Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Servers
The UW servers have been down for several hours, which means no posting of lecture slides. I'll upload them as soon as I see the servers go back up.
Friday, January 4, 2008
BIOL432
This entry is for students in Biology 432, Molecular Biotechnology 2, to leave feedback on the course; this feedback can be anonymous if desired and will allow me to tailor my teaching style in both the long-term and the short-term, including any adjustments or clarifications that become appropriate through the course of this semester.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Unboxing
We bought a new TV this week, a 42" Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD. It was delivered today! It had been suggested that at least I wasn't a big enough dork to do an officially documented Unboxing. I am so that big a dork! Here we go!
Unboxing: Before
The empty spot where a TV will be!
First look in the box
The goodies
The stand
The TV itself, hermetically sealed for your protection!
Unboxing: After
It works!
Input from my Mac Mini. So happy!
Unboxing: Before
The empty spot where a TV will be!
First look in the box
The goodies
The stand
The TV itself, hermetically sealed for your protection!
Unboxing: After
It works!
Input from my Mac Mini. So happy!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Assignment
I've been giving writing assignments in my class (4th-year Environmental Microbiology at the University of Waterloo) to help the students with their written communication, leading up to a group term project. Last week, I asked students to choose and summarize a scientific journal article; this week, I asked the class to critique another student's summary. I solicited feedback on the assignment, partly out of fear that the students might see it as being "too high school". I got a great comment on the section of my blog that I provided for this purpose, and I tried to clarify what it is I am trying to accomplish with these assignments. I'm going to provide them here on the front page, to try to get them a little more exposure and maybe solicit further feedback as to whether my experiment in writing skills is a worthwhile one.
Hey Dr. Scott, today's tutorial task was a little annoying. It's not difficult to summarize a summary (though it seems pointless to summarize a summary, but I understand there's a reason why we did that), but to do so in about 30 minutes while you're calling out people's names, people are shuffling around and leaving, and I am trying to understand what somebody else thinks they understand from a primary research article....summarizing a summary becomes quite difficult. Sure it's worth 1% but that makes it even more frustrating because you would think it would take a little less effort to gain the percent. That takes me to my next grievance...
The tasks, as simple as they are and meant to help us, should be worth more than a % each, perhaps 2%. They are easy but time consuming. And though one could argue that they are helping us towards the project which is a big chunk of our final mark, you won't be looking at the 'little' things for the big presentation as closely as you are looking at them now...and that makes me believe that the tasks should be worth more.
Please don't make us do another impromptu task unless everybody in the room is going to be quiet and not start leaving 10 mins into the task. Thank you.
My response:
Thanks, I really appreciate that depth of feedback. I don't have a good solution for handing back assignments - for privacy reasons, I can't put them in the middle of the room and ask people to grab their own, and if you just tell the class to come and pick them up, many people don't bother. Since the most important part of the assignment is the feedback, I want to make sure people get them. I hoped that calling names would be unobtrusive, but I'll try to find a better compromise in the future. There were several logistical issues that I didn't consider ahead of time (what if someone comes in late? what if someone doesn't hand in assignment 2?) that I will need to work out before I try an experiment like this again.
Regarding the effort and the marks, my feeling is that I'm not asking students to do anything they shouldn't be doing already for their group projects. In a perfect world, I wouldn't bother assigning grades for the assignments at all, as I feel the exercise and the feedback from it is the important thing. Besides, if the point of the exercise is to help you improve at something you're not already good at, how can you be expected to get a good mark?
Here's an open secret about teaching: if you want students to take something seriously, you have to assign a grade to it, no matter how small. I want you to do it regardless of how much or how little of your grade it is worth, and you (as a class) won't do it or take it seriously if I don't grade it. Studies have shown that attaching a grade to a task is the (only!) way to assign importance to it, and that's why some classes will assign a trivial grade to things like participation: if you want students to talk, make it worth a mark.
As far as the effect this will have on my grading the final group project: Again, I am asking for things you should be doing anyway, and hopefully giving you feedback to keep you on the right track, as well as practice at writing and communicating effectively. My expectation is that each assignment should require between half an hour and an hour of effort above and beyond what you were already putting in for your group project. You get a mark for completing the assignment and putting the effort into writing clearly, and the real value is the chance to catch mistakes before they become habits. This should result in a final paper that is easier to read and more properly constructed, showing a more polished effort deserving of a higher grade (to say nothing of the effect on my mood while grading it!) On the other hand, if your final project still exhibits these mistakes despite the practice you've had with the assignments, I am going to be far less lenient when grading them.
