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Showing posts from January, 2018

Cyanobacteria, moss, lycophytes, and monilophytes walk and talk

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This term the primitive plants walk was pushed back behind the assigning of groups for the presentations on the primitive plants. The intent is to give groups more preparation time and a chance to focus in on their plant in the wild. This year featured a newly revised handout on the ferns and lycopodium of Palikir. I did not expect to see peipei aramas, but I knew that sometimes I stumbled on it in the field, so I tossed it on the list at the last minute. For good measure I added peipei eni as well. Weather conducive to fern finding The shortening of add drop a couple years ago meant that I could not end the hike down in the valley, standing in the rain in the swamp with the words, "If you do not like this experience, you should return to the office of admissions and records and drop this class." I am not aware of any student ever taking up the offer. This was possible because students had the length of the first week to add and drop courses, leading to tremendous chur

Student learning outcomes mastery tracking in real time with Schoology

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All gradebooks provide detailed data on grades for students. The ability in Schoology Enterprise to attach student learning outcomes to assignments, test questions, and marking rubrics coupled with the Mastery reporting screen, provides near real time information on student mastery of learning objectives. The student learning outcomes attainment data shows both the average, the number of times the student has encountered that outcome, and whether the student has met expectation at least five times (denoted by a star). Note that as of the third week of class one student has already demonstrated the ability to generate mathematical models for physical science systems and use appropriate mathematical techniques and concepts to obtain quantitative solutions to problems in physical science five times. The mastery settings in use for the course are presently attaining 70% average to meet expectations and five demonstrations above 70% to demonstrate mastery. These values are p

Linear motion

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After going over the first quiz on density, linear motion opened with a 3000 cm RipStik run. Although I have remained with centimeters and seconds for consistency through the first four weeks of the course, Desmos would be easier to set up this second Monday if I used meters. In centimeters the y axis runs out to 3000 while the x axis has a maximum value of around 12 seconds. The students obtain a vertical line on their display as a first result. Seconds versus meters would be a more functional option. I suspect shifting to meters would add a somewhat hidden layer of complexity to the face digits issue of laboratory two, and would push laboratory three towards also using meters. Although I again had a look at instantaneous velocity and the implied acceleration, I am less convinced that these values are as real as they appear. When converted to timing errors, the difference from a constant speed is always less than a tenth of a second. These are well inside reaction time

Banana patch clean-up

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One of the term start activities in ethnobotany is cleaning up the banana patch. The exercise helps set a pitch in and work physically tone to the course. Rodrigo cleaning near the uhten taiwang Nette and Melissa cleaning near the purported uhten pisi (Fiji) Yoma Jayme makes do with a plastic knife Jayme in the foreground with an actual knife Myra Via-Marie This term the primitive plants presentation preparation will precede the primitive plants hike for the first time. I used today to begin to sort out native language speakers. Yoma will tackle Kosraean and Melissa Woleian. I then asked for someone who has one parent from Kitti, and one not from Kitti. Via-Marie said she did, and I will have her tackle the pronunciation difference. The presentations will be a week from Thursday, so this is the earliest in the term I have started sorting students for that presentation. This Thursday I will see if I cannot have the stude