Tran "tnt, as in dynomite" T.'s Profile

For those who are looking into Preston University for a degree, do so with caution. Preston engages in questionable practices, according to various sources online (find out for yourself if you google "Preston university scam" or "Preston university fraud").

Yes, Preston is based in Alabama in the United States, but it is so because it is not allowed to engage in its brand of business in some other states with higher standards for education.

For more information, I recently wrote a blog post for Sitejabber on for-profit universities and institutions like Preston: http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2010/08/22/online-diploma-mills/

For those who are looking into Preston University for a degree, do so with caution. Preston engages in questionable practices, according to various sources online (find out for yourself if you google "Preston university scam" or "Preston university fraud").

Yes, Preston is based in Alabama in the United States, but it is so because it is not allowed to engage in its brand of business in some other states with higher standards for education.

For more information, I recently wrote a blog post for Sitejabber on for-profit universities and institutions like Preston: http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2010/08/22/online-diploma-mills/

For those who are looking into Preston University for a degree, do so with caution. Preston engages in questionable practices, according to various sources online (find out for yourself if you google "Preston university scam" or "Preston university fraud").

Although Preston is based in Alabama in the United States, it is so because it is not allowed to engage in its brand of business in some other states with higher standards for education.

For more information, I recently wrote a blog post for Sitejabber on for-profit universities and institutions like Preston: http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2010/08/22/online-diploma-mills/

For those who are looking into Preston University for a degree, do so with caution. Preston engages in questionable practices, according to various sources online (find out for yourself if you google "Preston university scam" or "Preston university fraud").

Yes, Preston is based in Alabama in the United States, but it is so because it is not allowed to engage in its brand of business in some other states with higher standards for education.

For more information, I recently wrote a blog post for Sitejabber on for-profit universities and institutions like Preston: http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2010/08/22/online-diploma-mills/

For those who are looking into Preston University for a degree, do so with caution. Preston engages in questionable practices, according to various sources online (find out for yourself if you google "Preston university scam" or "Preston university fraud"). I recently wrote a blog post for Sitejabber on for-profit universities and institutions like Preston: http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2010/08/22/online-diploma-mills/

For those who are looking into Preston University for a degree, do so with caution. Preston engages in questionable practices, according to various sources online (find out for yourself if you google "Preston university scam" or "Preston university fraud"). I recently wrote a blog post for Sitejabber on for-profit universities and institutions like Preston: http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2010/08/22/online-diploma-mills/

For those who are looking into Preston University for a degree, do so with caution. Preston engages in questionable practices, according to various sources online (find out for yourself if you google "Preston university scam" or "Preston university fraud"). I recently wrote a blog post for Sitejabber on for-profit universities and institutions like Preston: http://www.sitejabber.com/blog/2010/08/22/online-diploma-mills/

I remember being addicted to this online puzzle years ago: http://shygypsy.com/farm/p.cgi. It's hard for me to explain, but essentially you're trying to create a word map, starting with one phrase / clue: "on the farm". You guess words that are related to that phrase, and uncover more and more of the word map. Words connect to each other, moving further from the original phrase / clue, things get complicated, interesting and frustrating all at once, and you just have to try it to see what I'm talking about...

My friend Juice asked me to look into this website for her. She remarked that it could be "interesting, but scary". After checking it out, I figured out why. I also figured out why, being married, she could not check it out herself first.

The premise is interesting - video chat with random people around the world (the whole thing is supposed to be randomized). If you see someone you don't like, click NEXT. If you see something you like, stick around and chat it up. The reason I say "something" is because you don't always see people, but rather parts of people or couples in uncompromising positions, and that can be unsettling and vile after a while. According to MyAnh, who reviewed Chatroulette earlier today, the site seems to have cleaned itself up, but when I tried it a few months ago, that wasn't the case. When I explored it, it was a mature site, not to be visited by children, yet there were children on it, and I felt the sudden need to protect them.

I don't think the site is necessarily bad, but it can be disillusioning to see how uninhibited and lonely some people seem to be. And even when someone appears to be a respectable person to get to know, he may reveal his real motives with time, so take heed and be careful there. I'm also not a fan of NEXTing someone, in the spirit of MTV; I can't imagine how hard it must be for some folks to be nexted over and over again.

In short, while the idea is promising - to connect people from around the world, I feel like this is more of a social experiment that could potentially be damaging, if not better thought out.

This is a great idea. Everyone finds things laying around their parent's house and thinks or says out loud, "How does this fit into the whole schema of things?" With parents from Asia, it's more likely even to get a little bit of the old with the new, the American with the Asian, the giant Buddha next to the Frank Lloyd Wright piece. It's all very cute, and those kinds of things are featured on this website. Let's face it, our parents are weird, and they're also so tired from parenting us that they don't even care about continuity, consistency or feng shui anymore. Let's celebrate that weirdness and publish it for all the world to see.