Ultimately, I would expect that the majority of the class will get full marks on the majority of the assignments, while learning how to write properly and improving everybody's grades not just on the final report, but on the exams as well. If I have to give everybody in the class an A because everybody learned how to do these things properly, I'd imagine I'll find a way to sleep at night.
I don't want to "dispute" your comments and I certainly don't want to discourage anybody else from posting negative comments or constructive criticism. However, I feel that the teacher-student relationship will be beneficial to everybody if the process of teaching is transparent. If some of what I say here helps you to understand why I'm asking you to do these things, then you'll feel better and do better work. If you still think I'm full of it, let me know, and it'll help me to become a better teacher.
Hey Dr. Scott, today's tutorial task was a little annoying. It's not difficult to summarize a summary (though it seems pointless to summarize a summary, but I understand there's a reason why we did that), but to do so in about 30 minutes while you're calling out people's names, people are shuffling around and leaving, and I am trying to understand what somebody else thinks they understand from a primary research article....summarizing a summary becomes quite difficult. Sure it's worth 1% but that makes it even more frustrating because you would think it would take a little less effort to gain the percent. That takes me to my next grievance...
The tasks, as simple as they are and meant to help us, should be worth more than a % each, perhaps 2%. They are easy but time consuming. And though one could argue that they are helping us towards the project which is a big chunk of our final mark, you won't be looking at the 'little' things for the big presentation as closely as you are looking at them now...and that makes me believe that the tasks should be worth more.
Please don't make us do another impromptu task unless everybody in the room is going to be quiet and not start leaving 10 mins into the task. Thank you.
My response:
Thanks, I really appreciate that depth of feedback. I don't have a good solution for handing back assignments - for privacy reasons, I can't put them in the middle of the room and ask people to grab their own, and if you just tell the class to come and pick them up, many people don't bother. Since the most important part of the assignment is the feedback, I want to make sure people get them. I hoped that calling names would be unobtrusive, but I'll try to find a better compromise in the future. There were several logistical issues that I didn't consider ahead of time (what if someone comes in late? what if someone doesn't hand in assignment 2?) that I will need to work out before I try an experiment like this again.
Regarding the effort and the marks, my feeling is that I'm not asking students to do anything they shouldn't be doing already for their group projects. In a perfect world, I wouldn't bother assigning grades for the assignments at all, as I feel the exercise and the feedback from it is the important thing. Besides, if the point of the exercise is to help you improve at something you're not already good at, how can you be expected to get a good mark?
Here's an open secret about teaching: if you want students to take something seriously, you have to assign a grade to it, no matter how small. I want you to do it regardless of how much or how little of your grade it is worth, and you (as a class) won't do it or take it seriously if I don't grade it. Studies have shown that attaching a grade to a task is the (only!) way to assign importance to it, and that's why some classes will assign a trivial grade to things like participation: if you want students to talk, make it worth a mark.
As far as the effect this will have on my grading the final group project: Again, I am asking for things you should be doing anyway, and hopefully giving you feedback to keep you on the right track, as well as practice at writing and communicating effectively. My expectation is that each assignment should require between half an hour and an hour of effort above and beyond what you were already putting in for your group project. You get a mark for completing the assignment and putting the effort into writing clearly, and the real value is the chance to catch mistakes before they become habits. This should result in a final paper that is easier to read and more properly constructed, showing a more polished effort deserving of a higher grade (to say nothing of the effect on my mood while grading it!) On the other hand, if your final project still exhibits these mistakes despite the practice you've had with the assignments, I am going to be far less lenient when grading them.
Ultimately, I would expect that the majority of the class will get full marks on the majority of the assignments, while learning how to write properly and improving everybody's grades not just on the final report, but on the exams as well. If I have to give everybody in the class an A because everybody learned how to do these things properly, I'd imagine I'll find a way to sleep at night.
