No more pathetic excuses...

Sorry, I've had no free time to blog recently :-(

Continuing my rant about unbelievable excuses for late assignment submission, here's the latest story from "the unluckiest student in the world", biggest liar or just plain lazy person:

1. Thursday (after the initial deadline, which was Tuesday)I've been unable to do the work as my parents are getting divorced and it's been very difficult ... I have a note from my mother! (A first for me!) My response: OK, I'll cut you some slack in response to your mother's impassioned plea, you can have an extension until Friday 5PM.
2. Later that day: I lost my USB stick on the way to Uni so will have to start again. Can I have an extension until Tuesday? My response: No, but as the assignment will take less then 2 hours to complete & to cut you some slack, you can have until midnight tomorrow rather than 5PM.
3. The following day (early Saturday):I tried real hard to do the assignment but I had a family party from 6-10PM on Friday and wasn't able to do it. Can I have an extension until Tuesday? My response : No. No more excuses, late penalty is 1%/hour after midnight Friday.
4. On Tuesday: I injured myself in the gym on Saturday & have been to hospital and my doctor's so can I have an extension? My response: If your doctor will write a note explaining that you were unable to work on Saturday and you hand in the work today then I'll apply a 1%/hour penalty minus the incapacitated period.

What a shyster! Always out to negotiate a deal rather than do the work (probably spent more time on the phone calls than on the work.) Why can't they just do the work rather than try to get out of it? (This particular guy is in his fifth year enrolled at this University!) Argh!!!

Is this very funny, or is it just me?

The rather difficult to read Bee-dance GPS by Doctor Fun.

Opera is free?!

Double-take ... wow!: Opera removes ad banners and licensing fee. I was obviously asleep on 20th September 2005 ;-)

Cheat Sheets - ILoveJackDaniels.com

I vaguely recollect blogging these before ... but can't get enough! Excellent, useful, informative, just plain useful!

Mobile Dr Who and Red Dwarf

Interesting idea from the BBC: Can we sell video on a (presumably read-only) MMC card in a format suitable for mobile phones? Let's try it out on Dr Who and Red Dwarf fans! �16 for one or two episodes seems a little steep, however, and I'm not sure I'd be tempted by any of the proposed episodes at that price. Nokia only? Hmmm... not sure about that at all (automatically incompatible with my PDA, for example.) I wonder how many takers they'll have?

Clearing

It's clearing time for us here in the UK -- the process whereby people who applied to study at university who didn't meet the required grade have the opportunity to re-apply. At the fabled institution where I am a lecturer we academics spend a few days glued to telephones answering queries, supposedly screened by other trained personnel, but the majority of which could be answered by an automated system:

Press 'C' on your phone for computing courses ... Press '1' for the Computing With Bungee-jumping degree ... The entry requirements are a minimum of two A-levels at grade C or above and GCSE grade C or above in Maths and English. If you meet those requirements, which will be verified through UCAS, and have no outstanding offers from other UK universities please key in your UCAS or UCAS Clearing number followed by the pound/hash button now ... Thank you. You will receive notification of any offer via the UCAS web site within 24 hours. If you have any other queries please press pound/hash now.

The reason that this could so easily be automated is that there aren't that many judgment calls to be made at this time of year and those applicants that need intervention can easily be called back. Why do we do it manually? One thing's for certain: It's not so that abusive parents can accuse us of racism when we reject an applicant because he or she does not meet the minimum requirements (I kid you not! But her school says she's within 2% of a C so why is her D not good enough? You're just being racist in rejecting her... No, we're being selective in rejecting people below the minimum requirements and if you have a problem with selection then please feel free to apply to the University of Bums on Seats. It is you who is prejudiced. Trying to play the "race card" only works for Johnny Cochrane!) No, it's done manually because <cynical>academics are cheaper than IT systems or expensive administrators</cynical> or, possibly, we're old-fashioned enough to think that the personal touch matters when dealing with the future of these applicants ;-)

Neat web app: Gvisit is cool...

Google Maps is such a neat web application and the applications like Gvisit that are springing-up are cool too! Visitors to this blog are mapped here...

A funny side to trying to cheat in exams

A Russian youth wearing a drag outfit which gave him improbably large breasts has been caught trying to sit an entrance exam for a female friend.

