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TAG: Drop-In Centre
Two wrongs make a right
Students make a lot of mistakes when doing their maths, but sometimes they will make two mistakes in such a way that their final answer is still correct. This happened last week with one student quite spectacularly, because his doubly wrong method of doing a particular problem always produces the correct answer.
Let me explain: the […]
Why I’m not a “lecturer”
Every so often a student asks me why I am not a “lecturer”. Often it happens after I’ve helped them understand something from their course, or (as it did this week) after I’ve given a revision seminar on some topic from their course.
Now I do realise that they are giving me a compliment by saying […]
Assignments don’t teach people
It is a well-known truth that assessment drives learning. Students will often not learn a particular topic or concept unless it is assessed by an assignment or exam. Fair enough — often students are not choosing to do a particular course for the sheer love of it, are they?
However, many lecturers take this truth just […]
You will never see this problem again
“Now you understand that you’ll never see this problem again, don’t you?” I said, after a particularly productive problem-solving session at the MLC whiteboard with a group of students.
And then the world ended.
At least, I would have gotten the same reaction from the students if it had. They were all staring at me with wild […]
The seven doll’s houses
There is an episode of the TV show “Friends” where Phoebe makes a doll’s house out of boxes. The other friends are most impressed with this doll’s house, especially with the candy room, aroma room and bubble-blowing chimney (except Monica of course, who still wants to play with her historically accurate mansion). Unfortunately, the cardboard […]
Playdough wins again
Recently I asked the boss for some money for some new stuff for the MLC: laminating for the new signs, batteries for the clocks, an HDMI cable for the electronic sign, new trays for the tea and coffee, and also new play dough. In her email to approve this expense, she said, “Play dough eh? […]
Birth stories in the MLC
One of my favourite memories of the Drop-In Centre happened not too long after I started here. One of our regular visitors happened to be pregnant at the time, and as always happens when parents are in the presence of a pregnant woman, it wasn’t long before we began swapping birth stories. And not just […]
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Beware of the Toast
There is a little trick someone played on me once as a child and I have been playing on the students in the Drop-In room this week. It goes like this:
Answer the following questions:
What would you find in a haunted house?
What do you call a meal of meat cooked in an oven?
What is the part […]
Who tells you if you’re correct?
At our uni, the first year maths students do the majority of their assignments online using MapleTA, and this week MapleTA was having problems. As always happens with technology glitches, it was an absolute schemozzle. It was bad enough for students that it was intermitently not working at all, but what made it worse was […]
Kindy is awesome
My younger daughter started kindy last week, and I got to actually be there for the beginning of her first day. It was one of those moments only a parent can understand as I realised with both excitement and sadness that my little baby was not a baby any more.
But this is a maths learning […]
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