Author: John Keegan

Intelligent design 15 years after Kitzmiller v Dover

Posted on by John Keegan in Intelligent Design, Lecture
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This year marks the 15th anniversary of Kitzmiller v. Dover 2005. The Federal Court decision was an important one for anyone who supports science education. Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the Creationist idea of intelligent design violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and was not science. The following lecture demonstrates that intelligent design has still not gained acceptance within the scientific community and that it is simply creationism relabeled.

Links

The Crusades Terry Jones

Posted on by John Keegan in History

Crusades hosted by Terry Jones (Monty Python) is a 1995 British television series, which examined European Christians’ efforts to take Jerusalem and other cities in the Holy Land from the Muslim Turks. In four episodes, Jones provides a basic understanding of the motivations both European Christians and the Muslim Turks. Its use of dark humor to deal with many of the unpleasant episodes of the Crusades makes the series useful in the classroom. Jones brings all his skills to the presentation of the series: trained historian, writer; comedian all can be seen in his presentation. Additionally, he holds the students attention. Below is the list of links to the programs in the series.

  1. Pilgrims in Arms
  2. Jerusalem
  3. Jihad
  4. Destruction

One of my favorite series, it is my go to program on this topic. As a historian myself, I fully understand that the historiography of any event needs to be examined from as many aspects as possible in order to obtain complete understanding of it.

OneNote Comparison

Posted on by John Keegan in Lecture, Microsoft, OneNote

Some two years ago, I wrote a post about Microsoft discontinuing development of what was then OneNote 2016 in favor of OneNote for Windows 10. That announcement went over like a lead balloon, and since then Microsoft has stated that it will continue development of what is now called OneNote side by side with OneNote for Windows 10.

I recently took another look at OneNote for Windows 10 to see what updates, if any, had been made. I found that the only one stand out for me was immersive reader; it is the only reason I have OneNote for Windows 10 on my machine, but I rarely if ever use it. It is likely because of my workflow and when I choose to do my proofreading. Nevertheless, immersive reader is a worthwhile and important tool which I hope comes to OneNote.

Not much has been added to OneNote for Windows 10 except immersive reader, and when compared to what is missing it’s not enough to make OneNote for Windows 10 daily note-taking program. As demonstrated in the video while embedded files can now be edited if they’re embedded using OneNote for Windows 10 they cannot be viewed and either iOS or Android versions of OneNote. Additionally, there is still no ability just save notebooks to the hard drive. Finally, there is still no ability to create and use page templates.

What’s new in OneNote for Windows 10. Before doing the video I uninstalled and reinstalled OneNote for Windows 10.

Lectures on YouTube

Posted on by John Keegan in History, Lecture, teaching resources

This week I discovered that PowerPoint has the capability to record presentations as videos that can be uploaded to YouTube or any website. This capability provides the opportunity for me to actually give the lectures I write. Below are examples of this capability. However, they are not the best from a performance standpoint; but the information is accurate.

This lecture and the three above are part of the unit Duck, Cover, and Conform America in the 1950s.

This lecture is part of a group materials on Watergate, which I created some years ago.

Windows 10 2004 Feature Update

Posted on by John Keegan in Science and Technology

Yesterday, I decided to install Windows 10 2004; chiefly because I couldn’t put it off any longer. Both my machines were ready for it and it was being offered through Windows Update. My laptop, the machine I rely on the most, is an Acer Core i5 with 16 GBs of RAM. I started the process at 8:24 a.m. yesterday morning and my machine was ready to use at 12:41 yesterday afternoon. Over four hours was taken up by the installation of this feature update. Nothing went wrong, I didn’t have to look up anything on the internet; the process just took that long. To find out what was new I had to go to thurrott.com and read Paul’s article, for the improvements were not obvious. While, the new search feature is nice and it is also nice to be able to name virtual desktops, and there are improvements to the your phone application; which I cannot get to work on my Galaxy Note 9. I do not think that these improvements were worth four hours of my time.

I put the time and the percentage of the process complete into a spreadsheet, which is below. In addition to the data, I also made charts.

Excel Workbook