Andrew Cullison

A recent opinion piece in the New York Times argues that Amazon ought collect sales tax on goods bought by customers in states where, currently, Amazon does not collect any sales tax.

Here’s a bit of reasoning offered by Jeff Bezos for the conclusion that Amazon ought only pay sales tax in the state of Washington, Amazon’s corporate headquarters. (more…)

Filed under: Uncategorized by Andrew Cullison
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Evidently, drunk drivers are using twitter to alert each other about sobriety checkpoints - story here and here.  What I find absolutely incredible is a defense of this practice that comes up in both stories. (more…)

Filed under: Uncategorized by Andrew Cullison
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I’m back. The break was great. We went to Jamaica just before Christmas with my wife’s side of the family, and we just finished Christmas with my side of the family.

It’s time to start doing some philosophy.

The really exciting news is that my wife and my folks went in together and bought me the nook for my birthday (which was on Christmas). The bad news is that I have to wait until January 4 to get my hands on it.

As soon as I get my hands on it, I plan to do an unboxing (for philosophers) and start experimenting with PDFs. My goal is to give philosophers useful information about the nook that I couldn’t find anywhere else.

While you’re waiting for philosophy related Nook reviews, I’ve created a category for all of my previous Nook posts.

If there’s anything you’d like me to test out/explore once I get the nook- let me know

Filed under: Uncategorized, nook, open source by Andrew Cullison
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It’s finals week here at SUNY Fredonia, and I thought I’d share a quick and easy to record those final exam grades using Google Forms.

1. Create a Google Form with 2 Questions - one for Lastname and one for Points. (the resulting form will look like this)
2. Give yourself an easy way on your computer to refresh the browser and bring up that form. I go to it and then drag it to my firefox toolbar. After I submit a form, I just click the button and it brings up a fresh form.
3. Have your computer open as you grade final exams. When you’re finished grading a student’s exam, enter their lastname and exam points in the form and submit. Refresh the form and grade the next exam.
4. When you’re finished highlight the two columns, copy them and paste them into your main grade book.
5. Assuming your main gradebook has students alphabetized by last name, you’ll want to quickly sort your exam data to fit this. Highlight both columns and resort them alphabetically. If the lastnames column is the left column, the entries in the left column will re-arrange alphabetically. The entries in the points column will stay with their respective names. You might want to practice this a couple of times to make sure. Different spreadsheet programs have different rules as to when columns stay linked and when they do not

Why do this? (more…)

Filed under: educational technology, teaching by Andrew Cullison
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