I just read about this on the New York Times and decided to give it a go. I'm still figuring it out, but it seems like a pretty promising way to go about learning languages - by interacting with native speakers and getting feedback from them through written and oral submissions (that are provided as practice through free or fairly cheap courses) or simply by chatting. On the flipside, you can also act as a teacher by reviewing submissions by those wanting to learn your language. All interactions result in Mochapoints, and I believe even a chosen few who have earned enough points can be employed by Mocha as online teachers.

The only concern I have about this is that some folks may be thinking of it as a singles / dating site. Of course you can submit your photo, age, relationship status, etc. So just look out for those without the real intention of learning / teaching.

The site is somewhat tricky to navigate at first, but with a few minutes, you get the hang of it. I submitted some feedback this morning and found it quite easy. As well, it seems that the community in general is there for the right reasons.

As an educator of children with special needs, I would encourage anyone to check their facts before investing in places like this center, which promises cures for all kinds of things from ALS to Parkinson's to autism. I can't claim to know how difficult it is to live with a child with autism, to watch a parent suffer from Alzheimer's or to feel your body failing you with M.S. I can only imagine the moments of desperation and longing for a cure. Not only that, but I'm sure that hearing these stories of friends of family of friends of people you know having these "miracle cures", can create a kind of hope that probably overrides good, solid research and judgment.

The American Stem Cell and Anti-Aging Center (ASCAAC) boasts of those miracle cures, and for $25,000 for a two-day treatment, a child with autism can be in the world and learn how to speak again. Supposedly. This isn't based on any valid science. These places feed on desperation. So I urge any parent or individual who's considering this kind of drastic measure, to slow down, gather your facts and use your best judgment based on those facts.

Not as good as the books, but still entertaining, the Freakonomics blog at the NYTimes offers some little tidbits and insights into the phenomena of our times, in behavioral economic terms. Unfortunately there isn't enough of a Steven Levitt presence and the articles are too short for me to pay attention for long.

Scienceblogs is full of friends I want to have: witty, smart people who make science comprehensible to me. My friend Jeremy gave me the idea that maybe one day, when I'm rich, I might be able to hire someone to compile interesting information, the best written articles, the most compelling blogs, and put it all in a weekly book for me to read. Until I can make that moment happen (I'm guessing it will be never), there are my weekly Scienceblog updates.

Something weird is happening. All of a sudden the educator and psychologist in me wants to be in marketing, business, advertising, etc. instead. Why? Because of Harvard Business Review. HBR is supposedly for serious business folk, but I find, as a non-business person, most of the articles accessible, engaging and insightful. Not all articles can be read in full online, but enough of them can. At a whopping $89 for a subscription, and even more to subscribe while living abroad, the website is a great substitute.

When my good friend Judy and I were tweeners, we used to play this game where we would pit two male friends (also tweeners) against each other, in elimination rounds, to see who would be the ultimate "funny guy", "cute guy", "best hair guy", "future husband guy" and so on. We did Kitten Wars and Hot or Not style warfare before they even existed (http://bit.ly/dm74oX), but our kittens were prepubescent boys whose voices cracked uncomfortably whenever they tried to sing Boys II Men songs.

Okay, anyway, let's cut to the chase. The concept of All Our Ideas is similar, except the questions are more like, "What do you think is our most important national priority?", with answers like, "Expand funding for stem cell research", "Capital finance reform", "Provide quality healthcare for all", etc. Not as fun as Kitten Wars or my and Judy's childhood game but still an interesting use of open source technology to gather the opinions of thousands of strangers on serious or frivolous issues of relevance to you.

Car Talk is more than just talk about cars. The title in no way captures the warm hilarity that is the nature of this show, which has been airing for many years now. On Car Talk, Tom and Ray, brothers from Boston, talk about cars, turning what is, to me, an uninteresting topic to something absolutely delightful. It makes no difference if you're into cars or not: Car Talk will make you listen to cars in a way you never have.

I actually haven't looked at this website in great depth. It bills itself as a TED tribute website (independent of TED). By collecting talks that are along the same lines, it supposedly makes it easier to hear talks that follow a sequence or the same topic. I think TED might do a better job of that though.

Science Daily is terribly designed, but the articles / summaries are short and easy enough for a layman like myself to understand. I subscribe to the weekly science and health updates, so Sunday mornings are always a thrill as I wade through tons of headlines to find ones relevant to my work.

I don't actually even subscribe to Scientific American but I will when I return to the states. For now, I receive weekly email updates in my inbox and I love it. Scientific American packs up science for me into nice, bite-size, pop culture-y chunks. I need information and I need it fast - that's when SA comes in handy.

NPR music's first listen series consistently features new music that I am bound to be interested in or to love. NPR not only produces great news features and stories but the music staff seems to have an impeccably sophisticated sense of what's fresh, hip, well-written and well-produced.