I don't want to "dispute" your comments and I certainly don't want to discourage anybody else from posting negative comments or constructive criticism. However, I feel that the teacher-student relationship will be beneficial to everybody if the process of teaching is transparent. If some of what I say here helps you to understand why I'm asking you to do these things, then you'll feel better and do better work. If you still think I'm full of it, let me know, and it'll help me to become a better teacher.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Asterisk
The ball that Barry Bonds hit to break Hank Aaron's career home run record was bought by fashion designer Marc Ecko for $752 467 (that's $756 385 Canadian!). On his website, Ecko put to a vote the three fates of the ball: Bestow it to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown; Brand it with a red asterisk, and then donate it to Cooperstown; or Banish it to outer space.According to an article on MLB.com, the overwhelming result (47%) was to brand the ball. The President of the HoF has stated that the ball will be displayed in whatever state it is presented, asterisk and all.
The asterisk has a controversial history in Major League Baseball, as it was first used to qualify Roger Maris' single-season home run record, in which Maris hit 61 home runs over 162 games, breaking Babe Ruth's record of 60 hit when the season was only 154 games long. The asterisk on Bonds' record-breaking ball is intended to represent the controversy over Bonds' alleged steroid use, in what is quickly becoming known as the "Drug Age" of baseball.
After being called "an idiot" by Bonds for doing this with the ball after spending so much money on it, Ecko said:
"I saw the purchase of the ball as an opportunity to open a national conversation using new media -- the Internet, blogs, videos -- to allow America's oldest sport to have America's most modern conversation. The people should be the arbiters of what is historically significant about this artifact."
For the record, I voted Brand.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Comments
This entry is for my students in Biology 447 to leave anonymous comments regarding the lecture from Sept 24 2007, or any other lecture, really. Thanks for your feedback, guys!
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Parity
Image stolen from CBC News.As of Thursday morning, with the US Dollar continuing to plummet, the Canadian dollar achieved parity with the US greenback for the first time in 30 years.
Now, will this translate into lower prices on goods in Canada? According to analysts (like this one writing for the Globe and Mail) recent appreciation by the Loonie of 15% has been accompanied by only a 6.4% reduction in import prices, all of which has been enjoyed by import and manufacturing companies with little or no passing on of savings to Canadian consumers. Further, we apparently shouldn't expect this to change anytime soon.
Now, I understand that the US market and the Canadian market are distinct. Supply and demand might differ significantly, there might be higher costs to doing business in Canada due to differences in taxes and reduced economy of scale due to our dispersed population and smaller advertising markets.
However, we live in a smaller world now than 30 years ago - it is much easier today to quickly compare prices on identical goods between US and Canadian retailers, which should drive consumers to vote with their wallets by either 1) waiting for the price drop to come or, 2) cross-border shopping.
Some obvious discrepancies that will be difficult to ignore:
- Prices on Amazon.com vs. Amazon.ca. The links are for identical products: the Knocked Up 2-disc set coming out next week. Which is 39.86% more expensive to buy in Canada. Which, what, gets me closer to free shipping faster?
- I was planning to buy that DVD on Tuesday anyway from a brick-and-mortar store. Maybe I'll go to Best Buy, where the difference is only 26.1%?
- Yesterday was New Comic Book Day. US and CDN prices are both included on the cover. Marvel comics are about 25% more expensive in Canada, while DC books are over 33% more expensive. Maybe we have to pay extra to ship comics from the States to Canada - paper is heavy, you know - but both publishers PRINT THEIR COMICS IN CANADA!
To be fair, extending my searches to books on Amazon, I found that William Gibson's Spook Country, while having a higher cover price in Canada, as actually being sold for a lower price here. So I guess there's that. But it now makes sense, for medium-ticket items, to wait until we have an opportunity to cross the border. Even if you declare what you buy, you'll still save - and books and DVDs are no more difficult to sneak across without declaring. iPods are only about 10% more expensive here, but where's the break-even point? Last year, I bought a Mac Mini in Buffalo and, including taxes etc, spent a couple of hundred dollars less than I would have to buy the same machine here, and that was with a Canadian dollar worth less than 90 cents USD. Now, I'm not saying that I crossed the border without declaring a desktop computer (and a printer) but I'm also not saying that they noticed it was there, you know?
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