What Harry Potter can tell us about teaching styles

Great post from Dot Physics summarising "teaching styles" from Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix — when I first read the book I thought Dolores Umbridge's comments were pretty horrifying but, sadly, close to what's said in HE circles about the UK's National Curriculum and what the government's obsession with targets forces schoolteachers to focus on …

Sadly we're not immune: Learn-by-rote-memory is an easy/lazy approach for the lecturer, Learn-by-suffering is an ego-trip for the sadist, and whilst Harry's apparent workshop approach is better it doesn't work for every subject/topic — sometimes knowledge/information/curriculum needs to be learnt and experienced that has no practical analogue.

Meeting verbiage

Thanks to Swans On Tea for this morning's moment of amusement:

On Thursday I accumulated the datum that the phrase I might work better wearing lederhosen, but we’re just not going to find that out instantly ends the meeting.

http://blogs.scienceforums.net/swansont/archives/4388

Don't you just love/hate (depending on side of fence) people who derail meetings with "amusing" absurd analogies, reductio ad absurdum arguments, etc., no matter how fallacious? In my experience the likelihood that someone will bring one of these up depends on the length of the meeting (long => more likely) or, of course, the ridiculousness of the subject from that person's p.o.v. ...

It's a useful tactic in one's arsenal (as a meeting attendee) and motivation for having short, focused meetings (chairs please take note! — academia is notoriously plagued by ouroboros-like sequences of long, pointless meetings that seem to exist for their own sake & no other purpose.)

IELTS not spell-checking own web

We were discussing the use of IELTS for PhD students so I was amused by the irony — stackeholders?!

Basic time knowledge absent?

Currently the Odeon web site contains the following notice:

Important Information

Please note the performance of THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON listed at 00:01 on Friday 20th November is actually showing at 00:01 on the night between Thursday 19th November and Friday 20th November and therefore is showing in the early hours of Friday 20th November.

Grumpy-old-man: I weep for the youth of today!

Hybrio rechargeable batteries

Just bought four AA 2100mAh Hybrio NiMh batteries and a Technoline BC900 iCharger (which is cool!) Tested the four Hybrios with the iCharger, which reported capacities of 1907mAh, 1949mAh, 1950mAh and 2000mAh — is that normal?

Keynotes: Old school!

Perhaps should be a poll: Are conference keynotes predominantly given by poor speakers?

At the conference I'm currently at it's 50:50 so-far (decider, keynote#3, is tomorrow) — both professors, the first was a current lecturer and got his message across with minimal PowerPoint-text-abuse, the second is a high-up University IT manager who has a tendency to use reams of what looks like 10pt text and asks us "yeah?" on a regular basis (like it's for punctuation...)

What we learn

According to William Glasser, we learn...

• 10% of what we read
• 20% of what we hear
• 30% of what we see
• 50% of what we see and hear
• 70% of what is discussed with others
• 80% of what is experienced personally
• 95% of what we teach to someone else

(via etre.)

Misfits of interaction design

Amusing WTFs. To-date just 2 Adobe snafus, but maybe worth watching for the occasional smile :-)

University Websites crit by Paul Boag

... Paul (from Headscape & Boagworld) makes some good points ;-)

Why you can't discount IE6 (for certain sectors...)

… Hats off to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport which expects to complete its move to IE7 by the end of August. Less brilliantly, the Department of Children, Families and Schools plans to move from IE6 in 2010/2011. The Department of Health has no plans to upgrade - indeed it has yet to decide which browser to move to or when any such upgrade might happen…