Happy New Year!
Yeah, yeah, I know, you already started the New Year. What can I say. I'm still catching up.
I've got syllabi to write, cause I haven't written either of them yet; I did order the books some weeks ago, so we've at least got things to read, but I need to get in to the office and make detailed plans of what we're reading every week and when the papers are due and when the tests are being given and what are the rules in my classroom.
This last is a new wrinkle; it seems to me that I should be able to just demand proper behavior and leave it at that, but syllabi have gotten more and more legalistic as the years go by (they are legal contracts, I've been told by those above me), so now I have to explain EXACTLY what is ok and not ok. The more I think about it, the longer my list gets. Come to class on time, fine; no cell phones, ok; no late papers unless accompanied by Touching Narrative, sure; but what else? There's a lot of room. No dancing, no singing, no spitballs, no whacking one's fellow students, with or without provocation. I'd add in, no questioning my authority at any damn time, as a sort of joke, but since that's my favorite part of discussions, I'd best not cut it off early, cause the students who haven't met me yet might take it seriously.
So I'm going to go create syllabi. In the meantime, other people have discovered interesting things, which I will now share with you. Boing Boing has, naturally, been busy as always. They've found, for instance, this wonderful video of the seasons in Norway. And Jonathan's got a discussion of The Book of Knowledge, which has LOTS of knowledge in it from the 1920's, including an article all about chilblains. Which nobody ever gets anymore, but which used to be a big problem. Sort of like brain fever, which nobody ever gets anymore, either. (But not like the cause of the Black Death, which is still around.)
And Inner Bitch pointed me over to the Random Resolution Generator, which seems to me to be just as useful as the Pointedly Useless Resolution Generators we've all got in our heads. Let's see what mine is this year:
Excellent. Gotta keep the kittens happy.
I've got syllabi to write, cause I haven't written either of them yet; I did order the books some weeks ago, so we've at least got things to read, but I need to get in to the office and make detailed plans of what we're reading every week and when the papers are due and when the tests are being given and what are the rules in my classroom.
This last is a new wrinkle; it seems to me that I should be able to just demand proper behavior and leave it at that, but syllabi have gotten more and more legalistic as the years go by (they are legal contracts, I've been told by those above me), so now I have to explain EXACTLY what is ok and not ok. The more I think about it, the longer my list gets. Come to class on time, fine; no cell phones, ok; no late papers unless accompanied by Touching Narrative, sure; but what else? There's a lot of room. No dancing, no singing, no spitballs, no whacking one's fellow students, with or without provocation. I'd add in, no questioning my authority at any damn time, as a sort of joke, but since that's my favorite part of discussions, I'd best not cut it off early, cause the students who haven't met me yet might take it seriously.
So I'm going to go create syllabi. In the meantime, other people have discovered interesting things, which I will now share with you. Boing Boing has, naturally, been busy as always. They've found, for instance, this wonderful video of the seasons in Norway. And Jonathan's got a discussion of The Book of Knowledge, which has LOTS of knowledge in it from the 1920's, including an article all about chilblains. Which nobody ever gets anymore, but which used to be a big problem. Sort of like brain fever, which nobody ever gets anymore, either. (But not like the cause of the Black Death, which is still around.)
And Inner Bitch pointed me over to the Random Resolution Generator, which seems to me to be just as useful as the Pointedly Useless Resolution Generators we've all got in our heads. Let's see what mine is this year:
In the year 2006 I resolve to: |
Excellent. Gotta keep the kittens happy.
<< Home