21
May

What I learned in class this summer

By Jason 2 Comments
Categories: Academia, Supposedly substantial stuff and Teaching

The class of Summer 2007-08

Yesterday I gave my last class for this school year’s summer session. While I enjoyed teaching Business Writing, I also breathed a sigh of relief. Now I only need to grade the last set of exercises and quizzes, and I can look forward to… preparing classes for the first semester.

These are the things I learned from this year’s summer classes:

1. The summer schedule sucks. At least mine did. Three hours a day, four days a week, for six and a half weeks straight, is draining. In the mid-term assessment, I got low marks for enthusiasm; on some days I had to drag myself from the office to the classroom for the day’s class, and it showed.
2. The best way to learn how to write is, well, to write. I incorporated more writing exercises into the class this time around, with better results (I think). It was not an easy decision to make when I was just preparing the syllabus at the beginning of April, because I would deliberately be making my life more difficult (at least one one quiz and one writing exercise a week = 120 to 180 papers to check every week, multiplied by six weeks), but in the end I think it was the right one.
3. Large classes aren’t good, both for the teacher and the students. By some weird scheduling anomaly, I ended up with 45 students in one class and 22 in the other. The class of 45 was eventually trimmed down to 38 and the class of 22 remained at 22, and although I delivered the same content for both sections, it was still more tiring to teach the bigger class. There were more distractions, and fewer opportunities for interaction. Smaller classes = more interaction = more involvement, for students and the teacher = more learning.

20
May

Object of (techno)lust

By Jason 1 Comment
Categories: Supposedly substantial stuff, Tech Fix and Apple

Moshi zefyr laptop cooler

When post-prandial sleepiness strikes, like right now, I shake it off by surfing the web for stuff that I hope to get someday.

Be-ez LA besace bag A bit more professional-looking than the Crumpler Dreadful Embarrassment that I was eyeing but no less funky. I just saw them at the Case Logic/Be-ez stand at SM Megamall’s CyberZone the other day. I love my humungous Wenger backpack, but I want a smaller bag for daily use.

Moshi zefyr laptop cooler Yes, I already have a decent-looking, portable laptop cooler, but this is smaller, and waaaay cooler. Also way more expensive than my Vantec Lapcool 5.

Samsung 22-inch SyncMaster monitor (2232GW) A larger monitor is supposed to be good for productivity, but all I know is that Battlestar Galactica in HD would look awfully good on this LCD monitor.

15
May

Three free little programs that made my day

By Jason 4 Comments
Categories: Teaching, Supposedly substantial stuff, The Web, Geekspeak, Palm and Apple

Situation: Three-hour classes, four days a week. Lots of missed calls on my Treo. And since university policy bans cell phone use in the classroom, I have to live by the same rule.
The solution: TreoFlex TreoFlex is a free program that automatically sends out a custom SMS when you miss or reject a call. Find out more about TreoFlex here.

Situation: Call students at random for recitation. The little JPGs that I use as electronic index cards + Leopard’s CoverFlow + VX nano free-spinning scrollwheel works fine, but I needed something more like a tambiolo.
The solution: Luck of the Draw This is a program written by Steve Roy for the raffle draws in his Mac users group. I first saw this used in a PhilMUG meeting. It’s a perfect method for calling students at random. Their attention is focused on the little window where their names flash one after another, and they let out a gasp or a chuckle or a sigh of relief depending on whether they are called or not. Learn more about Luck of the Draw here.

Situation: I found a YouTube video of Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen creator, book author and blogger, giving a talk at Google, and I wanted to save it to my hard drive to use for my Business Presentations class.
The solution: TubeTV This is a sort of mini-browser dedicated to YouTube and Google videos. Just open the video’s URL in this application and then choose to watch the video, navigate to other videos, or download it (and automatically convert it to a format you can watch on your iPod, if you want). Find out more about this Chimoo Soft product here.

