Mike Morhaime, President & Co-Founder of Blizzard Entertainment kicked off the Austin Game Developers Conference (AGDC) this morning. Blizzard produces the wildly successful World of Warcraft on-line multiplayer behemouth (9 million+ players worldwide). AGDC is focusing on on-line games this year and a packed auditorium was eager to pick up…
Burger King and the Simpsons producers have teamed up in a brilliant marketing campaign – you can upload a photo of yourself (or victim) and create a Simpsonized image. Thats me to the left there, d’oh. If you need to waste 15 minutes today I recommend this activity! Its got…
Textbook publishers have a checkered history with developing technology products – which I’ve already commented on here and here. Yesterday Richard Carey sent me a link to Rockets, Cars, and Gardens, which does a very elegant job of explaining different software development paradigms. One of the concepts that jumped out…
Homing is the foundation skill for the 21st Century. Homing is the ability to circle in on key information, untangle it, filter it, order it, and ultimately make sense of it. A middle schooler writing a report on Madame Curie in the mid ‘80’s typically went to an encyclopedia and…
Life is tough, but it is tougher when you are stupid. John Wayne Helping people be smarter makes the world a better place. It really is that simple. I’m a business guy – but I love THIS business because when we do well something good happens in the world. Except…
I’m assuming this is just a rhetorical device but Wesley Fryer over at Infinite Thinking Machine is calling for a textbook moratorium so we can get laptops and digital curriculum in everywhere. I don’t disagree with his urge to shake things up and increase the rate of change in the…
Virtual Worlds and Video Games for Education are getting a lot of press these days. With all the hoopla it helps to bring a little perspective to where we are in the development of this new market. It is feeling a lot like the web in 1997 and perhaps we…
Collective writing is a critical 21st Century Skill. Wikis are the primary tool for teaching this skill today. What resources exist to help teachers use wikis in the classroom? Recently this issue has been bubbling up on several places. The Wall Street Journal had an article on the discussions behind…
Yesterday I commented on Granof’s Op-Ed – Course Requirement: Extortion. The New York Times Op-Ed made the case for reforming textbook pricing in higher education. Granof was kind enought to respond with some feedback on my piece. Below I’ve included the parts he responded to, his comments, and my clarifications/additions/agreements.…
An idea for reforming the textbook market in higher education was floated on the editorial page of the New York Times this past Sunday. Fellow Austinite Michael Granof proposed converting the textbook market to a site license approach used in the software world. His ideas, while thought provoking, fail the…