Does Amazon KDP want to engage authors or commoditize them?
We just released a new version of Engineering Long-Lasting Software on May 1, 2012. As we promised our alpha-edition buyers, we fixed hundreds of errata and added two new chapters. (UPDATE: we’ve...
View ArticleClik here to view.
About UC Berkeley CS169 “Software Engineering”
Since I find myself periodically explaining our “reinvented” CS169 to my colleagues, and since our SaaS MOOC is based on it, I thought I’d write up this short description. (The official link to the...
View Articlelatex2ebook now on GitHub: make PDF & ebooks from same sources
I finally got around to extracting the complex toolchain used to create our textbook into a separate project. You can check it out on GitHub as armandofox/latex2ebook It’s far from complete, has many...
View Article$5 Amazon gift card if you recommend a printer that doesn’t suck
I’m trying to buy a replacement all-in-one printer for my mom and dad (they have G4 & G5 Macs, an iPad, and two iPhone 4s), and all the ones I’ve investigated (including those sold by Apple in...
View ArticleThanks, Mr. Ambani, for thwarting free online education in India
Given our efforts to provide free education in Software Engineering—an area where India is known to be a strong player—it was particularly disconcerting to read that numerous Web sites including Vimeo...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to Visit San Francisco
If you’re staying in an urban area (SF, Berkeley, Oakland) don’t rent a car while you’re here. If you’re staying in outlying areas, you might use a car to get to and park at a BART station, but...
View ArticleShould you self-publish? Should anybody?
Many colleagues have asked us about the experience of self-publishing our textbook. In a previous post I talked about the DIY technology I harnessed to produce the actual artifacts (both the printed...
View ArticleFor four years I learned to be a toucan
For four years, I got a brief glimpse into the life of a toucan, by learning to be one. Four years ago Tonia and I acquired Pogo, a not-yet-weaned keel-billed toucan. We lost her yesterday in a freak...
View ArticleViewpoint: MOOCs can strengthen academia
[Now that I'm the Academic Director for online learning at Berkeley, I figured it's OK to raise my voice a little about what I think is good about MOOCs. The following was submitted as a "Viewpoint"...
View ArticleYou’re an idiot if you don’t think gun laws need to be reformed
Sorry, but you are. I’m astounded by the ideological rigidity that has apparently so immobilized some people—including some I normally think of as perceptive and intelligent—that prevents them from...
View ArticleWhat was it like to teach a MOOC?
Since I get asked this question a lot, including by the media, I thought it’d be useful to blog it. What MOOCs have I taught? I split our 15-week on-campus software engineering course into two pieces,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The traveling MOOC professor
I just returned from a short but much-needed vacation to Thailand and Indonesia, with a brief stopover in Singapore. (My wife and I are scuba divers, so we were diving in the Raja Ampat area of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Meeting some MOOC students in Paris
Last week I traveled to Paris for CHI 2013 to speak on a panel about online education. I’m getting to do that a lot these days, and while the travel can be tiring, it’s certainly more fun when I get...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How I got my MIT 6.004 nerd kit past airport security
As an undergrad at MIT in the late 80s, in my Digital Design and Computer Architecture courses we actually built stuff using discrete TTL parts on high-end protoboards with integrated power supplies....
View ArticleWhat to expect when teaching your first MOOC
Now that the media seems to have exhausted the “MOOC honeymoon” stories, they’re looking for “MOOC disaster” stories. Two recent high-profile stories involve the truncation of a Georgia Tech MOOC due...
View ArticleLetter to the editor of SF Chronicle re: SJSU “disappointing” online...
I submitted this to the San Francisco Chronicle today in response to an op-ed critiquing the “disappointing” performance of the Udacity/SJSU MOOC experiment: TO THE EDITOR: Your commentary on San Jose...
View ArticleedX, Google, and MOOC.org
(This entry is being cross-posted to the Berkeley Teaching Blog.) A few days ago Google and edX announced a new collaboration: Google will own and operate MOOC.org, a new site that will host the Open...
View Article
