Misc. Stuff

You are teaching a class (high school, college, whatever). You give five graded homework assignments and assign each one a score. What grading system will you use? What do you do if a student doesn't complete the assignment on time? What about if he/she never turns it in? How will that count.

Depending on what level you are teaching the course at and where you are located geographically, you might be influenced to answer in a very different way. Most high schools in the USA (where I attended/worked) grade students out of 100% within each individual course. For example, I might have had a 93% average in physics. I think most schools ultimately convert your average over to a gpa out of 4.0 or something similar which goes on college applications.

This is a perfectly valid system. However, what range of grades corresponds to an A? At my high school, 95-100 was an A+, 90-94.4 was an A, 85-89.4 was a B+, etc. Each of those bins is equivalent to approximately 5 percentage points. But after D (65-69.4) what happens? F covers all grades from 0-64.4 (varies slightly depending on school). So if you don't hand in an assignment and are assigned a 0% which is 65 points below passing, then you will need to get a 70% (passing by 5 points) on the next 13 assignments in order to compensate, or 75% on the next 6-7 assignments... or you could say that you'd have to get 100% on the next two assignments in order to compensate and get a passing average. If we also consider the ability of a 0% to have an emotional effect on students (due to its severe weighting), then this could become a recipe for disaster (failure in the course, etc).

Is this unfair? The system has worked well for hundreds of years... or has it? In colleges, the 4.0 scale is much more forgiving about failing grades. Suppose your student got an 95 on one assignment, an 80 on two of them, a 65 on one of them, and a 0 (didn't hand it in) on the last assignment. Using my high school's old grading system, that would work out to (95+80+80+65+0)/5 or 64%. This students has failed. However, using a college-style grading system, the student scored approximately a 2.2 which is a low-mid C.

Educational researchers are beginning to evaluate this system and are arriving at one unanimous conclusion: punishing students for incomplete or unsubmitted work with a disproportionately low grade is demonstrated to have detrimental effects on student motivation, performance, and learning overall. Not only is there a mathematical unfairness in 0% being 65 points away from passing (more than half of the total 100 point scale), but it causes students to shut down, do less work, and learn less effectively.

Returning to the original question, what would you do? How exactly would you grade the assignments? My school is currently discussing this issue and thinking of new ways to grade.

Relevant reading material for those who are interested:

"Alternatives" by Thomas R Guskey, Curriculum & Instruction, October 2004.

and

"The Case Against Zero" by Douglas B. Reeves, Phi Delta Kappan, Dec 2004 v86 i4 p324

P.S. One alternative is to maintain the same traditional system but use 55% (for example) as the lowest grade you can get on an assignment.

Disclaimer: I am not talking about your mom.

As I've said before my problem with golf may very well be that I grip my clubs too tight (see my last blog). First let me give an exciting conclusion to what happened last weekend.

Remember how I had torn up my hands and then was invited to go play 9 on a short par 3 course? Well, I went and played anyway. I taped up my injured fingers and it still hurt every time I hit the damn ball. I would usually accompany my swing with a yell of pain, but still I had some very nice shots including hitting the green on #9 (island green similar to sawgrass #17). After the round I decided to take it easy on my fingers for a while.

I rested the fingers all week and finally hit again today. I did a lesson followed by 9 holes on a local course. Although they are not better I arrived at the conclusion that I will greatly reduce the wear on my hands by holding the club less tight, and it's worth the bother of getting used to it. I even tried hitting out another bucket after my round and was getting the hang of loosening up my grip. So, the conundrum I had last time seems to be almost resolved.

Also we worked on short game mostly at my lesson (easier on the hands I suppose) and I am getting my chipping and putting decent. Had mostly 1-2 putts today on the course <3

I'll wait until I have some kind of dramatic news before I post again about golf.

P.S. How the heck do I get a handicap? It seems like a huge pain in the ass if you don't belong to a private club... the pro told me it's a good idea to get one soon though so I can play if I get invited to some kind a member-guest event in the future.

I'll give a bit of an update of how things have been going for me in golf... and ask for thoughts about one problem I'm having.

I finished my set of 5 lessons over the summer and played a few rounds in August... my last accomplishment I told TL about was when I made an eagle on a par 4. I played a few more sets of 9 holes on a couple of local courses and had some more pars and a birdie or two maybe.

