Willingham talk on critical thinking
August 28, 2013

I still don't trust Daniel Willingham on critical thinking at all. Here, in a talk posted this week, he seems to depict critical thinking as a type of memory. Explaining a critical thinking failure, for example, he says "they no not recognize that they have information relevant to the problem; instead, they try to 'critically think'." Willingham's main point is that critical thinking relies on 'underlying information', and is indeed impossible without it. The difficulty, he says, is "touching base" with this memory, because we are thinking only of 'surface structure' and not about 'deep structure'. In this respect, 'critical thinking' should be thought of as a 'bag of tricks' which is domain-specific. You can see that this inverts the relation between logic and domain, treating the domain as 'deep and underlying' and logic (and hence, things like probability and mathematics) as 'surface. It's like saying there is a special 'deep' mathematics for physics, and a different one for accounting, and a different one for political science. This is wrong, and will prevent people from being able to reason properly.

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Between Empowerment and Patronization: 40 Years IT
Matthias Melcher, x28's new Blog, August 28, 2013

X28's new blog (which has a new location) looks at 40 years of IT. "Many of the great novelties ignited hopes that were bigger than the reality emerging later. This was especially the case when the first personal homepages promised a big democratizing effect. I dreamt that these (after being registered in the various decentralized branches of a virtual library) would offer me a direct glimpse onto the book-(mark) shelves of scholars across the globe."

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Blocksworld Making Pretty Good Money for Linden Lab
Wagner James Au, New World Notes, August 28, 2013

Second Life has pretty much vanished from the radar (I follow a few groups and a couple of lists just to keep in touch) but Linden Labs is not disappearing quietly. It has scored a success with a product called Blocksworld that resembles Minecraft and is playable on the iPad. It's a bit of a marketing switch for LL, shifting from selling 'islands; to colleges and companies to iPad apps to consumers, but in my view, the consumer play has always been the more stable long-term business model.

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DEDTECH: GMU’s Nada Dabbagh on Integrating PLEs into a Graduate Seminar
Jim Groom, bavatuesdays, August 26, 2013

Jim Groom sites down "with George Mason University professor Nada Dabbagh to discuss her vision for integrating personal learning environments into her graduate seminar EDIT 802: Cognition and Technology." But I think that with cPanel and the like their idea of personal learning environments leans more toward hosted internet services offered by an ISP. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and it aligns well with the 'domaon of one's own' project.

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Get started with Hangouts On Air
August 26, 2013

Probably the best synchronous delivery tool for massive online audiences to come along in the last year or so is the Google Hangout On Air, which is a nice blend on 10-person conferencing and YouTibe synchronous broadcasting. But it's still not the easiest thing to do if you don't have the experience. This article is a 'getting started' guide and useful for anyone who wants to try live online video conferencing and streaming. Via Cool Cat Teacher.

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