shoplifting dog

Sometime before the fish incident, there was a bread incident, that might have gone something like this...

dog again

After the last cartoon, I was asked to continue and make a Quincy's Adventures series. Several weeks ago she was returned to our door by the husband of one of my geology PhD mates. What actually happened between escape and return by good samaritan remains a mystery, however the reek she brought back with her made me imagine this scenario (as doubtful as it may be in Logan, Utah in January...)

dog...

Below is a poorly (and hurriedly, and while laughing) drawn cartoon of what I came home to yesterday after school...

pedaBLOGogy

Most of you who read this little blog of mine know that I started it when I embarked on my transitional journey from student to professor... over the years I've shared my adventures with you, and, of a more entertaining nature, my horrific (and occasionally impressive) students' work. If you need a refresher on any of these, I'm listing a couple of classics below for you:

• Impressive: The amazing field guide to Meganeura (final Historical Geo project)
• Horrific: Shocking, but true, exam answers
• Horrific: What the hell were they thinking exam illustrations in lieu of written word answers
• Horrific: Who's heard of the bluewich meridian?

Now I find myself back in a transition... from professor to student again - which is admittedly a little odd, and since I'm not a TA, I will be unable to share such educational gems for the next few years.

Currently I'm taking an instructional technology - media tools course, for which I have a couple of blogging assignments. This is blog assignment # 1 -- the blog as a pedagogical tool.

I was instructed to find and read a few educational blogs, and since my experience and my aspirations lie in higher education, I started with where I used to work and with the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is where I actually found that former job back in early 2005. Where I used to work brought me to two blogs that I previously knew about, but upon closer examination I found that one was not particularly useful in this context, and the other, on assessment, was relevant, but not even remotely appealing. The Chronicle proved a better resource, and I found myself drawn into a post that related hiring new faculty to planting fruit trees in the yard... I think it was the weirdness of the analogy that drew me in in the first place. While the article isn't so much about teaching or pedagogy per se, I can definitely relate to the roots (ha. trees. roots. ha) of the concept, in that, like a biologically active and growing forest ecosystem, the faculty of a college or university need to be diverse, filling the various academic, collegial, administrative, etc. niches in order to generate a complete functioning institution that is also inspirational to the student body.

somewhat crappy doodle I did of a rainforest run by evil forest monkeys during another class while thinking about this assignment and playing with my livescribe pen

This naturally reminded me of where I used to work and how unlike a rainforest it was... or if it WAS like a rainforest, it was one where the evil forest monkeys (chancellor and chancellor minions/puppets) were building an unsustainable reserve factory on top of the forest canopy and fueling it with the non-renewable lifeblood of the forest understory... anyway... surely that sort of system is one that generates the uninspired student body, the students that are represented in my horrific examples above. The students that prompted me to routinely read a blog that shut down last year, called "Rate Your Students". While it was primarily composed of rants, they were rants I could easily relate to based on similar experiences I had with my own students, like this one, and that made me feel like I wasn't alone in my dying rainforest. Every once in a while, however, a post would appear on Rate Your Students that had a valuable teaching lesson, genuinely inspiring to a young college professor, and that's the real bummer about the end of Rate Your Students.

Meanwhile, back in the current world of higher education, I stumbled across this blog and consequently this article -- which is right on the money. I can't even begin to say how many former colleagues I had that fit the "I'm perfect and I don't need to improve" mentality, and how little they did to serve the institution. I served on the Academic Senate Executive Board for 5 of my 6 years there, and in that forum was surrounded by fellow faculty who strove to do more do better do faster do bigger, and like me, were also the primary constituents of every other important committee at the College. Meanwhile, the bulk of the rest of the population ran their scantrons through the scantron machine for the billionth unchanged time and bitched about how little time they had for other things because they're teaching 8 identical scantron sections... I digress... you get the point. Thank you Dean Dad, it's nice to know that some Deans notice this sort of thing.

This is becoming a fairly lengthy ramble, and I'm not sure that I've even touched upon the relevance of blogging with regard to education, or its use as a tool in education. To some degree I've used this blog to educate you all about a few random/historical/geological places I've been-- and I can certainly see the applicability of this, say as assignments for students to show their comprehension of subject matter -- like my former student Terisaurus Wrecks demonstrates in this vlog:

In fact, posting their reflections on subject matter, to be graded, in the context of a publicly visible blog might just get a few more students to proof-read their work so that it's not an incomprehensible pile of misspelled words bracketed by capital letters and periods. Maybe.

