Sunflowers - photo essay

It's sunflower season. Field 5 .1 miles north east of Lawrence on Hi-way 24/40 - about halfway to Tonganoxie from Larryville on west side of road. I put the roadsigns below - but the field of yellow is hard to miss.

You can pay a dollar and cut your own to take home. It's the honor system and I hope they make $. I donated a buck out of appreciation. My wife took the best pictures in the morning around 9am. Earlier might be better. Because the field is west of the road and runs up a hill, late afternoon isn't as good - and the moths, bees and butterflies are better in the morning.






Can anyone name this moth?

Beloit College Mindset list.

The Beloit College Mindset list came out this week. Find it here or find some discussion why it's relevant here. In it teachers are reminded that most freshman this semester were born in 1992, and their cultural references differ from those of their teachers who come from different generations.

I'm struck by the following - this year's crop of students

• have always had email and may never have written a letter and sent it "snail mail."
• They've never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day (and likely don't wear watches).
  
• "Go west, young college grad," has always implied "and don't stop until you get to Asia and learn Chinese along the way."
• With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
• Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.
• Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.
• Secondhand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.

NPR offers a nice and well-thought-out riposte - that the list tells us more about the people making the list than it tells us about the new crop of students.

Persied meteor shower?

Last night Perseid Meteor shower reached its peak, and we bundled up the family on a picture quest. My wife captured the moon over KU campus with 3 planets aligned - Mars, Venus and Saturn - over the top. We also experimented with sparklers while we waited for the meteor shower to start, but clouds moved in by 11, when the action was due to start. The lingering heat, persistent bugs and dust from the infrequent traffic on the old country road contributed to our heading home before midnight, without having gotten a pic of a shooting star, but I may try again later.

Andragogy - Teaching theory

Many education professors have recommended "A Teacher's Dozen" Fourteen General, research-based Principles for Improving Higher Learning in Our Classrooms by Thomas Angelo. You can find the PDF free here.

It might be more beneficial to require students to read it than to just share it with teachers. It is a succinct and brief treatise on what we know about learning - and since learning is more efficient when students have clear reasonable goals - and when their goals fit with the instructor - maybe it should be required reading. We need to discuss active learning and how it is superior to passive learning, and how that will affect the expectations in the class.

At any rate, my students will start by finishing these metaphors

• "learning is ______________________________________"

and

• "teaching is to learning as ___________________ is to __________________"

What not to say to your prof

These were collected by a colleague of mine, David Davis. They do have a way of getting under a composition instructor's skin - tho I said at least 1 of 'em as an undergrad.

10 things to avoid saying to your professor

1. "You know what I mean."
2. "I really need an A" (B, C, whatever).
3. "I have a friend who is an English major and he said..."
4. "In high school I always got As" (Bs, whatever).
5. "I really worked hard on this." / "I put a lot of effort into this."
6. "Well, that's just the way I write."
7. "I wasn't in class; did I miss anything?"
8. "I couldn't get the assignment done because I had a big test in another class."
9. "Well, I don't think comma splices (organization, topic sentences, following directions, whatever) should be worth that many points."
10. Passing the buck: "My boyfriend/girlfriend was supposed to put my paper in your mailbox" / "My cable provider has really unreliable internet service" / "The drop box is really hard to understand" / etc.

For the entire list together as David wrote it, with his trenchant and entertaining explanations.

My classes will have to explain why students say these things, and imagine how an instructor will react. Maybe we'll do a role-play.