax

"video games don’t try and recreate the world we know; they reference it in order to create their..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:05:44 -0400

“video games don’t try and recreate the world we know; they reference it in order to create their own.”

- Little Big Metaphor: On the Promise of Video Games | Scrawled in Wax

Don Norman: The three ways that good design makes you happy (by...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:34:09 -0400

Don Norman: The three ways that good design makes you happy (by TEDtalksDirector)

(via Video: The Art of Creative Coding | Watch Off Book Online |...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:55:00 -0400

(via Video: The Art of Creative Coding | Watch Off Book Online | PBS Video)