<grin>

You have phrased your question ... poorly

I know I've been there (usually more than once a week) and am sure everyone else in a "support" capacity has been too ... today's User Friendly cartoon suggests the perfect response from an educator to a poorly-phrased request for help ;-)

DOM inspector, slayer-style

Found on SitePoint, MODI is an excellent tool (CO2013/CO3013 and CO3060 students take note!) that shows you details of an element's representation in the DOM in your browser window -- kinda like Mozilla's DOM Inspector with bits of the Web Developer Extension but wrapped into a favelet that works in Internet Explorer v6! (As well as Opera & Safari.) Kudos to Steve Chipman for a really useful cross-browser tool :-)

Movie: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Saw "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" last night and it was excellent <grin>
It's rated PG and is quite suitable for kids (bright colours, simple, vicious humour, bad people suffer/good people triumph etc) but it's very funny for adults too (although maybe not for parents of spoilt kids...) I vaguely remember reading Roald Dahl's books at around junior school age but my impression of the story is really based on the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which is also a good film). Johnny Depp's portrayal of Willy Wonka is very different from Gene Wilder's, but Depp's portrayal suits the era -- less camp, still weird but even funnier (no way is it based on Michael Jackson!) The Oompa Loompa's were excellent too, by the way ;-)

Internet Explorer BETA

Microsoft have released IE version 7 beta to MSDN subscribers ... I've not seen it, will not test it but am happy to see signs of progress towards a better IE (critical mass will never be achieved until it ships as a/with a browser upgrade) as Molly says: That's why it's called a beta version! Didn't Microsoft also announce a few years ago that IE6 would never be upgraded, a stance they've only recently changed? Consequently it seems a bit churlish to suggest that the beta has been in development for several years ... the IE7 team have probably been working on it for less than a year thus far.

As someone whose job is affected by IE6's incompatibilities (it's hard enough teaching web development without large platform inconsistencies!) I'd prefer IE7 to be here, right now but let's get real! It's not a strategic priority for Microsoft so, with WaSP's encouragement hopefully it'll happen some day & let's follow PPK's example and give three-cheers for Molly & Chris! Keep up the good work...

Movie: War of the worlds

Just a quickie: WOTW was good, watchable fun with an ending that didn't stray too far from the book. It had a 12A certificate, which was fine (no sex, little swearing, lots of violence but very impersonal so not really harrowing) apart from the advert beforehand that talked quite frankly about erectile dysfunction ;-) Parents of young 'uns beware...

Geekiness

Shouldn't number 6 say "overclocked"? ;-)

Should have worked harder (SHWH)

Argh! Why is the standard answer to questions like "It's nearly a pass ... can't you do something?" not "Should have worked harder then!"?

We had our annual marks consideration meeting today where:

• we ensure that assessment has been done fairly for all modules (with the assistance of an external examiner or three),
• ensure that transcription errors have not crept in,
• process the outcome from another meeting that dealt with students' mitigating circumstances and
• decide on what form of reassessment people failing the module should be offered, including retake (more commonly known as a summer resit), repeat, ("come back next year") and fail (do not pass go...)

Now I happen to agree that it's important to consider "borderline" cases, especially in our system where the score (%) that a student achieves is translated into a "grade" (A, A^± etc) and, moreover, is eventually translated back into a numerical point value (please don't ask me why or I'll start to whimper...) The system means that the boundaries between grades are more significant to students' eventual degree results than a rounded 0.5% might suggest: For example a 1st class degree requires at least 110 points from 12 relevant modules, so what if the student has 0.51% less than a particular grade in one, which translates into 1 of these 110? (0.51%/12 is 20 times smaller than 1/110!)

In my book "borderline" is something close to the rounding error (i.e. less than or equal to 1% below a boundary.) It's not at all surprising that in the eyes of students (who have a vested interest) it's more like "within 5% of a boundary", which actually spans a whole grade, so we resist pressure from them to ratchet their marks upwards ... However it never ceases to amaze me when colleagues ask "Is there anything you can do? <nudge-nudge> <wink-wink>" for students who are usually more than 3% away from passing a module. My response is often "The student should have worked harder then!" (unless there clearly are circumstances beyond the student's control, such as a poor group performance strongly affected by one group member, but usually I'll already have taken that into consideration...) I object to the suggestion that standards are dropping everywhere...

By the way, if a student is good enough to get a grade greater than a pass but is lazy and deliberately aims for a pass to make her life easier and misses the mark by a few percent then, hey, it's her own fault and she SHWH!

Laugh of the day: When PDA means "Personal Dead Animal"

Laugh of the day: "There is only zuul..."

<dialog id="mydialog" xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul" buttons="accept,cancel"> ...

