Wide Scope A philosophy blog that ranges over philosophy and other fun stuff.

15 Excellent Wordpress Plugins for Course Management

11.03.2009 · Posted in educational technology, teaching

I’m using Wordpress now as my course management platform. I outline and explain the reasons why this is awesome here. In this post, I want to highlight some plugins that run the gamut from must have to cool-to-have. I’ll let you decide which is which. ...

Math Professor Plays Cool Halloween Trick

11.01.2009 · Posted in fun

Bonus points for introducing something like the duplication problem for various theories of personal identity. ...

Journal Survey Update: List of Journal Requests from October

11.01.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

I had a lot of requests to add new journals to the survey list. I finished putting up the last of them this morning. A lot of new journals have been added now. Keep the requests coming, and keep filling out those surveys. Remember, any time you get a decision from a journal, come fill out ...

Grade Student Papers Using Google Forms

10.30.2009 · Posted in educational technology, teaching, the academy

If you can break down what you’re looking for in a good paper into a set of categories and assign a numerical value to each category, then you should definitely consider using Google Forms to help you grade. I just developed a quick and easy way to do this. Here’s what I do. My students submit ...

The Monads Are Back

10.29.2009 · Posted in fun

The Monads are back. I suspect a lot of my readers are familiar with the Monads. What you may not realize is that they are back. Kris McDaniel, an original member of the Monads, has revived the group with Ben Bradley and Carrie Jenkins. They are calling themselves “The 21st Century Monads”, and they already have ...

Building An Awesome Philosophy eLibrary

I’ve been waiting for the perfect eReader to sweep me off my feet with its native PDF capability and huge file capacity. I thought it would be the Nook, but it looks like the annotation function is missing some desirable features. There’s also salient possibility that PDFs of journal articles will be too small to ...

Academic Philosophy on Reddit

10.27.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

Someone started an Academic Philosophy sub-group on Reddit. I love the mission statement. This reddit is intended for practicing philosophers - undergraduate students, graduate students, professors or researchers. People who like /r/philosophy but find the insipid self posts and cartoons tiresome. Persons with academic training outside of philosophy are welcome. Links to articles of merit and length ...

Will the Nook PDF Capability Be Good Enough for Academics?

10.27.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized, nook

I mentioned how excited I was for the Nook here. A large part of the enthusiasm was that, as an academic philosopher, I really want an eReader that has native PDF support. I want to build a huge, awesome eLibrary of philosophy journal articles. I’m still excited about the Nook, but this enthusiasm has been tempered ...

Playing Around With Wordpress Themes

10.26.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

I broke my sidebar. Not sure how. This seems like the perfect time to explore for a new wordpress theme. So, pardon me while I play around with themes for a while. All of the content will still be here. Most importantly, the journal surveys will still be up and running. So don’t be freaked out. They’re ...