25
Apr

The evolution of mice

By Jason 5 Comments
Categories: Supposedly substantial stuff, Tech Fix and Apple

The evolution of mice

I get a kick out of shopping for computer accessories the way many of my friends do when they shop for clothes. And I have a special thing for mice, USB hubs, and laptop coolers. A history of my mouse purchases (from left to right):

Logitech MouseMan Traveler It had a sleek, attention-catching design that had people asking me (back in 2003) where they could get one, too. It served me well while using a temporarily-assigned HP laptop and later when I got my own PowerBook. It’s still around, and works just as well as the day I bought it. I used it from early 2003 to late 2006.

Logitech V500 Even sleeker, and more high tech. The “expanding chassis,” the touch-sensitive scroll “pad” in place of the scroll wheel, and the cool built-in hiding place for the RF receiver drew as much attention and the same question as the MouseMan Traveler. I used it from late-2006 until early 2008.

Logitech VX Nano I bought this, I must admit, because I wanted a black wireless mouse to go with my new black MacBook. This is a laser mouse, and it doesn’t have the irritating red-flashlight-like feature of optical mice. The RF receiver is amazingly tiny, and I am more comfortable using a traditional scroll wheel instead of the fancy-touch touchpad of the V500. This one is a keeper. Until the next laptop purchase, of course.

21
Apr

Rebooting into teacher mode

By Jason 8 Comments
Categories: Academia, Supposedly substantial stuff, Teaching and Tech Fix

Electronic index cards

The transition from researcher-with-a-3-month-old-dissertation-deadline to teacher-with-a-hectic-summer-load wasn’t as painful as I initially feared. I had greeted the news of what my summer load would be — one class (Business Writing), 2 sections (60 students in all), 4 days a week (3 hours a day) —with a loud sigh. But as I began reviewing notes and slides and revising them to suit the compressed summer schedule, I actually began to look forward to standing in front of a class again to deliver lectures and lead discussions, especially after a seven-month break to concentrate on research. The highs and lows of a week’s worth of classes so far have been the following:

  • High: It’s stimulating to lecture in front of a class. You’re really in your toes, alert for any kind of reaction (Are they getting bored? Am I going too fast?) and adjusting your teaching technique on the fly to suit the circumstances of that particular morning. It certainly beats reading page after boring page of journal articles.
  • High: I feel good when someone comes up to me to say “I learned something today.” That single comment always makes me feel that the three hours worth of preparation and three hours of class time was worth it.
  • Low: This is a writing class, and so there are a lot of writing exercises that need to be corrected; I also want to give detailed feedback for each student, but there’s just so little time to do that.
  • Low: Students who are distracted (often they are looking at a laptop screen and smiling or giggling) distract me. A lot. But I don’t want to waste a single second thinking about it, because it breaks my concentration, and brings down the energy level of the class.

For this summer’s course, I’m also trying out a couple of neat, teach-oriented tricks:

  • Posting announcements on a public site. For this course I’m using Google Sites, but the so far it’s been problematic. Some students have complained that they couldn’t open the subject’s home page, and the features are too basic. I would like a site where I can restrict access to just the students in my class, so that there’s a measure of privacy when I post quiz scores and class standings. Maybe next sem I’ll try PBwiki.
  • Using “electronic” index cards. I need to review index cards with students’ basic information frequently because I am really bad at names and faces. But I want the index cards accessible all the time. And so I’m experimenting with an electronic version that I keep in a folder on my virtual desktop to substitute the paper ones that I used to use and keep in an envelope that was always on my real desktop. The recipe for this experiment requires a small digicam, Pixelmator (or some other “Photoshop-lite” type of program), and the Cover Flow feature in Mac OS 10.5. The results have been really neat, and spinning the mouse wheel to simulate a tambiolo-spin when calling someone to recite adds an element of suspense and excitement to the class.
« Previous Entries

Reading: Michael Chabon

21/04/08 7 comments

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

I seem to have gone overboard in my attempt to get to know Michael Chabon’s work. I knew of him only tangentially, as the author of the book (Wonder Boys) on which the movie where a pre-Spiderman Tobey Maguire received a lot of attention was based. Then I picked up Summerland and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay when they were on sale last September, and thought “What the heck; he’s a Pulitzer-prize winning novelist so I should be in safe, albeit unknown, hands.” Then the reviews of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union were so overwhelmingly positive I ordered the book from Amazon (at about half the price it was going for at National Bookstore), and now I’ve asked a friend who just left for the US to bring back a copy of Maps and Legends. All these before reading a single page of any of his work.