Obviously the guys at Mozilla have a sense of humour! From Ghostbusters: There is no 'Dana' only Zuul.

Sin City movie thoughts

Saw Sin City last night courtesy of Orange Wednesdays (the Darth Vader ad. convinced me to switch to Orange!) and I really enjoyed it. Despite being just over 2 hours it didn't feel long. It was stylish, funny (taped-up mouth on Jackie Boy's head was a hoot), sexy, violent and disturbing. However if you really don't like excessive/stylised gore and/or torture don't go! We didn't know what to expect (the trailers and certificate 15 don't give it away) and the person I went with was at times upset, nauseated and annoyed ... even more-so as I was obviously enjoying it too much to want to walk out. Ho-hum.

Moral: More research next Wednesday...

Busy time of year

Sorry, been too busy to blog recently due to:

• Endless marking (coursework, exams, more coursework...)
• Applying for 2.4 new jobs ... one is a 2/5-time secondment ;-)
• Endless admin (meetings, meetings & merger.)
• Conference ... yay! @media2005 was fun.
• Research? Not much but it's ticking-over.
• Geekiness: Learning to use my new PDA and mobile phone ;-)

Now back to the grindstone...

Dealing with plagiarism in Norway

Jill has an interesting post about plagiarism in her department that I'd like to discuss a bit ... I completely agree that I think we need to be strict and very consistent about plagiarism. and (hope) that I (if not 100% of my colleagues) are being similarly strict and feel the same way: Imagine what we teach students if we allow them to plagiarise their work?.

I love this idea:

If the student is found to have plagiarised, the exam will be annulled and the student may be barred from taking exams at any university in Norway for one or two semesters, depending on the gravity of the plagiarism and how advanced the student is.

Barring them from other universities for major offences seems like a great idea. Perhaps we could manage something similar with a system of questions on a mandatory academic reference? Otherwise I imagine the problem would be too large to handle.

She also expresses how I felt when I first became aware of blatant copying in my modules, but says it more eloquently than I:

Most of all I've discovered my own fury when confronted with plagiarism, though. They think I'm stupid not to see through this? How dare they waste my time like this? Why on earth would I put effort into doing a good job as their teacher when this is all they think learning is worth?

Thanks for such an encouraging post & let's keep on doing the right thing...

Adobe + Macromedia

Today Macromedia announced that, pending government & stockholder approval, Adobe will buy Macromedia. It looks like an interesting opportunity for both companies -- Dreamweaver > GoLive? Fireworks + Photoshop? Flash + PDF? Flash + SVG?!

Update: Excellent funny from Illiad ;-)

No WiFi at Kings?

I cannot believe King's College, London, are happy to host a web conference yet won't help the organiser with an internet connection and/or WiFi! The near-London institution where I work seems to be ahead in this respect...

Bad Meteorology

Every one involved in teaching atmospheric or environmental science should read this page: Bad Meteorology. Admittedly, the author is trying to give us better explanations so he seems to be nit-picky at times, but a better explanation can more easily lead to comprehension than a technically OK but obscure explanation.

Rude young men

This from one of our administrators:

Just had my first instance of rude young guy who wouldn't look me in the eye turned up 2 hours late for his interview and then when I was trying to explain why he would have to wait for an interview turned his back on me with the comment I don't talk to women.

To paraphrase the Conservatives It's not racist to refuse to give university places to rude, misogynistic scum. (Or do we have a quota?) Seriously: How incredibly, insufferably rude! He wants to be a pharmacist but his prejudices already violate the RPSBG's Code of Ethics and Standards (my emphasis below):

Key responsibilities of a pharmacist

...At all times pharmacists must act in the interests of patients and other members of the public, and seek to provide the best possible health care for the community in partnership with other health professions. Pharmacists must treat all those who seek their professional services with courtesy, respect and confidentiality. Pharmacists must respect patients' rights to participate in decisions about their care and must provide information in a way in which it can be understood.

so I dearly hope we didn't offer him a place, or (evilly) that we did and can beat some sense into his narrow-minded, prejudiced skull over the next 4 years or-so.

Update: After some quick peer pressure where a student on the same interview session had a word, the young man apologised to the adminstrator ... all credit to him for being brave enough to do-so & kudos to the other student(s) for speaking out.

Mobile users ready to hang-up

Getting a new customer costs 10 times as much as keeping an old one, a lesson that should be posted on every helpdesk on the planet. None more-so than T-mobile, my current provider who will not give me an upgrade allowance despite having the same phone & contract for nearly 2 years...

