The interior of St. Eustache, in central Paris.
Stephanie Bossert Gupton, a friend from my days at Blacksburg High School who is now a professional photographer, responded to an image I posted on Facebook recently. She asked me to post more, so here’s a start (thanks to a decent internet connection and a day to relax in Paris).
This is a panorama taken inside Paris’ church of St. Eustache.
As you can see, I have a lot of fun with my iPhone!
We’ve had 2-3 weeks of glorious weather here in Dublin. People seemed stunned. A few people even started complaining that it had been 75 degrees for too long. Too hot, some said. And truly, we did have a day of high humidity — almost unknown in this fair city.
The past few days ushered in a return of regular irish weather. In Ireland, experiencing “all four seasons in one day” isn’t unusual.
Above, I’ve uploaded some photos from my stint across town and back today.
The photo below was taken from my seat atop a double-decker bus. It offers a glimpse of Dublin city traffic… and shows you why I don’t bike here more often!
Yes, we ARE passing that truck!
I’ve been following the development of online education and MOOCs, in part because I hope someday soon there will be a way for me to earn a certificate or degree in structural engineering using an online format. I’d love to learn from the very best professors in the field! The tools for assessment are developing beautifully.
Salman Khan’s TED talk, about the Khan Academy, blew my mind. What this man is achieving and offering to society is absolutely amazing.
I’ve been intrigued to learn, also by watching TED videos, about Corsera‘s new achievements. Five of Corsera’s programs were recently endorsed for meeting the standards of university coursework.
The image below illustrates what I’d already heard: college costs six times more than it did the day I started. This spike began while I was in college, and I faced mid-year tuition hikes. How do students in the US manage to repay their loans?
TED’s website explains:
Daphne Koller is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free — not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. With Coursera (cofounded by Andrew Ng), each keystroke, quiz, peer-to-peer discussion and self-graded assignment builds an unprecedented pool of data on how knowledge is processed.
I recently received a request via email to share some images with you — I’ve included a thumbnail below that you can click to view.
Hi Dr. Chance,
I wanted to reach out to connect with you about a graphic that I helped create which takes a closer look at MOOCs and their recent growth in the education space.
I came across this post on your site: shannonchance.net/2012/11/13/whats-a-mooc-and-can-it-save-humanity/ – and given that you might have an interest in the topic, I wanted to see if you’d be interested in taking a look and/or sharing the piece with your readers. If so, let me know and I’d love to pass it along!
Thanks,
Allison M.
We ended the “Engineering Your Future” week, sponsored by DIT and Engineers Ireland, with robot competitions (video footage to come) and awards. On the RoboSlam blog, you can see the full contingent of robots we created. Students earned awards for their essays, test performance, robot design, and the like.
I went on the hunt for lions in Dublin last week, and found plenty to stir my soul! Disney’s theatrical production of the Lion King is energetic and mesmerizing. The costumes and choreography amazed and astounded me.
RoboSlam planning session with Ted and Damon.
Ted, Damon, and I have been meeting over the past couple of days to evaluate past events, brainstorm strategies, and plan for upcoming workshops. We enjoy remembering recent Slams….
Opinion is mixed regarding the Dublin City Council building. It’s a hulk of a building, but a fine example of modernism — in the brutalist style. It’s got some nice features, but they obliterated the old Viking settlements to build it. Such a shame.
Things really got fun once all the circuitry, programing, structural components, and body casings all synched and we stared testing out our nearly-fully-functioning robots and working out the final kinks. Success!
See more photos about finalizing and testing on the RoboSlam website.
Hanging out with Daniel O’Connell. My photography exhibition was held in the house where he used to live, on Merrion Square.
Our Fulbright shin dig included a visit to Glasnevin Cemetery. I’d spent about an hour here, just outside the gate, one evening near Halloween when Esther was visiting. That was part of the (very worthwhile and historically accurate) Ghost bus tour and we followed it up with a visit to John Kavanagh’s “Gravediggers” pub.
The cemetery itself was started outside the city, at the same time the same thing was happening all over the USA. The American cemetery movement actually sparked the American park movement, believe it or not. The historian J. B. Jackson explains that people found they loved going to the suburban cemeteries — which were new and had wide open (corpse-free) spaces. These early cemeteries were well-designed and had beautiful architectural features, as you can see on the home page for Thornrose Cemetery where my grandparents lay today. In any case, in the ten year period of the Civil War, nearly every American city built a “central” park, and Frederick Law Olmstead’s office designed many of them… and many college campuses too.
Wikipedia has some of the most interesting info online regarding this particular cemetery:
Glasnevin Cemetery (Irish: Reilig Ghlas Naíon), officially known as Prospect Cemetery, is the largest non-denominational cemetery in Ireland with an estimated 1.5 million burials.[1] It first opened in 1832, and is located in Glasnevin, Dublin.
The stories I heard on our tour of the cemetery brought to life for me the history of Michael Collins and Daniel O’Connell, two of Ireland’s most important political figures. Éamon de Valera and Countess Markievicz are also buried here.
Dun Laoghaire harbor
It’s overcast in Dublin today, so I’m pulling out some images from a recent sunny Sunday in nearby Dún Laoghaire, a town in the suburbs of Dublin.
Dún Laoghaire is accessible from Dublin city center by train and bus, and it makes a lovely day trip. On the weekend, “Peoples Park” is full of market stalls and vendors with prepared food, raw ingredients for purchase, crafts, and other quality goods. The water front, with its harbor and beach, provides a relaxing place to stroll.
The town’s official website explains:
Dún Laoghaire is a town on the east coast of Ireland, about seven miles (11km) south of the capital Dublin. Its focal point is a splendid harbour and the town is surrounded by spectacular rolling hills.
…Historically Dún Laoghaire has always been a ‘Gateway to Ireland’, Dún Laoghaire gets its name from the Irish translation Fort (Dún) of Laoghaire. It was once the seat of King Laoghaire, the ancient High King of Ireland before the Vikings sailed from Scandinavia and established themselves in Dublin.
Dun Laoghaire beach with a view over to Howth (the peninsula on the left of the image, past the end of the pier).
Ireland by Chance 