Nine Theses on Wikipedia: A Special Feature
I submit these nine theses to Wikipedia’s community and to the world. I do this, as Martin Luther said when he posted his famous 95 theses, “Out of love for the truth and the desire to elucidate it.”
My Blog
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On Robinson on Education
This very striking video has been circulating, and I’m inspired to reply to it: First, let me say that the video design is very cool. Moreover, Sir Ken Robinson is quite an excellent public speaker. Finally, I agree with him entirely that standardization is the source of a lot of our educational difficulties. But much…
12 comments on On Robinson on Education13 minutes -
Wikipedia’s proposed legal policies
It looks like Wikipedia might be, finally, accepting its legal obligations. Geoff Brigham, General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation (which is the legal owner of Wikipedia), has posted to the Foundation-l mailing list a link to a draft document described as Office of General Counsel “staff policies.” The document is here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Legal_Policies When I saw it, one…
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25 Replies to Maria Bustillos
In a recent essay, in The Awl (“Wikipedia and the Death of the Expert”), Maria Bustillos commits a whole series of fallacies or plain mistakes and, unsurprisingly, comes to some quite wrong conclusions. I don’t have time to write anything like an essay in response, but I will offer up the following clues for Ms.…
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Can early education literally create geniuses?
I’m interested in this question, and I am asking in order to be enlightened by you, dear reader. Suppose you had twins, separated at birth, Norman (for “normal”) and Gene (for “genius”). Norman receives an ordinary middle-class upbringing, without much special early learning. Gene gets the most effective early training that you can imagine, whatever…
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Ask DadDude: learning a second language
I regularly get questions from people asking advice about their early learning situations. I always tell them that I’m not an expert, just a fellow parent who is highly involved in his boys’ education and possessed of an interest in educational theory–but they don’t seem to care. So I think I’m going to start answering…
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Any volunteers to help with the reading tutorial?
I need some volunteers for my new free reading program, and I hope someone (or several someones) out there might be able to help! I really need it! If you are interested, please read on. As readers of this blog know, I am working on something that is tentatively being called WatchKnow Reader. Here’s what…
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Reviews of educational apps for little kids
Here are some app reviews I just posted on BrillKids.com. Below that are some older reviews, still valid. Five star apps National Geographic World Atlas HD – 5/5 – can’t believe I didn’t get this earlier. Now one of our most-used apps. For purposes of teaching, this has gotten more use, recently, than Google…
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Manifesto of Very Early Education (version 1)
I have been “pre-homeschooling” my two boys, H. (almost five years) and E. (seven months). It has been an interesting journey. I have picked a few very general principles, which I thought it might help me–and perhaps other parents in similar situations–to write down. You might call this my credo, or manifesto. Feedback and pointers…
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My response to the CFCC’s FTC complaint about YBCR
[All: here is my letter in support of Robert Titzer and Your Baby Can, in response to this scurrilous complaint by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. I encourage you to send the FTC similar responses, citing your own personal experience and, if you have it, linking your videos of your child reading at an…
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Update on WatchKnow Reader progress (April)
We are hip-deep in the initial building phase of the project. We’ve got a demo going (nothing suitable for public consumption yet though) and made a lot of adjustments to the plan. The whole plan of making an elaborate, complete demo turned out to be well justified; basically, it has turned out to be very…
4 minutes
Support the Knowledge Standards Foundation:
/larrysanger- An open reply to Jimmy Wales. He's wrong: Grokipedia won't necessarily be biased; and, obviously, the Trump article is badly biased. First of a series of replies to Jimmy's remarks in this Reason exposé: https://reason.com/video/2026/02/23/can-you-trust-wikipedia/
- I invited my X peeps to ask me questions and then "like" the various questions, and I would upload the answers in video form. Here it is! Christian identity – 1:10 "Call no man teacher" – 9:25 Role of government – 15:45 Authority & resistance – 19:15 Wikipedia labor – 24:20 Net value of Wikipedia […]