Author: Larry Sanger
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A common error of school lessons, or, why I’m homeschooling
Here is one reason why I’m homeschooling, and why I would probably never send my children to a school–even most private schools. I was looking over some instructional material recently (something I do often these days). It was a sample curriculum for teachers, explaining how, in one lesson, they should teach Kindergartners the principle that we say…
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Wales declares Sanger arbiter of consensus on Wikipedia
While looking at the old Wikipedia-L archives, I came across the following deliciously ironic post from none other than Jimmy Wales: [Wikipedia-l] subpages Jimmy Wales jwales at bomis.com Mon Feb 25 23:33:51 UTC 2002 kband at www.llamacom.com wrote: […] > If he’s still the final arbiter of all Wikipedia > functionality, then this is a…
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Jimmy Wales on advertisement
A comment in Wired UK has Jimmy Wales saying this: Sanger was absolutely adamant that Wikipedia must have ads, and it was my refusal to do so that led to Wikipedia being as it is today. The Spanish fork did not provoke any changes of any kind. We stayed the course. I didn’t want to…
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WatchKnow’s new FREE app
WatchKnow has finally released its iApp. Not that I am biased or anything (I did design it), but I think it is one of the best educational apps in the app store. More details anon.
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Johnson v. Your Baby Can: not much of a case
I finally got my hands on the court filing for Johnson v. Your Baby Can. The case number is BC450907 and it was filed in Superior Court of Los Angeles County on December 8, 2010. My initial assessment is that no jury is going to find for the plaintiff if this is the case; the…
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Class action lawsuit against YBCR
UPDATE 1: my apologies. I thought this was news, but it actually isn’t. I ran across this Courthouse News Service story, and the plaintiff is a Tondia Johnson, not Matthew Melmed (as I mistakenly wrote), and the dateline of the Courthouse News Service story is December 9, so it’s month-old news. As CNS says: The…
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WatchKnow Reader coding gets under way!
I’m really pumped now! Technical development of WatchKnow Reader (tentative name) is now officially under way. After months of planning, requirements writing, and demo’ing, we are now starting a proof of concept that the software can be coded in HTML5. Yes, we’re hoping to go with HTML5 so we can write the code just once, and then…
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Invitation to collaborate on encyclopedia article
Some time ago I started working on a Citizendium article titled, tentatively, “Accelerated early childhood education.” (Is there a better name for this subject?) What is the Citizendium, you ask? It’s a wiki encyclopedia, like that other wiki, but it requires that you use your real name, and there is a low-key guiding role for experts in…
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Interview in Education News about infant reading
This morning, an interview I did a couple weeks ago appeared in Education News. The topic is the how and why of teaching babies to read. It covers familiar ground to readers of this blog, but still might be interesting to those who are skeptical or puzzled about baby reading.
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I am not Jewish (not one of the Frozen Chosen)
I am not Jewish, not that there is anything wrong with that! OK, seriously, neither my mother nor my father (or any grandparents or great-grandparents) has, to my knowledge, any Jewish blood or religious heritage. If we do, it must be a very small percentage. I was raised Lutheran and, after annoying family members and former pastors, have…