students

February 5, 2013  by

A Student’s Complaint

Students, poor students. Here’s a letter my Grandpa received when he was Chairman of Math and Science almost twenty years ago.

[Date]

Dear [Instructor’s Name]:

Today I came to Math 104, with the intention of taking an exam. After a few minutes a medical emergency, unknown to me at that time, guided me to the hospital emergency room instead.

The day I was to return to class, you reviewed the exam with the class. Knowing I still had to make up the exam, I decided not to go to class that day.

The following day when I asked you about re-taking the exam and showed you my doctor’s excuse you informed me that you would not let me make it up because I had already seen it (the day I got sick). You went on to tell me that this exam would be the exempt low score that you offer your class.

I have a real problem with this. I feel I have the right to make up an exam if I have a legitimate excuse for missing the original one. Especially with an authentic document from the emergency room physician.

I still want to make up this exam. I would like to resolve this problem as soon as possible, but I will not hestitate to go to a higher authority if necessary.

Sincerely, [Student Name]

cc [Name, Chairman of Math and Science]
[Name, Director of Math and Science]

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September 3, 2012  by

Starting a WordPress blog

If you want to quickly share information with your students, it’s hard to beat a course blog. There’s a bunch of free blog sites out there, like WordPress. Here’s a guide that’ll get you blogging in no time, plus some highlights:

 

Content

One nice thing in a blog is that you can keep static content (in pages) separate from changing content (in posts).

 

Pages

If there’s info that’s not going to change all that much through the semester, but students will need ready access to, that’s good stuff for a page. I made one page for Powerpoint files where I uploaded class files as we went through the class. You can also use pages for office hour info, TA emails, etc.

 

Posts

Posts are great for announcements, FAQs, and other info that’s dynamic. Most folks set up their blog so the posts show up on the front page of the blog, so whatever’s been newly updated is front and center. If you want, you can sort posts by various categories to make them easier to search. It’s really easy to upload an image (as long as it’s a jpeg), or link to a video, and post it.

 

Theme

In WordPress, the “theme” is like the look and feel of your blog. It’s basically digital wallpaper. You can play around with themes and find which one you like best. Here’s some ideas on themes others have picked out.

 

Menu

You can arrange the menu to help guide students to info. For example, you can highlight commonly used pages by putting them in a menu. Also, if you sort your posts by category, you can put links to your categories in your menu. On a lot of themes, the menu shows up right under the blog’s header that shows its name.

 

Comments

If you want to, you can set up your blog so as soon as someone comments on a post, WordPress emails you.

 

Disclaimer: once you start a course blog, it can get addictive. But kick back and have fun with it!

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