Or, in the context of geobloggers like Garry Hayes and Silver Fox who use their blogs solely to share their geological experiences and knowledge with the general public. With a subject like geology, where the hands-on field experience is so crucial to learning the material in context, blogs like these provide a sort of "virtual field trip" that allows the reader to passively "travel" with the author and "share" their experience.
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web addresses for blog references:

http://chronicle.com/section/Blogs/164/
http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs

Assessment, or something.

I received the following e-mail today: "We have a large, blank posterboard where we can display the exciting ways we are assessing our students. This is due April 15th. If you can get it to me by 4pm Thursday, I would appreciate it. ... Anything you can contribute would be appreciated. Remember, use colors and big fonts." Well, I have no idea what they are looking for - but having recently seen a super cute faux Ikea instruction sheet for Stonehenge, I decided that was what I was going to do. During my lab this afternoon, in between helping students figure out rates of motion of various dinosaurs, I drew a bunch of cartoons. Note that I managed to not accomplish the "use colors" part of the vague instructions. To remedy this, I handed off the drawings (after scanning) to a student to colour during the geology club meeting. Mission accomplished. I can't wait to see what the administrators make of it.

it's exam time again!

I tried to resist posting this so soon... but I just couldn't make myself NOT share it! I think this might be the "best" picture I've ever gotten. My comments are in pink - it's only slightly less harsh on the poor students' eyes than red.

I told them they could illustrate exam answers, but only if a) their illustration was clearly labeled and b) their picture was literally worth 1000 words.

This one might be worth 1000 words, but I'm willing to bet that the words would not be strung together in any sort of logical, meaningful sentences...

For those non-geologists who are thinking there's some way to make this work, this link is more or less what the student was supposed to be getting at...

Meganeura? Megaproblem.

In lieu of the norm (heinous exam answers) for this time of year, I would like to share with you my final research assignment that I did for my Historical Geology class.

Historical Geology: Megafauna

The term “megafauna” translates to “giant animals”, of which (even excluding dinosaurs) there has been an incredible variety in the geological past. For this assignment you are to create a profile on one of the extinct megafauna listed below. You will have to sign up for your megafauna of choice, as there is a limit of 7 spots available for each animal.

• mastodon
• woolly mammoth
• Megatherium (cousin to the giant sloth)
• Titanis walleri (giant bird)
• Dragonfly of the Carboniferous
• Jaekelopterus (giant lobster-like eurypterid)
• Dunkleosteus (giant armored fish)
• Liopleurodon (sea reptile of “Charlie the Unicorn” fame)
• C. megalodon (the big guy from Sharktooth Hill)
• Diprotodon (largest marsupial that ever lived)
• giant ground sloth
• woolly rhinoceros
• Indricotherium transouralicum (largest mammal to ever walk on land)

Please feel free to get very creative for this assignment, a rough guide to writing profiles is available here. For another approach, check out TMZ for a tabloid approach on profiles.

The BC library has research materials on megafauna; additionally Natural History museums should have lots of information to guide you (i.e. Buena Vista Museum, La Brea, etc.)

Your profile should be 500-1000 words, typed (12 point font, 1.5 spacing), and will be graded using the following criteria:

1. Content (depth of research, references are cited)
2. Creativity (writing/presentation draws the reader in)
3. Clarity (writing is clear, logical, flows, and is free of errors)

This assignment is due by April 29^th. You may turn it in earlier, but late assignments will not be accepted.

Additional advice from my partner in Elvis exploration; English professor extraordinaire and former journalist: “Since this is a fun assignment, you should ask your students to interview extinct megafauna as if the students are reporters from some tabloid journalism outfit, such as TMZ, E, or The National Enquirer. Their mission: Find out the REAL reason this particular animal went extinct. As with any profile, they should do a background check on their subject first to learn about the animal's life and death. Usually a profile has these elements:

1) A creative beginning or feature lead (first paragraph). This can be an anecdote told by the animal, the reporter capturing a moment of description during the interview, or what I call the human hook: a cryptic beginning that makes the reader hunger for more.

2) A physical description of the subject interviewed. Ideally a profile might involve hanging out with an individual at work and at home with the kids.

3) Background on the subject explaining what's happened up to now.

4) Great quotes. (These might reveal The Untold Story of the creature's demise.)

