One of the most enduring myths in education is that of learning styles. I had written about it back in 2009 in a blog post titled: Teaching to learning styles: What hogwash. But it a myth that does not seem to go away, maybe because it seems to have some kind of...
Perfect Vacuum (OR who wrote this poem?)
I was cleaning out my drafts folder and came across this poem. I liked it. A lot. It has my sensibility. My sense of whimsy. But I DO NOT remember writing it. Nor do I remember finding it somewhere and copying it into an email. There is no author attributed - which...
Friday the 13th
A design for Friday the 13th (shamelessly building on an original idea from Nikita Prokhorov) Enjoy.
Cheating in a test, why that’s the way to go
I just read this wonderful essay by UCLA professor Peter Nonacs titled: Why I Let My Students Cheat On Their Game Theory Exam. In this essay he describes an experiment he recently conducted in his game theory class. This is what he told his students a week before the...
iVideos from Australia, the 2011 edition
Last June I had posted a note (Teacher as filmmaker: An update from down under) about the iVideos created by students from the University of Technology, Sydney (under the guidance of Dr. Matthew Kearney). iVideos or "idea videos" are short films often 2 minutes (or...
Nothing is original (great quote)
Unoriginal Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds,...
My favorite Internet meme (and how it almost died)
I have been tracking the Hitler-Downfall parodies for over two years now and it seems that they keep getting better and better. But over the last few days comes the news that Constantin films, which owns the rights to the original movie asked YouTube to find and take...
What is this thing called text?
Steven Johnson has a great essay on the future of text title: The Glass Box And The Commonplace Book. I recommend reading the full thing but here is a quote that sort of captures his vision (though there is more, much more). Here is a great quote: WHEN TEXT IS free to...
Creativity, computers & the human soul
In his article Is Google making us stupid? the author Nicholas Carr takes Sergi Brin to task for something he had said in a 2004 interview with Newsweek. Brin is quoted as saying “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an...
Douglas Adams, technologies & anticipatory plagiarism
Image Credit Leeks As readers of the blog know, Matt Koehler and I work together quite a lot. In fact we just rotate author-order in our papers since it is hard to keep track of individual contributions. (I would like to claim that the cool ideas are mine - but again...
The mathematical “i”
I guess 'tis the season of Math-Po's! Sue VanHattum, whose challenge started all this, commented on my recent Math-Po (Math-Po (Mathematical Poetry): Goldbach’s Conjecture) by providing an example of her own writing, a poem titled Imaginary Numbers Do the Trick. That...
All you can cheat, part II (a response)
Patrick Diemer commented on my previous posting, All you can cheat, the web & learning by saying: Do you have any words of wisdom or resources on how to create appropriate questions? This sounds great, but easier said than done in my humble opinion. I started...
Profesor 2.0, blurring the boundaries
I am in Chicago to give the Keynote address at the 2009 DePaul University Faculty Teaching and Learning Conference. The conference theme this year is Engaging Minds: Pedagogy and Personalism. I was invited by Sharon Guan (she was part of the AACTE Innovation &...
Plagiarism update, VI
I guess this is the final update on the David Jiles, Ph.D. plagiarism saga. Those of you who came in late can get the complete picture by starting from David Jiles, Ph.D., Creativity Expert, Plagiarist! The sequence continued as follows: Emailing a plagiarist |...
Update V
Here is an email from Rita Selle-Grider, of Young Bright Minds & Inventors Academy. I have spoken about her response (which I admired, contrasting it with some of the other responses I have been getting). I include the complete email below (with her permission). What...
Update IV
Chris from Creativity Portal dropped off a "strong" message to me on my website (see it here). Just a couple of points. First, I have not received the email they sent me (I do not question the fact that they did send it) - just that I did not receive it. I checked my...
Update III
David Jiles Ph.D.'s book is no longer available on the Lulu.com website. Another example of delete and hope the world will forget that I didn't do my homework. See here and here for more on this issue.
Plagiarism, update II
Just heard back from Innovation Tools. They are changing the status of the articles by Dr. Jiles to "not visible" till, as they say, "the matter is settled." It is not clear to me what "settled" means. I doubt that David Jiles Ph.D. is emailing me (or anybody else)...
David Jiles plagiarism issue, update
An update on the ongoing saga of David Jiles, Ph.D. For context see this. (Please note the David Jiles referred to in these posts is NOT Professor David Jiles of Iowa State University and Cardiff University.) I have heard back from some of the websites that had...
Plagiarism, note to Root-Bernstein’s and Creativity Portal
Here are some emails (for the record) that I have sent recently to the Root-Bernstein's (the authors of Sparks of Genius) letting them know of how their intellectual property has been stolen by David Jiles, Ph.D. Details in my original posting: David Jiles, Ph.D.,...
Emailing a plagiarist
I am sending the following email to David Jiles, Ph.D. whose plagiarism I have documented in this posting: David Jiles, Ph.D., Creativity Expert, Plagiarist. The email is as follows: Dear Dr. Jiles -- I have some questions and concerns about your book "Creativity and...
David Jiles, Ph.D., Creativity Expert, Plagiarist!
I do not know who David Jiles, Ph.D. is. I do know that he is a plagiarist, an intellectual crook and a thief of the highest order! I do not write these words lightly. I was first informed of this by Mike Deschryver and have over the past few days attempted to look...