Comments for Talking Teaching

Comment on selling services on line by alison

alison — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:59:11 +0000

I tried very hard not to put my foot in the wrong place!

Comment on selling services on line by fergpip

fergpip — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:36:17 +0000

Yep, my friend, I heard you!

Comment on selling services on line by alison

alison — Tue, 14 May 2013 03:45:09 +0000

And a good one – thanks, Pip :) I’m talk about this very issue on Radio NZ this afternoon; will have to try to keep all this in mind.

Comment on selling services on line by fergpip

fergpip — Tue, 14 May 2013 02:56:40 +0000

I attended the 5th International Plagiarism Conference in Newcastle, U.K., last year. One of the suggestions that was made and I thought sound, involved designing a ‘tiered’ assessment task in which students handed in work on one part of a topic, got marked for it, and in the next assessment had to build on their first task to develop the ideas or concepts further (etc, etc,). This would tend to cut down on plagiarism and certainly the purchasing of essays or reports from a foreign site, because you needed to know what had happened in the first assessment in order to complete the next, and so forth. Just another idea! Cheers, Pip

Comment on selling services on line by alison

alison — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:30:39 +0000

Useful suggestions!

I try to make it a bit harder by setting new topics each semester, which means there’s not a circulating pool of answers out there, and basing each one on a recent scientific paper that they HAVE to read & comment critically on.

Comment on selling services on line by complynn

complynn — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:19:04 +0000

One other suggestion: make it prohibitively expensive or nearly impossible to buy a relevant paper by requiring students to incorporate comments from you (a selection you cull from your handouts or lecture notes), someone you choose, and/or classmates (via an online discussion group). Custom papers usually do this badly while cheaper papers do not do it at all. Make those additions a condition of a passing grade, and it won’t matter that you cannot prove the essay was purchased.

I have a 30% grade penalty for not following all instructions. Any further points reduction beyond the 30% penalty sends the grade down too low to be a passing score. Because purchased papers often have fact or logic errors or they veer off the assigned topic, a cheating student fails.

Comment on what is the caminalcule lab supposed to teach? by Athanasios Seliotis (@seliotis)

Athanasios Seliotis (@seliotis) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:59:14 +0000

All phylogenetic trees are theories. They are hard to test because there is no true tree to compare with. Caminalcules, being artificial actually have a true ancestor and tree that we can test algorithms against.

Comment on ‘scientists anonymous’ write to me about ‘programming of life’ by ‘scientists anonymous’ write to me about ‘programming of life’ | quarkaz1

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:36:57 +0000

[...] ‘scientists anonymous’ write to me about ‘programming of life’. [...]

Comment on ‘scientists anonymous’ write to me about ‘programming of life’ by rockofgabraltar

rockofgabraltar — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:07:18 +0000

This video cost a boatload of cash to produce. Who’s money is it? With (Mr. goody two shoes / corporately unoffensive / super clean white guy) doing the narration, it has the racist, sexist, barbaric Mormon church written all over it. I was brought up in a christian family with strong religious bias toward everything in life. I have had to suffer tremendous psychological pain resulting from withdrawal, isolation, ridicule, and all the other maladies of a recovering catholic. I have always punctuated every pursuit with the possibility of a creator. However; since the modern day witch hunts of religious zealots, and lunatic, rightwing, Cotton Mather types I have tossed the oppressive vile propaganda of religion on to the scrap heap where it belongs. These sleazy propaganda charlatans should be thoroughly investigated, and squelched not by suppression, but by their own vile self serving lies. Thank evolution for my brains ability to spot garbage propaganda. The “macrophages of intellect” to coin a phrase, are hard at work providing me with the information I need to spot, and reject the false, synthetic, Cheezy manipulations of hard won data by religious fundamentalist fools. I will fight to expose the lies, and stomp out the propaganda as my lifes work. This film and the sick people behind are a disgrace.

Comment on how do kids learn about dna? by alison

alison — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:43:29 +0000

Hi Jenny – lovely to hear from you :) Thanks for dropping by & sharing your thoughts. I hadn’t heard about the nanobots, but I’ve used the mammoth example in my own teaching – you might be interested in reading my take on it: http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2011/08/a-mammoth-resurrection-task.shtml Cloning seems to attract huge interest at all levels.