Items to Share: 5 January 14

Retrospective and Prospective

• Books, bloggers and metablogs: The Blogosphere in 2013 | Pragmatic Education Links fest—but how does Joe Kirby find the time to do all this?

• Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014 | Open Culture 'When New York City hosted The World’s Fair in 1964, Isaac Asimov, the prolific sci-fi author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, took the opportunity to wonder what the world would look like 50 years hence [...] [he] imagined a world that you might partly recognize today...'

• The Best of Farnam Street 2013

• 180 MOOCs to Start the New Year (Is This the Crest of the Wave?) | Open Culture 'I’d hazard a guess that this January might be the peak of the free MOOC trend. Enjoy them while they last. Whatever their shortcomings, they can be quite informative, and you can’t beat the price.'

Education Focus

• Double Standard of Critical Thinking — dyske.com 'Whenever I hear teachers and parents talking about how important “critical thinking” is, I feel bitter about their double-standard. I’ve met very few people in my life who actually welcomed critical thinking when it was directed at them.' 

• A Systems Thinker Reviews The Atlanta Public Schools' Performance in Reading and Math[s] (artofteachingscience.org) 'Ed Johnson is a systems thinker. [...] His commitment extends to advocating the transformation of K-12 public education systems to humanistic paradigms from prevailing mechanistic paradigms. In this regard, he believes schools can not be improved by trying to improve the parts separately. It is a sure path to failure.'

• Who learns in maths classes depends on how maths is taught (theconversation.com) 'the outcomes for different groups of students were dramatic in IBL classes compared to non-IBL classes. Implementing inquiry-based learning approaches in mathematics improved outcomes not only of high achieving students, but also females, future mathematics teachers and low achieving students.'

Other Business 

• Talking Without Conversing (andrewsullivan.com) It's a familiar theme, but a couple more thoughts on the impact of digital communication on social relations.

• A daily miracle Joe Moran on Arnold Bennett on time. 

• Just Because You Give Someone Cleaner Technology Doesn’t Mean They’ll Use It | Motherboard 'If you want to build an effective solution, you have to identify the real problem first'. A salutary tale of unintended consequences. (via Andrew Sullivan)

• The Closing of the Scientific Mind: David Gelernter (Commentary Magazine)  'The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do. Too many have forgotten their obligation to approach with due respect the scholarly, artistic, religious, humanistic work that has always been mankind’s main spiritual support.' A substantial piece (6,100 words) but a meaty start to the year...

• Full Fact Finder: Browse by topic | Full Fact (fullfact.org)A free and independent guide to the best sources of information on the topics that matter.

• Scientists tell us their favourite jokes: 'An electron and a positron walked into a bar…' | Science | The Observer 'Science is a very serious business, so what tickles a rational mind? In a not very scientific experiment, we asked a sample of great minds for their favourite jokes.'And a commentary: Science: A Laughing Matter?