Saturday, October 29, 2011

Royal Society Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online

Royal Society Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online:



Maggie Koerth-Baker of BoingBoing writes:


60,000 peer-reviewed papers, including the first peer-reviewed scientific research journal in the world, are now available free online. The Royal Society has opened its historical archives to the public. Among the cool stuff you’ll find here: Issac Newton’s first published research paper and Ben Franklin’s write-up about that famous kite experiment. Good luck getting anything accomplished today. Or ever again. —


Newton’s telescope appears in the image above

Monday, October 24, 2011

Tintin and the war - FT.com

Tintin and the war: If you have any interest in Herge, Tintin's creator...

Tintin

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Monday, October 10, 2011

The other side of Elearning

This article highlights the perils of exaggerating the benefits of elearning. I was surprised to learn that classroom-based software is a $2.2 billion market.

A Classroom Software Boom, but Mixed Results Despite the Hype - NYTimes.com:

"Carnegie, one of the most respected of the educational software firms, is hardly alone in overpromising or misleading. The Web site of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt says that “based on scientific research, Destination Reading is a powerful early literacy and adolescent literacy program,” but it fails to mention that it was one of the products the Department of Education found in 2009 not to have statistically significant effects on test scores.

Similarly, Pearson’s Web site cites several studies of its own to support its claim that Waterford Early Learning improves literacy, without acknowledging the same 2009 study’s conclusion that it had little impact."


Credible prediction of a full-on recession?

An outfitcalled ECRI which claims to have correctly called the last three recessions with no false alarms in between is putting its stake in the ground by
saying that there really anything any body can do at this point to stave off a recession. In the promo for their new report (U.S. Economy Tipping into Recession) they summarize:
"Here’s what ECRI’s recession call really says: if you think this is a bad economy, you haven’t seen anything yet. And that has profound implications for both Main Street and Wall Street."