On this website, I was able to find a video on the battle between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex in the teenage brain. It was the exact thing that I needed for my class, and the video was appropriately short for the teenage attention span.

Here's a useful place to look for clean, crisp stock image photos. The website also suggests similar photos and allows you to choose the size of the images as well as parts of the image (so useful).

I used Spyguys math lessons with one of my boys with Asperger Syndrome. Spyguys is a product of learnalberta.ca and was perfect for that particular student as the lessons are very specific, providing a comprehensive lesson and an adequate amount of practice exercises. For some students, you may consider padding the lesson with more practice. http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/mesg/html/math6web/math6shell.html

A website full of free and simple worksheets for topics from math to reading to science and social studies. This site is really a jewel for our teachers who need simple, distraction free websites with big print and few problems per page. Working with children with special needs, we've found that super teacher worksheets allows us to accommodate to our students very easily!

Starfall is a wonderful free resource for pre-reading and basic reading skills. It has a kind of Sesame Street, commercially feel but it actually is fairly well-developed and easy to access.

Oh how I love Into The Book, a project of the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board. The website provides resources (lesson plans, videos, interactive series of activities) on the 8 researched strategies for reading comprehension. The website can be accessed for free by students and by educators and the ideas for each strategy can be applied to reading comprehension and content areas.

Reading is Fundamental (http://www.rif.org) is a really nicely organized site with resources for educators, parents and children. There are plenty of free resources, such as ready made packets, depending on grade levels and themes. The best part is that there is a fairly ample section in Spanish, making it more accessible for our school in Guatemala.

Our school raised funds to donate to the Haiti Children's Relief Fund, and I accidentally made the payment to the Global Fund. Folks told me it was not a big deal, but I wanted the money to go where our students thought it would be directed so I called Save the Children. They fully understood my concern and redirected the funds the next day. As well as that, they sent me an email asking for the school's mailing address to send a certificate of gratitude (which arrived in the mail this week) to our 23 students for the $300 donation. Though it wasn't a large amount, in comparison to other organizations and individuals, Save the Children still made the time to make our students feel special for their contribution.

My friend Jessica linked me to this, and I left it sitting there for an hour before I actually tried it. The concept is this - pick one of the moods that are available (from "feel like crying" to "driving route 66" to "sunday morning"), and there's a couple of hundred tracks playlist right there at your eardrums. There's a very decent selection of indie, electronic and non-top 40 tracks. All in all, I was impressed although I can't help but think that this may have been developed by a group of folks with a tremendous collection of music and Itunes's "Genius" button.

Yes, there's a bias towards indie and electronic, but that's A-OK with me, especially the Indie part. An obsession with Hot Chip's Made in the Dark stripped down version actually made me sign up for this Hype Machine business, and boy, was it worth it. Endless listens to remixes and barebones versions of my favorite tracks, for an obsessive personality like myself, is too good to be true.

My friend Ario tweeted this. I thought I'd give it some more exposure. http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Make-Something-Cool-Every-Day-2009/171640
This guy made something "cool", interesting, rather, everyday.

your friends live far away, as in another continent. you want to do a little happy dance for them, or a sad dance, or a robot dance, depending on your mood and their desires. you don't want to get on to skype because you really don't want to TALK to each other, you just want to show your friend the dance. nimbb.com solves your problem. make your robot dance using your webcam, press record, check it, save it and send your friend the link. so easy. thanks, nimbb, for helping me maintain my friendships cross-continent.

When you get tired of your regular websites or have exhausted all they have to offer, but are looking for something along the same lines, insuggest.com is a fairly decent tool to use to find websites similar to your favorites. It seems to still have a limited range as I end up getting the same recommendations but is a neat idea nonetheless.

If you are a hipster who doesn't take yourself seriously, you may find this website mildly amusing. Unhappyhipsters provides clever captions to photos of modern people existing in their post-modern spaces. I think all of these photos come from Dwell magazine, and most are so funny that even my architect friends find humor in them.

this is not legitimate. see other reviews.

I placed an order on the 14th of December for 2 small containers of theraputty and one bodysock. I received the theraputty within about a week but still have not received the bodysock. Shipping cost me $18 for items that are so small you could stick it in a $10 USPS box. The website did not indicate that the bodysock would be on backorder, and I've tried twice to contact them with my concern. No response. I'm not sure if this is a scam or if the company is just incredibly irresponsible. For these items, next time I'll go straight to therapyshoppe.com.

Readwritethink.org is an educator's friend. It has great lessons for teachers and activities for students. My favorite parts are interactive tools such as the interactive Venn diagram, http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/venn/, which makes it easier to help students organize their ideas and to practice their computer skills.

Find out where to recycle just about anything from paper to plastics to metal clothes hangers. I could even find out where to recycle polysterene (#6 plastic) at a location less than 4 miles from my house.