I continue to be distracted from the paper-writing that I really ought to be doing by thinking about my classes this fall, and Joss Ives isn't helping. By being very helpful-- he posted a nice list of resources for active teaching. His blog has a bunch of other interesting stuff, too.
For the specific Matter and Interactions curriculum that we're using, it's probably also worth noting that they have a complete set of video lectures linked from their resources page. Unfortunately, these are complete with the "going over the syllabus" stuff in the early lectures, so the early going is a little rough...
And now, paper writing, damn it.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
It's that time of year again, when I start thinking about my fall term classes. I would really prefer to put it off for another couple of weeks, and I will put off spending much time on class prep in favor of finishing up some paper-writing and other things, but when the calendar turns to August, I…
Last year, Brad deLong did a most excellent dissection of the lecture, how it came to be, and why universities need to rethink the whole approach to learning concept before they get eaten by technology development providing even cheaper content delivery.
I've been meaning to editorialize on this…
As I've said a bazillion times already this term, I'm teaching a class that is about research and writing, with a big final paper due at the end of the term. Because iterative feedback is key to learning to write, they also have to turn in a complete rough draft, which I will mark up and have them…
During my winter blogging break, I thought I'd repost of few of my "greatest hits" from my old blog, just so you all wouldn't miss me so much. This one is from September 24, 2007. This post follows up on my initial 2007 post which I reposted yesterday.
It's worth noting that the blog has evolved…
Hi Chad,
I'm always happy to contribute to a little grey matter warmth. Thanks for sending your readers my way and I hope you are able to make some use of my post.
- Joss
Nice resource, Joss!
Chad, thanks for the tip about "going over the syllabus". I found that very interesting to watch. She got past it in LESS than 10 minutes, mostly devoted to showing how to find the syllabus and other things on line. Having homework questions about the syllabus is much better than "going over" it. I particularly liked that she showed how to find the course materials even if you can barely remember you are a student at the college.
I recommend watching the "syllabus" part and timing your first day of class. I take longer, but then I actually do one of the homework problems from the first assignment.
The only thing I didn't like is the "need to pass" rather than "need to know" objective -- looking ahead to the day after the final exam is over with. Well, that and not writing the three principles on the board. I'm going to steal that 30 second intro, because it explains why my future engineers need to KNOW those fundamental principles: They apply to buildings and machines as much as they do to "physics problems".