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Post by Farrar on Apr 23, 2020 17:54:18 GMT -5
VENTING TIME!!! I'm marking exams right now. Those of us who teach will be familiar with the following strategy, usually used by students who can't quite understand the point of a question: just throw everything at the wall, and hope that something will stick. Here's an example. Question : "When referring to something of considerable size, why do we call it a whale?" Answer : "Whales are marine mammals belonging to two major orders, Odontocetes and Mysticetes. They evolved from land animals and share a marked genetic homology with creatures such as hippos. Whales are warm-blooded and give milk, like other mammals. The big fish that swallowed Noah in Genesis is often depicted as a whale, and Pinocchio was famously swallowed whole by one. A white sperm whale is the titular character of the novel Moby Dick, which is set during the glory days of the whaling industry. To whale on something means to attack it in a brutal and relentless way. The Acanti, in old X-Men comics, were sort of space-going whales. Dolphins are smaller but... (and so on for five pages). This is annoying in the best of times... but can you imagine what happens when students are confined at home and every exam is perforce an open book one? "Let me copy and paste everything I find on the internet!!!"I swear, I must have re-read the same Wikipedia articles 300 times today.  A friend of mine teaches 10th grade social studies, and since the move to distance learning she posts a "fun" question daily as an attendance check. The other day the question was "What is your favorite sandwich and why?" - -to which a student responded as follows: "There is nothing like a great Reuben Sandwich all year around and especially on St Patrick’s Day! Delicious melted swiss cheese paired with tangy sauerkraut and the flavor of good corned beef in between layers of rye bread. I love to make these classic reuben sandwiches at home for my family. It is one of my husband’s favorite sandwiches! With St. Patrick’s Day around the corner, we are enjoying some of our favorite Irish dishes during the next couple of weeks. We love corned beef and cabbage, and make these easy rueben [sic] sandwiches for lunch the next day. It’s a simple and delicious way to use up your leftovers!" |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Apr 23, 2020 18:12:30 GMT -5
^^^^ That’s the greatest thing I read all day!!!  |
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Post by The Captain on Apr 23, 2020 18:50:51 GMT -5
Your problem? You asked the question that students are generally brought up not to want to answer: "Why?" They can spout/ copy/ spew the shite that answers questions like Who? What? When? and Where? till the cows come home or until you run out of pens. But "Why?" Sorry, no. Asking "why?" mean that they'll have to actually think. No fair, teach. An accurate analysis, I’m afraid! I should have stuck to True or False and multiple choice questions. They can even be automated online, so I wouldn’t have to do any correction work! My older daughter (8th grader) had to do an assignment for her Social Studies class earlier this week where she researched a battle fought on North American soil and give at least five details about it. The teacher assigned a battle to each student and hers was a somewhat obscure one: The Battle of the River Raisin. She searched all over the internet and was having a hard time finding five details about it, so she came to me and asked for help. Having been a history ed major, I have a decent library of historical texts, one of which is American Military History (from a class with the same name), which I went down and got for her. She looked at it and asked "what am I supposed to do with that?" I told her that there was a write-up about the battle in that book and she could pull details from it. She scrunched up her face and told me that the teacher only wanted "online sources" so he could verify if they were real or not. I haven't seen either of my kids read a book for school, other than for English class, in years, and it bugs me to no end. She has no idea how to do research other than Googling everything, and she seems to think Wikipedia is a better source than a book produced for ROTC students about American military history because it is "online, so everyone knows about it". Sigh. |
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Post by brutalis on Apr 24, 2020 23:32:17 GMT -5
Library's are no longer a useful source of information for most people. Had a friend trying to figure out some home plumbing
repair work who had problems with his home computer & couldn't use the internet to search. He kept calling me while I was at work to look stuff up & when I told him no i can't & he should go to the library his response? Don't know where one is. Sad state of affairs that a 56 year old man is even clueless. Can imagine how much worse it is with teens.
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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 25, 2020 6:31:45 GMT -5
The Captain, maybe your daughter could go into wikipedia and add the facts that she learns in your book. What a world , where we can add anything to a document and from anywhere and it's accepted as fact.
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Post by Prince Hal on Apr 25, 2020 9:17:29 GMT -5
The Captain , maybe your daughter could go into wikipedia and add the facts that she learns in your book. What a world , where we can add anything to a document and from anywhere and it's accepted as fact. IIRC, a few years ago, a slew of anti-Semitic comments were placed into an entry about Jack Kirby. May have happened a couple of times, for that matter. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 25, 2020 9:21:41 GMT -5
John Byrne had a beef with the things written on his wiki.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 25, 2020 9:27:28 GMT -5
In a similar topic I have noticed young adults (younger than 22) seem to hold in contempt anything created before they were born. My daughter's are in their late 20s and they and their friends do not have this tendency. I remember growing up liking my own music and TV etc but I still enjoyed stuff from my parents generation. I also notice at work when I show someone an old school way to fix something like using a bucket of water to flush a toilet they are dumbfounded (evidently automatic toilets don't flush when there is no power). I feel those that have grown up having the internet their whole lives have this trait.
