Project generation grows up and writes for The Onion

Oh God, Teacher Arranged Desks in Giant Circle

“I have no idea what’s going to happen here, but it can’t be good,” said a visibly shaken Katie Wahl, 11, who according to reports began steeling herself for whatever god-awful group project, class discussion, or sharing of personal experiences the sixth-grade teacher might have in store for them.

Wait.

Group projects aren't fun?

Here's a thought experiment.

What happens when there are no grown-ups left who remember sitting in rows, reading textbooks, and completing homework assignments on their own, without their moms having to shlep them across town to meet with their team?

We'll still have constructivists inveighing against 19th century schools, but everyone's bad memories will be about hands-on learning in groups.

How will that work?

1 space after periods redux

I knew there was a reason why you're supposed to use just one space after a period when you're typing on a computer, but I couldn't remember what it was.

Turns out that, unbeknownst to me, my Downloads folder holds the answer, in a document entitled "Problems Noted on Student Writing":

This change occurred in academic writing as a result of the use of computers that have proportional fonts capable of adjusting the spacing as needed. This rule has been the standard in journalism and publishing since computers have been used for word processing purposes. 

Have I ever come upon a document I didn't download?

Sometimes I wonder.

1 space after periods, not 2

I've taken to reading legal writing blogs, mostly because Katie Beals & I are getting toward the end of our writing exercises for Ed's textbook, and I keep worrying we're shaky on topic chains (or topic strings).

Idealawg has a fabulous interview with George Gopen. Well worth your time.

It also has this.

Conjunction junction, après le déluge

I was searching for a transcript of Conjunction Junction when I came across the following exegesis of conjunctions, also entitled "Conjunction Junction" & inside a Prezi presentation, no less:

…if a conjunction is the 'Hitch,' the matchmaker, then the clauses are the two strapping young lovers (the two parts being joined).

• Independent clauses can stand alone as sentences. In our Hitch analogy, they are the sassy, strong independent sugar mamas and sugar daddies.
• Subordinate clauses are the gold diggers. They cannot stand alone as sentences. They begin with subordinate conjunctions, and are NEEDY.
• They are like parasites. They depend on independent clauses for survival.

I've just read this passage out loud to Ed who says, "Obviously you should never use subordinate clauses."

Yet more evidence that something happened in 1985. ^*

Something bad.


^* Wikipedia tells us that the first run of Schoolhouse Rock began in 1973 and ended in 1985.

Sunday reading - horselaugh edition

I'm a huge fan of bad sci fi (Ed, too).

I'm also a fan of funny writing about bad sci fi, which goes with the territory. Any day that brings an Anthony Lane review of a movie starring Tom Cruise is a good one.

Yesterday, via the magic of Google, I discovered Ricki Lewis's post on SyFy Channel's Helix. She is hilarious.

Her piece was so funny I insisted on reading practically the whole thing out loud to Ed while he was trying to read something else.

I was laughing and guffawing throughout, which I'm sure added to the entertainment value.

SyFy’s Helix: Tired Plot, Bad Science, Fun
By Ricki Lewis, PhD
Posted: January 16, 2014

Off-topic: John Mulvaney on SVU

Chris just showed me this bit, and we guffawed….'cuz we've watched a lot of SVU in this household.

Warning: language. SVU language.

Dick Van Dyke on comedy

Auntie Ann left this link to Dick Van Dyke explaining comedy:

15:54 Dick Van Dyke:
A comedy writer writes those funny stories that people like Captain Harper steal, uh, sell.

9:45 Boy in class:
Can you write one now?

Dick Van Dyke:
Can I what?

Boy in class:
Can you write one now?

