Comments for Blogging on the Brain

Comment on Teaching Statement by Hillary

Hillary — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:08:37 +0000

Hi Steve, thanks so much for your comments! I’ve been sending drafts back and forth with Gardner all weekend now, and he pointed out many of the same things you have here. My statement is now twice as long and hopefully about twice as good as the one I posted here. I appreciate you taking the time to read it and giving such helpful feedback!

Comment on Teaching Statement by Steve

Steve — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 23:38:49 +0000

In the interest of getting these comments to you quickly, they are very rough.

“I found I enjoyed teaching as much, and sometimes even more, than research.” SG: Can you say something more about why you enjoy teaching? And why sometimes you enjoy it more than research?

How many courses have you taught on your own, that is, not as a TA under a professor who was lecturing or otherwise teaching the course? That’s relevant to your qualifications.

“it seems important to initiate undergraduate students into the field by sharing our questions with them and inviting them to think creatively about problems they may one day solve.” SG: How have you done this? Can you give one or more examples?

“I believe it would be a tragic loss to overlook the possibilities inherent for deeper student involvement [ADD: in their studies] through use of these tools.”

“These technologies can be used in any number of ways” SG: You might want to explain a bit *how* you can use these for academic purposes, especially in ways that are better than traditional methods.

Participation in the learning process is also important [ADD: to] my teaching philosophy

This looks like a great opportunity. Good luck!

Comment on Writer’s Block…or something by Gardner

Gardner — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:01:24 +0000

Might be a bit scary, but you could post your teaching statement to your blog and invite comments. I bet you’d get some responses. Whether they’d be helpful or not, I can’t say–but I think they would be.

Comment on The Grading of the First Exams by Corinna Narum

Corinna Narum — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 01:49:13 +0000

Interesting read! I also found something similar you may want to check out, its about getting GPA Scholarships with just having a 2.5 GPA or higher. Check it out on the link here and let me know what you think! - All the best

Comment on Collaboration Win. by Gardner

Gardner — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:27:26 +0000

Very cool. I saw this same story and was bowled over by it for the same reasons you cite, even though I’m not a scientist. I also immediately tried to map the sharing and collaboration onto my own disciplines, and onto the larger question of what the Internet makes possible. This kind of collaboration is exactly what the founders of the information age imagined. I hope that this example inspires many other folks to consider analogous experiments of their own–like networked faculty development seminars. Funny (or tragic) how many business-as-usual assumptions need to be swept away before we can return to the important things we learned in kindergarten.

Thanks for this post. I’m inspired by our shared excitement.

Comment on ICT and SFI by Jordan LaBouff

Jordan LaBouff — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:25:18 +0000

I like the quote. It fits in line with some of the research on internet and isolation done in the very early days of the net (see Katz, Rice & Asdpen, 2001). I’ve spent probably too much time thinking about how web-based relationships match face-to-face relationships. We get a lot of different things from relationships, I wonder what they can provide and what they can’t.

Given the density of social networking now, I think it’d be difficult to find an area where they can’t provide some kind of benefit.

Comment on Ready, SET, Oh… by Gardner

Gardner — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:23:26 +0000

I really do appreciate your blogging this. Believe me, all of us in this biz have had this exact same experience, and it really does leave a very frustrated and empty feeling. It helps to know we’re not alone….

Comment on Cheaters by Jordan

Jordan — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 03:17:54 +0000

I’m interested to hear who said that we as graduate student teachers of record cannot report the students to the office of academic integrity. I have sadly had a few cheating students this semester and have submitted a report online.

Assuming that everyone does their job of reporting violations like that, it’s understandable to be a little more redemptive than pursuing the full extent of possible penalty (though I sometimes do when it’s that egregious). Assuming that the behavior is systemic, the second violation is automatically referred to the honor council, they’ll get the boot soon.

Then again, there is absolutely, positively NO reason a student in an upper level class at a good university would ever think that behavior is appropriate. A willing violation of the honor code deserves a willing kick in the pants as hard as you can muster, in my opinion.

Comment on Freakonomics by Hillary

Hillary — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:07:31 +0000

Thanks, Sarah! I’ll add that to my (ever-expanding) reading list!

Comment on Freakonomics by Sar Lake

Sar Lake — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:30:12 +0000

Just FYI, they have another book out called Superfreakonomics. Haven’t read it, but my friend who originally recommended Freakonomics did and he said it was great.