In the case of tabloid journalism, it also could include rumors, scandal, and a scene of chasing a Giant Sloth down the street with a camera crew from "Extra" or "Entertainment Tonight" simply because the sloth refuses to be interviewed. (This no doubt would prove the animal was guilty of causing its own demise.)”

Though it wasn't a "typical" profile, but rather a conspiracy-theorist's guide, this particular project really needs to be shared with the world. Enjoy! (I know, I never share the work of A students, but I got his permission first too, which is also a first)

A New Semester Begins

Part of what we have to do at work is assess "SLOs" (student learning outcomes) every semester. I was a little slow in bothering to tally my pre and post semester assessment quizzes, and literally just got around to it now when I remembered that I had to create a new set for my new class starting next week...

Anyway, see if you can find what's wrong with this picture...

return of the apples

Some of you may remember this post from last year. An illustration of an apple tree that was supposed to in some way represent a flow chart of scientific method. Well, joy of joys and surprise of surprises, I received the following diagram to illustrate the importance of Newton's "discovery" relative to our current understanding of the operation of the Solar System!
I like it for the following reasons:
a) it includes an apple tree, but this time it is relevant
b) there is a squirrel running up the apple tree
c) the apples are more or less apple shaped

Yay!


As an aside, but also involving student drawings... how great is this dinosaur???

Griping about students... AGAIN

I just did a lecture on control surveys and map projections for my surveying class. Consequently I also gave them a simple quiz on the subject. One of the questions was as you see below. All the images will grow when you click on them, and all my comments on the quiz papers are in green scrawling writing. Shall I weep? The class average was 48%

The question. You see, not too difficult I thought.

When in doubt... keep writing the words all over the place, surely one of them will land on the right item?

Interestingly, we didn't even talk about the poles during this lecture, they are left off the mathematical model because they get too distorted...

Equator? Of all the things to NOT remember? Equator? BLUEWICH? Funny, but really really sad.

Well, at least they got "equator" on this one...

The best right answer, with added bonus of being pretty. There were few of these "right" answers.

New answers for the wall of FAME (shame)

Midterm exam questions:

Use a simple diagram (flow chart) to illustrate the scientific method.

Answer:

Define epicenter: the gaseous center of the earth

unicorns

At the end of a particularly good exam was a little present for me. Yay!

And, while we're on the subject of unicorns. Subject yourself to the silliness below - IF YOU DARE!!!

More class sandwiches

This week in geology I covered metamorphism, and based on the previous week's sandwich success story, I obviously had to do it again.

I brought an iron into class, and thought long and hard about materials to use in the sandwich to create an interesting metamorphic story (that would be much less messy than last week's sticky finger incident). Ingredients? Wheat bread - limestone, cheap-o (and not good tasting) brie - hydrated clay layer, arugula - peat bog (to morph into coal!), cranberries - mammoths (yes, mammoths), more bread - sandstone.

The end product told the story very well, we used all three agents of metamorphism, but the sandwich didn't taste great - mental note: arugula, while divine in a salad, is significantly less good in a sandwich.

Using Technology (or: an excuse to eat in class)

In an "effort" to take advantage of the technology I have available to me... no, scratch that.

In an effort to make a 3hr long night lecture on geology less mundane, I am constantly trying to come up with interactive activities for my surprisingly willing students to partake in.
Monday of this week was a lecture on weathering, soil and sedimentary rocks. I decided that a good way for the students to put it all together was to build a "sedimentary sandwich". We have these video projector devices (elmo document cameras) in some of our classes that are "more than your average overhead projector". Since they have a camera, you can do more things with them than just put a 2D diagram (or text for heavens sake) on the big screen. Read more about elmo here. See a picture of elmo here.

So back to my sedimentary sandwich. I built a sandwich, using different food stuffs to represent different sediment types, and we told a story of sedimentary environments together as a class. Then I made them draw it and write the story out for their future reference. Below are two examples (both by boys, and both receiving 5/5) of the two scenarios we mapped out. Clearly one of them is a better artist than the other...


The real reason I'm bringing this up is (well, because I made a comment on kilometres' blog actually) because my choice of sandwich ingredients - crunchy PB and honey being the main culprits - made for a very very messy situation. There I was, gooey hands in front of the document camera - on the big screen for everyone to see - and I had nothing to wipe them on. I had to lick my fingers, there was no choice at all... Even better of course, is that I was operating with PB and honey on a piece of expensive digital equipment. Not to worry, I had a paper plate underneath it all...

Next week is metamorphic rocks - I'm hoping no one minds if I iron on top of elmo.