Then September hit and I ran out of time and just stopped playing golf for one month. Suddenly I decided I need to get back into it and hit the range a couple of time and played a couple more 9 hole rounds (amazing how 1 month can make you suddenly suck again). I just signed up to do some more lessons with the same pro at a discount (some other pros told me that the one I'm with is very good).

I had my first lesson today where I compared notes with the pro on what my equipment is like now (real golf shoes, lightweight back with backpack straps, 3 hybrid to replace 3 iron, new sand wedge to replace shitty old one, new mallet putter, etc) and then he worked with me on my newer clubs. I was having some trouble with the 3 hybrid and driver.

Then he gave me some free balls and I went to practice with all my irons. I was doing beautifully with them and even my 4 iron off the mat was looking good. It's very rewarding when you can hit all of your irons with consistency (whenever I switched clubs it would take 1 or 2 balls to get a good shot, and then I would have it). I even practiced the 3 hybrid a bit more and was doing better (albeit not as good as the irons). Tried the 5 wood off the mat and was struggling so I decided to give it a rest for the time being.

But my hands were getting a bit torn up. On the bottom surface of my right ring finger and top surface of my left index finger (where they rub) I was getting some torn skin, etc. Next time I go to practice I'll put a bit of tape over the patches of skin to protect them from further wear, but I know what the problem is. I grip my club too tightly.

Originally, the pro told me I grip it too tight which explains why I sometimes get a certain problem with my ball path (especially my right hand). Today however I was getting very nice shots with my irons (never mind the woods/hybrid) so it didn't occur to me that I was holding the grip too tightly.

So I'm sorta faced with a tough decision. Right now my irons are beautiful (not that this can't change). As a result of how I'm holding the clubs I'm straining my fingers though. Over the summer whenever I tried loosening up my hands it would somehow destroy my golf swing and I guess I've just sorta learned to deal with it. Do I try to adjust the tightness of my grip and the expense of hitting good shots? Or, do I just keep doing what I'm doing and slowly toughen up my fingers a bit? I normally wear a glove on my left hand (which had a problem on the index finger today) and no glove on my right hand (which had the biggest of the problems today).

I think the reason why I clamp down on the club so hard is because I have a high swing speed. Right now it's looking like my 6 iron has a 85-90 mile/hour swing (according to a simulator) with 175 yards and my 5 iron gives me ~185 yards of carry judging from the last par 3 I played (ball landed ~185 yards away on the back of a green [not a downhill shot] and stopped within 2 feet, which surprised me quite a bit). I don't seem to be swinging too hard from a perspective of consistency on the range/course, but could I be overswinging my hands?

Next time I meet with the pro I will obviously discuss this with him but there was not a chance today.

edit: oh thedeadhaji thanks for all the help last time. My short game is getting much better which makes me really happy. Now I can actually pitch and chip half-way decently which makes a HUGE difference as you promised me. I no longer am using a blade putter and plan on improving my putting by getting used to this one.

I am putting together a professional website where I'll sell the pictures I've been drawing (at a nominal price of 20-50 dollars per drawing). Here is a time-lapse video of one of my recent pieces. I can't accept credit cards yet but if you want to hire me to draw a photo of yours in my medium of choice (see video) then please pm me and I'll get back to you with a pricing estimate (discounted for all TL members).

Enjoy!

Click Here for Youtube Video

Many Credit Cards have systems where you earn points for each dollar spent. If you accumulate enough points, you can cash them in for prizes such as airline tickets. For example, you may need 30,000 points in order to receive an airline ticket to anywhere within the USA up to a maximum value of 400 dollars (or something like that). I have no problem with this system.

However, I RAGE (possibly due to hunger) when Credit Card Companies refer to these points as miles. They are called miles yet are completely unrelated to how many miles you can actually fly. I haven't done the math but you might need 10 or even 100 miles for each mile that you want to fly. It drives me crazy when companies do annoyingly deceiving things like this. GAR.

Received this in an e-mail today... surprisingly these things hadn't occured to me before.

GPS

A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car broken into while they were at a football game. Their car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans.

Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard.

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen. The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean out the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.

Something to consider if you have a GPS - don't put your home address in it. Put a nearby address (like a store or gas station) so you can still find your way home if you need to, but no one else would know where you live if your GPS were stolen.

MOBILE PHONES

I never thought of this.......

This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her mobile phone after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which contained her cell phone, credit card, wallet... Etc...was stolen.

20 minutes later when she called her hubby, from a pay phone telling him what had happened, hubby says 'I received your text asking about our Pin number and I've replied a little while ago.' When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money was already withdrawn. The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to text 'hubby' in the contact list and got hold of the pin number. Within 20 minutes h e had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.

Moral of the lesson:

Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact list.

Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc....

And very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts, CONFIRM by calling back.

Also, when you're being text by friends or family to meet them somewhere, be sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them. If you don't reach them, be very careful about going places to meet 'family and friends' who text you.

I never thought about the above!

As of now, I no longer have 'home' listed on my cell phone.

1: Every time it's my turn to draw in iSketch at least 1 person guesses what I'm drawing correctly! I have never passed on a word either. If only my guessing skills were nearly as good as my 'getting people to figure out what the heck I mean skills' then I'd be set! (note: my drawing skills in and of themselves suck)

2: I'm considering going to wcg usa in nyc this weekend. I work until 2:30pm on Friday and as far as I understand it Sunday is mostly a wind-down day, so I'm thinking of getting a Saturday ticket. One or two other people I know might want to go for the actual anime convention so the train ride into the city wouldn't be boring.

For anyone who's been there, what's your thought on this plan? What will be happening? You go to the bw section of the convention and invariably bump into other tl people? People hang out when they meet up there?

Are you familiar with Dreamspark? It's a website that's been out for a year or two (by Microsoft) that allows you to download computer programming and server software for free if you have a college e-mail address. Some stuff they have:

MS Visual Studio 2008
Expression Studio 3
Windows Server 2008
etc

I verified myself as a student because I have a college e-mail account where I am getting my Masters, and was able to quickly download Expression Studio 3. I think this might also work for high school students but I'm not sure how you could verify yourself. If anyone could clarify, that would be great.

Just wanted to share this!

I just thought this up and it might be trivial or difficult... not sure.

Consider the following picture:

+ Show Spoiler +

In my current studies of astronomy, I've begun to tackle the issue of how life came to be on Earth. Of course, there is a lot of disagreement about how confident we can be in prevailing scientific theories. But, I didn't realize how ignorant I was on the scientist side of the argument.

Things I knew, more or less:

Much of the information we claim to know about what the Earth was like when life was most likely to begin is a combination of educated guesses and logical thoughts. Most signs of what the Earth was like so long ago were erased by violent surface activity (volcanoes, meteorites, etc). Still, we have concluded that the atmosphere was most likely composed of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon compounds (not so much free oxygen). Shortly after, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide entered the mix.

I also was aware that natural sources of energy could have contributed towards the creation of live. Lightning (along with radioactivity, radiation, meteor impacts, and volcanoes) all helped to shape the naturally occurring elements and compounds into complex molecules suitable for creating life.

I thought the theory ended there.

What I now know more about:

The first step in creating life from inorganic compounds, according to the prevailing theory, is for amino acids and nucleotide bases to be created (these are organic, carbon based molecules). In the 1920s, this was first being addressed scientifically. It wasn't until 1953 that the Urey-Miller Experiment attempted to scientifically recreate the environment where life is believed to have first come about (primordial atmosphere).

The scientists created a chemical apparatus which stored a mixture of the gasses of the early Earth atmosphere (ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor). The gas was energized by a spark-discharge electrode to simulate lightning, the theorized catalyst for the necessary reactions. After a week of running the experiment, amino acids (including those found in most living organisms) and other complex molecules were found in a trap.

Since then, many other experiments have reproduced the same basic results, while varying many parts of the apparatus and conditions. Amazingly, it has been shown that organic molecules can be made from inorganic compounds simply with natural forces that most likely appeared on early Earth.

No organism has ever been made from one of these experiments, but I'm not surprised. If a few dozen scientists could be so successful in a short period of time, imagine what results could have occurred if given thousands or millions of years.