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…

End of another assessment season :-)

Whoopee! The final exam board of the year is over at last :-)
Some excellent results have been achieved, so my thanks to all of the students whose final year results I've been involved with: Most of you worked really hard and I'm very pleased with the results of your efforts :-D

Notable mentions go to all of my project students: Andrew, Katy, Martina, Sam, Sayvai, Wei, and those whose projects I marked — Lukas and Mantas. I hope you all do as well after graduating as your projects suggest you should!

Now it's time to kick-back, relax & enjoy my shoes … hang-on, there are still 3 French internship students to supervise, 2 PhD students to work with, 1 module's reassessment to prepare (and mark), my Teaching Fellowship to finish, a new role to prepare for, students to counsel post-results and a very busy term to prepare for (my usual annual teaching load has been compressed into just the autumn term!!!) Moral: The work in higher education never stops, it just changes mode from time-to-time...

Binless stupidity

The HE sustainability bandwagon seems to be populated with micromanagers: Let's not tackle the big issues, such as the appalling cost of heating outdated buildings and the insane "policies" of facilities management types who insist that "heating goes on at a set date and off at a set data every year", but we'll look at tiny projects like removing bins to encourage recycling. Not that encouraging recycling is a bad thing (but energy waste is a much bigger, bad thing) — our "sustainability" lot seem to win awards but the effect they've had within the faculty in which I work has been minimal ... at least until they take away all of our bins without consulting us! Like Essex, they've piloted the idea in a non-faculty environment, in our case where they're mostly open-plan so it was generally a short walk to the "recycling facility". In faculties, where we mostly have offices with 1-4 academics, it's going to be a long, regular walk to the "bin", interrupting those periods of intensive effort that goes with academic work (such as focusing on research, planning courses/lectures/assessments/modules, administering student marks etc.) They've also not consulted anyone about where these "bins" will sit — and in old buildings where Health & Safety already ban any non-fixed object that might obstruct corridors and fire evacuation routes, it's hard to see where they'll put bins. (Oh, I forgot: It's central departments that banned corridor bookcases, seats and any other obstruction, so they can easily un-ban huge obstructive bins if they like...)

What about students in classes and labs? Our sustainability guys might quote the bold experiment of our new teaching building, which has no bins in classrooms but "recycling stations" in the central atrium on every floor … sadly they've never taught a group of students in the inevitable squalor left at 4PM after a full day of students leaving bottles, crisp packets etc. behind because they have no bin in which to put their waste!

All-in-all it's a typical example of the "central departments" vs. Faculty divide and the lack of communication and consultation that occurs. (NB: We're not blameless, but we have no central-power to waltz in and modify their facilities — in that respect it's all one-way.)

Corrupted files for sale

via Bruce Schneier:

Here's a site that sells corrupted MS Word files. The idea is that you e-mail one of the files to your professor when your homework is due, buying you a few hours -- or maybe days -- of extra time before your professor notices that it's corrupted. On the one hand, this is clever. But on the other hand, it's services like these that will force professors to treat corrupted attachments as work not yet turned in, and harm innocent homework submitters.
http://www.corrupted-files.com/Word.html

Hmmm ... wonder if I've been hit by this & damn this is a stupid thing to pay money for but feel-free! It's your money versus my deadline & submission policies…