Fun
Moodle MUG at Macalester College
The Collaborative Liberal Arts Project’s first ever Moodle User Group meeting was held June 23-24, 2014 at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. It was followed by our traditional Summer Moodle Hack/doc Fest. Getting there was an adventure in and of itself — Charles Fulton (Lafayette College) and I took the train from New York … Read more
What I’m Reading: Consider Phlebas
The last book on my 2014 summer reading list, and the one I didn’t get to finish. Consider Phlebas is the first novel in Banks’ Culture series of novels. It’s a morally ambiguous space opera in which its namesake civilization — the Culture — is a post-scarcity, trans-human, machine intelligence-led empire. Daniel Landau, a CLAMP colleague at Reed College, … Read more
What I’m Reading: Empire of Light
Humanity has made it to the stars, but only by hitching a ride with the fish-like Shoal aliens, who have a monopoloy on faster-than-light travel. The first book was filled with ancient mysteries, post-human monstrocities, and a touch of FTL battles. The second dealt with the theft of an FTL starship and the efforts to … Read more
What I’m Reading: The Stone Canal
Book 2 of the Fall Revolution by Ken MacLeod revels in political discourse and post-human speculation as it bounces between a far future with robust artificial intelligence, cloning, planetary colonization and the more mundane world of Scotland, circa 1975.
What I’m Reading: Words of Radiance
The first book on my summer reading list is Words of Radiance, the sequel to Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. It’s an epic fantasy novel set in the world of Roshar, a planet ravaged by mystical storms, whose people were abandoned by their arcane defenders generations ago. Now a terrible danger — The Last Desolation — threats the … Read more
Getting Ready for Macalester
Moodle is hitting Macalester College in a big way in June. First, the Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project (CLAMP) is hosting it’s first ever Moodle User Group meeting (or “MUG”) at the St. Paul, MN college. The MUG runs June 23-24, 2014 and features a packed schedule focusing on the pedagogical uses of Moodle. Immediately after the … Read more
What I’m Reading: A Darkling Sea
A Darkling Sea by James Cambias is a story of first contact between humanity and a seemingly primitive race of intelligent crustaceans living in the world ocean of a Europa-like moon. Europa’s fascinated me ever since I read 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke, and that fascination as only grown as we’ve learned more … Read more