I’m happy to report that I’m now I’m two chapters into Kavalier and Clay, and I’m hooked. So far, it looks like it will really have been worth it hunting down and ordering his books just on a hunch.

Blow Fly

21/03/08 7 comments

Blow Fly, by Patricia Cornwell

Well, Special Topics in Calamity Physics turned out to be a mixed bag. The prose was fantastic, refreshing, and witty, and it was always a pleasure to read it even as the plot developed ever so slowly over more than 700 pages. The ending was a let-down, in my opinion, and left me with a ”Huh? What just happened?” expression on my face when I finished the book.

After STCP, I decided to read Patricia Cornwell’s Blow Fly; reading a Kay Scarpetta book is like eating Chickenjoy — a familiar, comforting, and completely predictable experience. Blow Fly was a relatively quick read — just under two weeks, compared to the five months or so it took me to read STCP. It got middling reviews from most readers but I enjoy every Kay Scarpetta book; it’s part of a forensic pathology universe that I bought into beginning with Quincy ME and which now continues with CSI and CSI New York.

I was choosing between Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini as my next read, and Brian pushed me in the direction of Kite Runner. Unfortunately, my copy is missing — disappeared into the ether. While I racked my brain trying to remember who had borrowed it, I bumped into Butch Dalisay while I was in UP briefly last week, and remembered that I had recently unearthed a copy of Penmanship while I was cleaning my cubicle a few weeks ago. It will tide me over the next couple of weeks while I try and recover the missing Kite Runner.

Reading: First Among Sequels

14/01/08 0 comments

First Among Sequels

I finally got to reading the fifth Thursday Next book. So far it’s been a blast, like re-connecting with an old friend I haven’t seen in some time. I liked both of Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crime novels but I missed Thursday Next. That accident with the laptop has done wonders for my book-reading habit ;-)

Reading: WIRED, Esquire September 2007 issues

25/09/07 0 comments

WIRED September 2007

Esquire September 2007

WIRED’s cover story is the new HALO 3 game for Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which has all my nerd friends salivating like Pavlov’s dogs. Looks like a cool game; too bad I never got into computer games beyond the Game and Watch era.

I’ve only leafed through the Esquire issue, but the article that immediately caught my attention is Luke Dittrich’s feature on how a sting operation by a crusading TV show goes horribly wrong. I think it provides a glimpse at the future of Philippine TV if the SSS formula (yes, I just coined that, and it means “sensatonalist sex and showbiz” formula) isn’t junked at some point soon.

READING: WIRED, July 2007 issue

17/08/07 4 comments

WIRED July 2007

Even though my subscription copy of WIRED arrives about a month late and all the articles that appear in the print version — and then some — are available on the web site, I much prefer to wait for and read the print version. Magazines and books, for me, have as much to do with emotion as with information. That’s why I never picked up the habit of reading long documents on a computer screen, or on my PDA or phone. The paper, design and layout, typography, and sometimes even the ink used make each issue, each story, unique, and the experience never translates well into a web page. After a few clicks, every page begins to look like the previous one, and that takes much of the fun out of reading.

The same is true for books, although only to a limited extent. A well designed cover and elegant but easy-to-read type enrich the experience of reading a book; on a PDA or eBook screen, each page of each book looks exactly the same as all the other pages, and where’s the fun in reading something like that?

Recommended reading: Chip Kidd at Esquire.com on How to Make People Buy Books