Purses stolen near CSE labs!

I'm not in a good mood today, the reason is because three of my students had their purses or bags stolen today. These thefts occurred while they were having their lab sessions in MCID.

I would thus kindly request all you readers to keep your valuable stuff (purse, mobiles, jewellery...) with you when you are in the labs.

As a temporary solution, the Dean of Faculty and the Head of Department have agreed that you will be allowed to bring your bags with you in the Labs. Please take extra care with your stuff.

I do comprehend that it is disgusting when your stuff has been stolen or others have gone through you things...so i can only tell these three students of mine that no crime or evil action goes unpunished.

Anyways, I went for my second Teaching and Learning seminar today, and since i had forgotten my spectacles, i went to the front row. Linda's slides are so cool, in fact she allowed me to realise that several little things which we can do can greatly improve the 'quality' of our lecture and make it mre enjoyable to our dear students. I can't wait to put her advice in practice and make our students benefit.

She also did some 'mini tests' in class, and i managed to solve all the questions correctly.... I think i manged pretty well simply because some of the others think inside the box, and since i have a 'Ronin' (Japanese word for a wandering spirit) , at times (though very rarely) i come up with 'different' ideas.

This is something soem of us might train for...thinking 'out of the box' our education system is so rigid that at times we get the impression that we are told how to think, and this hinders or even suppresses lateral thinking and creativity.

Linda had those interesting slides about the 'clicker'

A clicker is a little device which allows people to 'vote' or choose answers, its easy to use to allow

students to vote, and you can even carry out MCQ test in large cohorts rather easily and anonymously.

Each little clicker communicates with the PC or laptop using RF which uniquely identify each clicker, and a little receiver has be to attached to tohe computer to pickup the signals.

The application software can be integrated with presentation packages and can generate reports (as shown below) about results , which will give a clear indication whether or not the students have really understood...

We might think of a similar system using mobile phones, whereby students can send text messages containing Question number and chosen option to a number and we would only retrieve the reports later to gauge the level to which the students have really grasped the concepts. I might call ppl from Emtel or Cellplus tomorrow to find out if such a method can be implemented.

However, while looking for the pictures for the clicker in Google, i came across this image about use of mobile phones:

It seems a very interesting device, we might all have seen them in use in TV shows like 'Who wants to be a millionnaire?' or other shows where the audience actually votes for things.

By the way try reading this:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Were you able?

According to a researcher (sic) at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.

Imagine my lecture notes with letters jumbled all around!

Anyways, see you tomorrow.