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Post by beccabear67 on Apr 25, 2020 13:17:45 GMT -5
It used to be true that the most recent edition of a reference book was the preferred source, I suppose people might assume the same of something like wikipedia. I remember thinking the world had gone insane when elementary schools even had internet connections. I still think the internet should not have anyone under fifteen or so on it at all never mind in school which I see no reason whatsoever for. We had to copy things by hand from the blackboard a lot when I was in school, cut and paste on a virtual medium seems a quick path to flabby minds! Also when libraries switched from card files you could access to databases (that did allow for inter-branch accessibility it's true), and cards in the front of a book stamped with the return by date, it meant that if the system was down they had to close entirely. There are hotels like that with these cards you swipe to open doors, they can't operate now if the system goes down. I wish the systems would go down for everyone and stay down if that's what it would take to teach people involving computers in every possible thing with no ability anymore to do otherwise is what Magnus, Robot-Fighter warned us about! Cash registers all come with change making function now where you type in the amount received and it spits out the change. I used to do it in my head for years and sometimes a customer would question it and you'd have to go over the process again and figure out who had been right... so I eventually started using that change function just to avoid that, it was printed out on the receipt to match things up with quickly. I probably lost the basic maths skill I had developed when cash registers didn't have that function. I also started out using a mechanical scale and we were forced by regulations to get approved of digital ones that you would type the per pound or whatever price into. If the power went out I could still take out the old scale and continue, and did, nobody reported us, though I did add up the totals with a calculator that had a receipt which we had around for book-keeping anyway. Later we would add in the unrecorded sales to the register once the power was on. Now it seems like they will have computerized sneakers that don't require shoelace tying, and they will be connected to the internet also! Didn't enough people read any science-fiction to warn them? People will be unable to walk otherwise.  |
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Post by Batflunkie on Apr 25, 2020 15:32:50 GMT -5
I had dial-up until 2009 and a lack of things to do (you know, without tying up the phone-line) kind of encouraged me to be creative with my time, I read more then too. But now anything that doesn't readily hold my attention span kind of gets put to the back burner (it was like that before, but it's way worse now). Having an issue with blue light has kind of brought me back though
In a similar topic I have noticed young adults (younger than 22) seem to hold in contempt anything created before they were born. My daughter's are in their late 20s and they and their friends do not have this tendency. I remember growing up liking my own music and TV etc but I still enjoyed stuff from my parents generation. I also notice at work when I show someone an old school way to fix something like using a bucket of water to flush a toilet they are dumbfounded (evidently automatic toilets don't flush when there is no power). I feel those that have grown up having the internet their whole lives have this trait. Spending time with my grandparents kind of encouraged me to have an appreciation for things passed. My grandfather got me a subscription to Reminisce Magazine because of this
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Post by Batflunkie on Apr 25, 2020 22:20:13 GMT -5
Been looking at/thinking about a new external hard drive and it's funny looking back my meager 2009 HP compaq presario laptop and thinking that 200gbs (or 750gbs on my Toshiba external hard drive) of storage would be all that anyone could ever need. I'm sure it was like that going even farther back
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2020 1:44:09 GMT -5
Been looking at/thinking about a new external hard drive and it's funny looking back my meager 2009 HP compaq presario laptop and thinking that 200gbs (or 750gbs on my Toshiba external hard drive) of storage would be all that anyone could ever need. I'm sure it was like that going even farther back
When I was in NY last year I bought a 5 Terabyte external HD in Costco for about $100. Works great and is fab for movies and music.
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Post by Cei-U! on Apr 26, 2020 7:17:58 GMT -5
Been looking at/thinking about a new external hard drive and it's funny looking back my meager 2009 HP compaq presario laptop and thinking that 200gbs (or 750gbs on my Toshiba external hard drive) of storage would be all that anyone could ever need. I'm sure it was like that going even farther back
When I was in NY last year I bought a 5 Terabyte external HD in Costco for about $100. Works great and is fab for movies and music.
I have one of those, but it's actually installed in my PC alongside its standard hard drive so the "exterior" part is in name only.It holds all the comic scans I use in my research... and it's 80% full.
Cei-U! I summon my virtual library!
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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 26, 2020 7:20:15 GMT -5
My pop passed away this morning. Non covid-19 related but he was admitted to the hospital two-weeks ago and stopped eating. He was 90 and I think was tired. He went almost every day to visit my mom who has dementia and when the shutdown occurred, he was not allowed to visit her anymore. I think he became depressed and gave up. He was my hero who always worked and never treated us with anything but love.
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Post by Phil Maurice on Apr 26, 2020 7:31:49 GMT -5
My pop passed away this morning. Non covid-19 related but he was admitted to the hospital two-weeks ago and stopped eating. He was 90 and I think was tired. He went almost every day to visit my mom who has dementia and when the shutdown occurred, he was not allowed to visit her anymore. I think he became depressed and gave up. He was my hero who always worked and never treated us with anything but love. Very sorry to hear of your father's passing. Sounds like he was a good man and father, as well as a dedicated husband. May you find comfort in happy remembrances. |
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