27 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Teaching with Pokemon Go
Learning objectives that ask students to assemble and integrate data (like a language or math class) are well-suited to the capture and find aspects of Pokémon Go!. Imagine setting up a variety of PokéStops around your campus. Each one can be visited by students as they go about gathering the data they need to accomplish the learning objective you set. Perhaps after traveling about campus, they have to return to your classroom and use the data they’ve gathered like PokéBalls to solve mor...Folksonomies: gamification
Folksonomies: gamification
1 
notes
notes25 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Martin Rees: We'll Never Hit Barriers To Scientific Under...
We humans haven't changed much since our remote ancestors roamed the African savannah. Our brains evolved to cope with the human-scale environment. So it is surely remarkable that we can make sense of phenomena that confound everyday intuition: in particular, the minuscule atoms we're made of, and the vast cosmos that surrounds us.
Nonetheless—and here I'm sticking my neck out—maybe some aspects of reality are intrinsically beyond us, in that their comprehension would require some post-h...Folksonomies: understanding transhumanism
Folksonomies: understanding transhumanism
1 notes
notes21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Five Strands of Mathematical Literacy
Recognizing that no term captures completely all aspects of expertise, competence,
knowledge, and facility in mathematics, we have chosen mathematical proficiency to capture what we think it means for anyone to learn mathematicssuccessfully. Mathematical proficiency, as we see it, has five strands:
• conceptual understanding—comprehension of mathematical concepts, operations, and relations
• procedural fluency—skill in carrying out procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently, and a...Folksonomies: education mathematics
Folksonomies: education mathematics
1 notes
notesCognitive tools.
31 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
COBOL as a Programming Language
I worked with COBOL near the end of my last contract and found aspects of it fascinating compared to today's languages. Everything is about structures that map directly to the bits on disk, with fine grain control on precision and data types. But then the language reads as a series of macros where you don't have to remember the low level details: do this to this, put this here, if this do that.
It's also a terribly difficult language to parse because it was designed for ease of use by humans...Folksonomies: history computer science
Folksonomies: history computer science
1 notes
notesComment captures what's interesting about it historically, how early programmers needed algorithms to handle all the bit-switching.
16 JUL 2013 by ideonexus
Covering Your Tracks Online is Suspicious
The drawback to covering your tracks like this on
a daily basis is that it sometimes makes you look
like, well, like you’re covering your tracks. People
who engage all of their privacy functions sometimes
stand out in a transparent society. It may make
people suspicious, thinking that you’re up to something.
If you’re only encrypting your communications
with certain people, it sometimes makes it look
even worse, like you’re collaborating—and it also
pinpoints who you’re in cahoots...
1 If you do not show up in searches, then it appears as though you have something to hide.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
James Randi Definition of Science
Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work. 1 notes
notesExpansive, but succinct.
03 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
This is the Age of Insects
The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects. 1 notes
notesMan is under assault from germs carried by insects.
07 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Learning Different Perspectives Makes Children Better Liars
Children's discoveries about belief also have consequences for other aspects of their relations to people. To deceive peopie, or to recognize that they are deceiving you, you need to be able to understand the differences between what they believe and what you believe. Doing that depends on understanding the way beliefs work. It depends on knowing what you have to do to make someone believe something that isn't actually true. Two- and three-year-olds are such terrible liars. they hardly qualif... 1 notes
notesBefore they understand that other people have different perspectives, children make terrible liars.
21 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Guy Steele: Computers are Too Complex to Know it All
I guess to me the biggest change is that nowadays you can't possibly know everything that's going on in the computer. There are things that are absolutely out of your control because it's impossible to know everything about all the software. Back in the '7Os a computer had only 4,000 words of memory. It was possible to do a core dump and inspect every word to see if it was what you expected. It was reasonable to read the source listings of tine operating system and see how that worked. And I ...Folksonomies: programming computer science
Folksonomies: programming computer science
It was once possible to know all aspects of the computer, but the system has grown too large and complex for that now.
