A few things that piqued my interest.
1. Why I deleted my Facebook account – An essay that echoes many of my own sentiments and articulates a few of the major issues I had that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
2. Writing by Hand: The Lost Art – Another op-ed about writing by hand, particularly noting that more and more students seem to be putting the onus on the teacher to decipher illegible handwriting, rather than making sure their writing is legible. She raises some interesting points, and I have expressed at least some of my views on this issue here, though I was responding to a scientific article about the hand as a a way of linking writing to tactile processes in education. I generally agree with this essay, though I generally think that she is harping on some of the (relatively) superficial consequences of weakened [sic] handwriting, and overlooking something more fundamental.
3. Taliban commander: we cannot win war and al-Qaida is a ‘plague– An interviewed senior Taliban commander admitted that the insurgents are unlikely to ever win back Kabul and that most members of the Taliban are angry with al-Qaida, saying that Osama bin Laden contributed to destroying Afghanistan and that if he truly believed in Jihad, he would have gone to Saudi Arabia.
4. Grading and Its Discontents – A post on the Chronicle of Higher Education about what grades actually stand for and how there is a fundamental misunderstanding, largely on the part of students, as to what is being measured, what needs to be improved, and how to approach their grades.
Seems like a light stretch for me; anyone else see anything good?
Noodlings 