Last issue we talked about Scholar-Dot-Google-Dot-Com, an awkward title for a graceful search engine that:
It’s that time again. Stock up on number 2 pencils, gummed reenforcements, lined notebooks, and maybe even a new trapper-keeper!
In this back-to-school issue the Cyberprof promises you you’ll get your money’s worth! Three useful articles:
This month the cyberprof is reluctant about going back to work. Instead he plans to tell you about his summer vacation, sharing some interesting and amusing links. The cyberprof’s wife came along and his two adult sons. Knowing that they would both soon be leaving the nest, the younger son for college, the older for graduate school, gave the trip a bitter sweet flavor.
A Blog/ Newsletter About Computing for Techno-wary Professors
I decided to publish a newsletter for three reasons:
The CyberProf attended Princeton University briefly, in 1966-1967 and chose to continue his education elsewhere despite the benefits of an Ivy League diploma. Perhaps the most enduring result of his Princeton experience is the arrival at his doorstep of PAW, the Princeton Alumni Weekly, every week regardless of how often he moves and how far he roams. PAW finds him as if a homing chip had been implanted in his skull (perhaps that was the true nature of that so-called lice examination Freshman year!)
There are many ways of grading written assignments. I recall when I was a student, there were, at one extreme, teachers who scribbled barely legible comments in the margins, and at the other, those who typed out their comments, sometimes several pages worth, connecting them with the appropriate points on my paper like footnotes. I found that I learned a great deal more from the latter. I was also aware, and appreciative of the amount of time these professors spent grading papers. Now that I know, from first hand experience, how many responsibilities they had beyond classroom work, I am even more appreciative.
Because my son is a high school senior this year, we have been immersed in junkmail from colleges, famous and obscure, urging him to apply. Last week we received a letter from University of North Carolina, Pembroke (established 1887) inviting the whole family down to an open house. Now, the CyberProf is a big fan of open houses. Wurzweiler School of Social Work, where he toils in the vineyards of higher learning, hosts open houses several times a year and perspective students sincerely appreciate a chance to get a sense of the school and its culture.
Sometimes something comes along that is so important that the CyberProf prints it even though it isn’t about technology. Sometimes he just has to wake up early on a Saturday morning, drive down to CyberProf Center, open up the offices, turn on the presses, light a fire under the copy editors and type-setters, and get out that special edition.
Recently one of the Cyberprof’s colleagues, Steve Pimpare, (a.k.a. “CrankyDoc”) created an innovative and intricate disposable blog project for a media and politics class he teaches at Yeshiva College and Stern College for Women (both part of Yeshiva University). The course curriculum tells the students’ their part of the task:
In a previous post the CyberProf discussed the advantages of using disposable blogs as student logs for courses. The CyberProf was a little reticent about implementing this, especially since social work students vary in their technological sophistication (as opposed to students of engineering, for example, or physics, or math, who seem to have been born with an HTML gene). But as they say in Maine, “Don’t recommend the stoned crabs unless you’ve tried ‘em yourself.”