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Posts under ‘research’

Qrumbs proposal to Digital Media and Learning Competition

The MacArthur Foundation is sponsoring a competition for innovative Digital Media and Learning applications. I had learned of it through my colleague Derek Lomas who won last year for his Playpower project.
This year the applications are posted online with open commenting. The word limit on applications is 300 words (not the abstract, the whole application) which makes it [...]

Preparing more people for a diverse future

The TED Talks lecture series is a wonderful intellectual and cultural resource. I’ve been a fan for years and on this long weekend relished the opportunity to catch up on some I’ve had in my queue. One of my favorites is by Ken Robinson, because it highlights both a goal and a challenge of my research.
First, the [...]

QCommons opens to all content areas

Today I rolled out a big update to QCommons, implementing  support for many more content areas than Chemistry.
The key new feature is groups. Each group has its own set of content, its own forums, and its own classification terms. (Because “rational” doesn’t mean the same in Economics as it does in Algebra.) Each group can [...]

Conference deadline extension statistics

Anyone who publishes in conferences knows the pain of making sacrifices to meet a deadline, only to find at the last moment that it has been extended.  Year after year of these extensions and people come to expect them, making them all the more inevitable.  This reminds me of people who set their clocks fast [...]

Pasteur’s and Edison’s Quadrants

If you’ve been to an plenary session or keynote on education research chances are you’ve heard of Pasteur’s Quadrant. It’s the idea that basic science (e.g., Bohr) and applied science (e.g., Edison) can be brought together to have significant impact on society, as exemplified in Pasteur’s prodigious contributions. Which quadrant should education research target?