UK iTunes pricing

Well I for one would appreciate paying in the UK the same 45p that iTunes charges in Canada...

Update: from VNUNet Apple is still under investigation by the Office of Fair Trading for its European iTunes pricing.

Groan ... my aching body

Note for the future: Don't play squash for the 1st time in 12 months (I won ... yay!) then have a few drinks, get dehydrated and expect non-aching muscles. D'oh!

AJAX Not just a buzzword

Seen it on discussion lists but until now not understood it: ajax: a new approach to web applications is a good explanation. A very cool approach to web app design ... and we have 2 new modules that are crying out for it: one on XML and the other entitled Advanced web design techniques, so look out! students, here comes XMLHTTPrequest ;-)

Progressive enhancement & Ajax from Adactio -- excellent idea. (And in XHTML application/xhtml+xml too ... nice!)

XHTML

I've wanted an excuse to add an XHTML post <grin> and this clear explanation from The Autistic Cuckoo of the way browsers use the HTTP Content-type and DOCTYPE web pages should supply is it: Doctype Declarations and Content-Type Headers.

Planning Structural HTML

It's great to see such a straightforward explanation of how one might think about structuring an HTML page with CSS in mind as this: The Early Bird Catches the CSS: Planning Structural HTML. One criticism -- whilst <div> elements are probably very useful for beginners to separate the structure of the site and as hooks for descendant selectors, I can't think of many reasons why the navigation <ul> elements need individual <div> containers. It's simpler and leaner to give the <ul>'s an ID and the advantages mentioned:

The nesting of div elements, as in this example, allows you more options for CSS rules to present what is structurally just two lists. There could be a presentation rule for #navcontainer, and another for #globalnav?For example, the #navcontainer rule might center the div in a column, while the #globalnav rule might left align the text of the centered div. And, of course, there can be rules for the presentation of #globalnav ul or #globalnav li that use this structural context. The rules for the list in #subnav could be completely different in terms of presentation.

can be achieved equally well with ID's on the <ul>'s. Are there any other reasons for the <div>'s? (Hackery to make IE work?)

Funny stuff from Google: Google Gulp

Responsible billionaires with a sense of fun? Google Gulp <grin>

Argh! Gas leak...

We had a gas leak outside our house, discovered and reported at 10PM, Transco were there before 11PM and the second crew to dig up the pavement are here now, pnematic drill pounding away! All credit to them for being respnsive, but it is midnight on a sunday ... me and the rest of the street need our sleep <yawn>

Cite what you like

Wahey! A useful tool: I'm always looking for another way to organise all the journal papers I intend to read but somehow seldom get around to ... thanks, Jill!

Maintaining standards

General reaction to De Montfort effectively lowering pass marks is of horror, but it seems to me that it's also a good advert for the systems of quality assurance (government review & external examiners) that exist at every university in this country. If we tried something similar we'd get hammered, not just by our externals but also by our internal QA <shudder> people ... at least I fervently hope we would because it'd demonstrate that all the bloody paperwork our QA people keep making us do does serve a purpose ;-)

IMO it's an essential part of the job (as an academic) to maintain standards & that means failing people who should not pass! It surprises me regularly when students complain because they are "close" to passing so feel they should because "they worked hard" ... sorry, I appreciate the hard work but it's tough: Meet the grade and pass! Fail to meet the grade and you should expect to fail!!

The Zen of CSS Design

Now this looks like a fascinating book ... and if you haven't seen the CSS Zen Garden -- why not?! Go there now ;-)

Marking joy

OK, so it's usually marking hell but today feelings of joy: four of the 80 or-so assignments I'm marking have copied students who did the same exercise last year in a clear, unequivocal way <grin> ... gives me a (brief) happy.

The weakest link

Not necessarily what you'd expect: Security rule 1 -- The security of any system is measured by its weakest link <grin> (Snaffled from the web, pointed out by Bruce Schneier)
Or, seeing as this is a blog dominated by dumbasses I liked the original site's caption: Probably an elaborate IQ test. If you sit at the barrier, you fail...

No such thing as bad publicity?

To appear in the Telegraph's "Non-Job of the week" ... is that good or bad publicity <grin> (And WTF is a "Sustainability Facilitator" anyway?!)

