October 20th, 2009 by Katrin Becker
Stanley Fish is really hit and miss for me: sometimes I agree with him, and other times really, really not. This is one of those times I agree:
By By Stanley Fish
Published: October 19, 2009
Reader responses and further debate on the issue of academic freedom and the law.
When he talks about how sordid academia can become, I can’t help thinking about the
UofC as a shining example of just how low one can go. While there are still some great people there, they are becoming fewer and fewer, and they are becoming more and more oppressed. The term “Death March” springs to mind.
Posted in Academia, Bullying & Mobbing, Ethics, Higher Education | No Comments »
October 16th, 2009 by Katrin Becker
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting really weary of dopey interface design decisions on the web. I’ve got 30 years in CS – I have a pretty good idea about what’s possible, what’s easy, and what’s hard. DO HCI people not pay attention? Here’s an example (from Scoop). Click on the “click to enlarge” link (or the picture itself). Does that look bigger to you? What’s wrong with these people?
Friday, 18 September 2009, 12:58 pm
Press Release: The Mandus

Click to enlarge
Now, the web isn’t the only place where people don’t bother to think about user experience design. It happens ALL the time, everywhere.
Watch this space for more…..
Posted in Doing it Right on the Web, Fail, HCI, User Experience Design | No Comments »
October 14th, 2009 by Katrin Becker
It’s the same old same old – human cry from those that have because they fear they might have to share. A Well-written article worth the time to read.
For the last hundred years, rightsholders have fretted about everything from the player piano to the VCR to digital TV to Napster. Here are those objections, in Big Content’s own words.
Posted in American Society, Trouble in River City | No Comments »
October 3rd, 2009 by Katrin Becker
I just read Mark Guzdial’s excellent post on some of what’s wrong with how we teach introductory programming courses.
The notion that we should be modeling expert behaviour when teaching programming is silly. Experts work quite differently from novices. We accept this as a given in sport – if you make a novice do things an expert does you could very well cause them to injure themselves.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Academia, Computer Science, Higher Education, Programming, Teaching & Learning | 1 Comment »