In The News

Mozilla To Develop Three HASTAC-Sponsored Learning Tools

At the closing ceremony of the first international Mozilla Drumbeat Festival on “Learning, Freedom, and the Open Web,” Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker announced that five projects previewed at the Festival had been selected for further development by Mozilla, including three presented at HASTAC’s “Storming the Academy” tent.  Mozilla will take these projects forward from the Mozilla To Develop Three HASTAC-Sponsored Learning Tools

Seen on Slate.com: E Is for Fail

The school board in Mount Olive, N.J., will get rid of the D grade starting this fall, in an effort to raise the standards for graduation. From now on, any student whose average grade falls below a 70 will simply fail. How did we end up with an A-B-C-D-F grading system, anyway? Did schools ever Seen on Slate.com: E Is for Fail

The News and Observor looks at networking in a world without boundaries

Cathy Davidson is a professor of English and interdisciplinary studies at Duke University, and she is a co-founder of HASTAC (pronounced “haystack”), a website that links humanities, art, science and technology. You can find her Cat in the Stack blog posts at www.hastac.org. She tweets at @CatInStack. Questions and answers have been edited. read more The News and Observor looks at networking in a world without boundaries

Inside Higher Ed reviews Davidson's crowdsourced grading

When Duke University’s Cathy Davidson announced her grading plan for a seminar she would be offering this semester, she attracted attention nationwide. Some professors cheered, others tut-tutted, and others asked “Can she do that?” read more >>

The Public Option

Shortly after last week’s column appeared, I headed out to Iowa City to attend — and, as the occasion required, to pontificate at — a gathering called Platforms for Public Scholars. Sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa, it drew somewhere between 100 and 150 participants over three days.