teaching
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Formatting Blues
The following conversation took place earlier this week on my personal Facebook page. Siobhan: Open memo to a student who shall remain nameless: Going into your final paper, you had an overall average of 59.7%. Did you not feel the stakes were high enough to invest half an hour in formatting your paper properly? Because Continue reading
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More Ways To Cheat (Because Where’s the Fun in Doing the Work?)
This week, The Tenured Radical has an imaginary conversation with her imaginary college-age progeny in which she explains why he/she should not cheat in order to get through the hellish last weeks of the semester. In the process, she directs us to some more online cheating resources (see one of my earlier posts for an Continue reading
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How To Use Quotations
I gave a lesson on integrating and formatting quotations on Tuesday, and – serendipity! – Carol Saller at the Chronicle of Higher Ed published about correct use of quotations the next day, right AFTER it would have been of some use to me. It doesn’t really matter; I’m unlikely to pass on any advice containing Continue reading
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Three Things That Are Driving Me Crazy This Week
1. Plagiarism In my remedial class, we have been talking for two weeks about paraphrasing, integrating quotations, citing sources and so forth. Nevertheless, three students have received zeroes on the first version of their final paper because of incorrect use of source material. There are a few mitigating factors here. First, I don’t believe that Continue reading
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Why Do I Have to Learn This?
Every so often, students ask me, “Why do we have to learn this?” It’s no use telling them that learning is a good thing, period. They’re taking seven or eight classes. Some are doing “part-time” jobs that have them working thirty hours a week. Making out with their boyfriends is a good thing. Playing Mortal Continue reading
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How Do Games Help Us Learn?
In an early post of mine, you can read about a couple of games that I have used in my classes to get students moving, talking and thinking: a getting-to-know-you game, and a grammar relay race. A few weeks ago, a reader (OnQuicken), left a comment on that old post, asking to hear about more classroom games. Continue reading
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How to Cheat
So I came across this Wikihow site the other day. It details 120 ways to cheat on a test. Does this say something about: a) kids these days? b) human nature? c) the inevitable descent into absolute amorality/immorality for which the internet will prove responsible? d) a revolution in human thinking that I’m too old and prissy Continue reading
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Here’s What I’d Change About School
Dear readers: There are some exciting developments happening at Classroom as Microcosm. The last week has seen a major uptick in traffic, not least because a recent post, Fail Better, was chosen as a WordPress Freshly Pressed feature and so attracted a whole bunch of new followers and, at last count, 228 comments – welcome Continue reading
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What is the Deal With Class Size?
Does class size really make a difference? Frequent commenters Gen X and Army Amy have asked me to give you my thoughts on class size and its effect on learning. Early in this blog’s life, I wrote a post on class size, in which I assert that I believe that if every class in the Continue reading
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The Problem With Desire Paths
I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about “desire paths” lately, and I don’t like where the talk is going. Tony Baldusaro tells a charming story about desire paths: officials at Disney World were upset about customers scarring the lawns by cutting across them instead of sticking to the sidewalks. They asked Walt Disney how Continue reading
About Me
My job is to teach people to read and write; aside from that, I like to learn things.
Classroom as Microcosm 