Problems with accessibility

An interesting post on 456 Berea Street entitled Accessibility charlatans highlights how difficult it is to tell if a web page is accessible or not ... It's not that hard to design an accessible page if you are already paying attention to web standards and people like Joe Clark. Sadly many sites slap "accessible" badges on their pages as soon as Cynthia or Bobby give no explicit "no" answers, but that's not enough.

The example that the trainees stumbled upon during a recent day's accessibility training was hyfinity whose site (in February 2005 at least) was an inaccessible mess of unsemantic div and span tags with oodles of CSS classes (a clear case of divitis and classitis!) They're a company that proclaims Our Web Accessibility programme is designed to ensure your web applications conform to WAI guidelines but passing Bobby or Cynthia does not necessarily mean your page is accessible.

I suppose it's a case of caveat emptor but how does the buyer know to be aware? Perhaps each country with specific disability legislation needs a certification programme run by genuine experts in accessibility? Sadly it could easily add to the real expense of implementing an accessible site.

MSc by Research success

Not long (in MSc/PhD terms) after our first MSc by research success, today we got our second ... so my congratulations to Millie and Dimitris :-)

First lecture ... a success?

1^st "Databases and the Web" lecture last night and it seemed to go OK. For the first time I recorded the audio from the lecture using a mini disc recorder and tie-clip microphone. It's weird listening to myself witter-on (is that really what I sound like? Blimey!) but the delivery seems clear and not too rambling ... I hope to use SMIL to attach the audio to the lecture slides. Techno-joy ;-) with an e-learning slant. Listening to the recording is also a great way to reflect (teaching & learning tree-hugging language ... shudder!) on the lecture so I intend to continue the practice.

Graduation day!

It's graduation day again at the Barbican Centre in London so I'd like to wish good luck to our graduates from 2004 :-)

Footnote: It was a shame our M.Sc. by Research success from last year could not make it ... good luck Andy!

Marking hell

OK, so marking is one of the most boring parts of my job. It's only fun when either entertaining solutions appear (thanks for the effort in week7RSVP, everyone!) or when entertainingly awful solutions are submitted.

The winner this week goes to the student who is already retaking the module (3^rd and final attempt, most likely.) Due to a possibly terminal case of laziness he simply took a copy of his week 7 exercise from last year, renamed the file and submitted it for this year. Using the correct filename suggests that he read at least the 1^st few lines of the assignment this time around. However since last year's and this year's exercises are completely different I guess he was fatigued by the effort of reading a few sentences and didn't go any further ...

Thanks for the laugh, whoever you are (I mark semi-anonymously with ID numbers only.) Needless to say you're failing again this year, but you're not surprised by that, are you?

Cretins

Here's an example: A guy emails me his work saying he can't find the place to submit it online (despite it being clearly labeled on the module web site). He's apparently repeating the module, having failed it last year, and the work he's submitted this year is mostly incomplete apart from the final week's XML exercise (that topic happened to coincide with the same week last year) which is a complete copy of last year's work! (Big fat zero time!) His email is polite (but uses all lower-case letters) and I can't help but think that he's put in about zero effort this year and just assumes he has a chance to pass! To mis-quote Dawg Brown in Cutthroat Island: Stupidity ... who can explain it?

Academic standards are not falling (despite what students might think!)

(You can tell it's marking season...) At least one student obviously thinks that academic standards are falling and that his standard of work can drop too, so he's handed-in an essay that includes a reference to that well-known peer-reviewed journal Nuts! Now writing funny comments in written work can be funny (within reason) but your reference list says a lot about how you researched your work ... we think it's taking honesty a bit to far to admit that whilst doing your work you were reading a tabloid men's magazine and that you thought that some of the content was of such obvious scientific value you just had to reference it! Probaby not "dumbass of the week" material (see the previous post!) but it's in the top 10 for this week :-)

Stupidest copying ever?

You couldn't make this stuff up: A colleague was telling me that a student on her module handed-in an essay that was made up of large chunks of text that were copied verbatim from two research papers. Not unusual, I thought (plagiarism is a problem and we try to be vigilant), until she said that one of the papers was one of hers! Now I appreciate that it's an unwritten rule that you should make sure you look for and reference any relevant papers by your examiners in postgraduate research but it's quite stupidly insulting to copy the text from your supervisor's own papers. <grin> at least it's easy to identify!

Stupid question of the week

Happy 2005! The new year starts by following-on from last year: Santa did not bring this student any more intelligence for christmas! Asking "When does term start?" really does indicate a lack of effort (it's not hard to find out!) or memory (it's in the student handbook, it's not a long document, you did read it like you were asked, didn't you?)