Dick Van Dyke:
Well, uh, see there’s so many different things a comedy writer – BACK TO CLASS, FACING BOARD, WALKING BACKWARD, FALLS OFF STEP IN FRONT OF CLASSROOM – does—

Children:
LAUGH

16:09 Dick Van Dyke:
You laughed there. You know why you laughed? Because that was unexpected. You didn’t expect me to do that. Did you see that? Unexpected means that something happens that you didn’t think would happen. It’s kind of like a surprise, really, and that makes you laugh. For instance, if Mrs. Gibbon had said, ‘Children we’re going to have some addition now, if she said, first of all [WRITING ON BLACKBOARD] 1 and 1 are 12.

Children:
LAUGH

Dick Van Dyke:
See, that surprised you. That was the unexpected so you laughed. Of course everybody knows that 1 and 1 are 11.

Children:
LAUGH

Dick Van Dyke:
DOUBLE TAKE – See? That’s what the unexpected does. It makes you laugh, because you don’t expect that. And it’s a surprise. Now, when I came in the door and sat down you didn’t laugh, did you, because there was nothing really funny. You expected me to do that. But what if I had come in this way. [WALKS TO DOOR] Just a minute, I’ll be right back.

Mrs. Gibbon:
Now watch carefully children. This will be very funny now.

LOUD BANGING ON DOOR, DICK VAN DYKE ENTERS, SLAMS DOOR ON HAND, AGONIZES, TRIPS OVER PLATFORM, FALLS ON FACE

Children:
LOUD LAUGHTER.

Dick Van Dyke:
Now you see. That was unexpected and you laughed. So that’s one way of making people laugh.

TRIPS ON PLATFORM AGAIN & FALLS DOWN AGAIN

LOUD LAUGHTER FROM CHILDREN

17:25 Dick Van Dyke:
See. Got you again. You can surprise people and make them laugh. Now. Another way to make people laugh is something familiar to them. If they see themselves, or they see something in other people that they recognize, they’ll laugh at that, too. Now. I’m going to do some movements for you. No words. Just gestures, and you’ll have to try and guess what it is I’m doing, alright? I’ll move this light table back – [STRUGGLES TO PUSH TEACHER’S DESK BACK TOWARD BOARD]

Children:
LOUD LAUGHTER

Dick Van Dyke:
[GIVES UP TRYING TO MOVE DESK, TURNS TO CLASS, FOLDS ARMS ON CLASS, LEANS AGAINST DESK] Well we’ll have to—oh! [DESK HAS MOVED BACK OF ITS OWN ACCORD]

Children:
LOUD LAUGHTER

Dick van Dyke:
Now I’m going to just do some movements and you’re going to tell me what I’m doing. Alright [PULLS UP PANTS AT KNEES, LEANS AGAINST DESK AGAIN, MIMES PUTTING ON ONE SHOE, THEN PUTTING ON THE OTHER & TYING IT]

Children:
Putting on your shoe!

Children:
Tying!

Dick Van Dyke:
That’s right.

[WALKS CHARLIE-CHAPLAN STYLE]

Dick Van Dyke:
My shoes are on the wrong feet! That’s right.

[MIMES CHANGING SHOES TO DIFFERENT FOOT, THEN MIMES WALKING PIGEON-TOED]

Children shouting out what’s happened [unintelligible]

Dick Van Dyke:
That’s right. Now. I’m going to do another movement for you. This is called pantomime. It was invented by the Romans about 2000 years ago. Alright.

[MIMES THROWING A BASEBALL]

Children shouting what he’s doing

[MIMES CATHINKG A BASEBALL]

Dick Van Dyke: Oh! [MIMES HURT HAND]

PANTOMIMES TENNIS SERVE, CIRCUS LADDER, TIGHTROPE, BICYCLE ON TIGHTROPE, HEADLESS PERSON, YO YO (HITS HIMSELF IN NOSE)

Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5

Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?

Speaking of jokes and "reward prediction error"

the world's funniest joke

I actually laughed out loud when I read this, and immediately afterwards thought: That joke's pretty dumb.

The fact is, though, that I didn't see the punchline coming, and I laughed.

Humor depends on surprise.

Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5

Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?

just let me staple the vicar...

I am going to try to get back on track here any minute now....but, in the meantime, and via Language Log, here is Peter Kay.

teacher humor at Pinterest

In bed it's 6am you close your eyes for 5 minutes it's 7:45.
In school it's 1:30, close your eyes for 5 minutes it's 1:31.

Making it as a Middle School Teacher

I find this joke much funnier coming from a kid, I have to say.

This one's funny, though: Should I ask the teacher my question?

dog dog

C's friend E is here & the three of us are watching Scared Straight while I finished grading the papers that straggled in at the end of the semester.

E's brother is dating a young woman who is working on her Ph.D. and teaching undergraduates in the university. She told E. that one of her students recently, in a paper, used the expression "doggy dog."

As in It's a doggy dog world.

Speaking of which, my neighbor sent me an email with the title "Never Again" this morning.

There were dogs inside.

Asians sleeping in the library

C. just sent me to the website.

the distressed student and the helpful friend

I'm not a politically correct sort of person (I'm fairly antagonistic to political correctness, actually), but the casting for this USF video for the university's writing center struck me as being (unintentionally) hilarious and slightly mortifying all at once.

It's a cute film, but I was laughing and semi-cringing throughout: Oh, look! The distressed student has found another helpful white person!

I am reminded of the time I cruised every single textbook for every single education course at NYU one afternoon in the basement of the NYU bookstore. There were zillions of books about heroic white teachers bringing enlightenment to downtrodden black children.

As a general principle, I am against education as civilizing mission.

This is why I've never been a fan of character education for any child of any color.

Six to Eight Black Men

I read the David Sedaris piece on Christmas in Holland a couple of mornings ago -- hilarious. Starts slowly, with a somewhat protracted rumination on gun laws in the hinterlands, but once he gets to Holland the piece takes off. (I would probably feel differently if I were from Holland, as opposed to the hinterlands, myself. Here's Leon De Winter on Santa Claus's Dutch Uncle in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. De Winter's account doesn't mention six to eight black men.)

From the Sedaris piece:

In France and Germany, gifts are exchanged on Christmas Eve, while in Holland the children receive presents on December 5, in celebration of Saint Nicholas Day. It sounded sort of quaint until I spoke to a man named Oscar, who filled me in on a few of the details as we walked from my hotel to the Amsterdam train station.

Unlike the jolly, obese American Santa, Saint Nicholas is painfully thin and dresses not unlike the pope, topping his robes with a tall hat resembling an embroidered tea cozy. The outfit, I was told, is a carryover from his former career, when he served as a bishop in Turkey.

One doesn't want to be too much of a cultural chauvinist, but this seemed completely wrong to me. For starters, Santa didn't use to do anything. He's not retired, and, more important, he has nothing to do with Turkey. The climate's all wrong, and people wouldn't appreciate him. When asked how he got from Turkey to the North Pole, Oscar told me with complete conviction that Saint Nicholas currently resides in Spain, which again is simply not true.
Six to Eight Black Men

Teachers' unions, explained

Making the rounds of some charter schools.
Enjoy.

Newhart

damn you autocorrect

have just discovered this -- hilarious!

Autocorrect is constantly tripping me up, but so far it's produced nothing as diverting as the stuff on other people's phones, it seems.

Tiger Mothering on the Daily Show

In case you missed it. Enjoy and don't forget your chopsticks.

The Daily Show - Tiger Mothering
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

way off-topic: ALERTS TO TERROR THREATS IN 2011 EUROPE

Ed and I are sitting here guffawing, reading this.

Starts slow, then hits warp speed in paragraph 4, with the Scots.

Of course, I love anything to do with the Scots and their bloody-mindedness.^*



Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America


^* I'm probably using that term incorrectly. Good thing it's not likely to appear on the SAT.

billboard

Just heard from a friend who saw this billboard on the way in to the city:

NYC:  where people are openly gay and secretly Republican