track the president...

and his campaign promises on the obameter, that has been set up by the st. petersburg times. i also put it as a link on the side...

amitabha...

my vaction hasn't been...

yo yo factory's the mighty flea ultra-mini...
Originally uploaded by divine_gear

filled with yo as much as i would have hoped that it would. however; i've noticed that since the beginning of the semester (last week), and my preparation for it; and the semesters to come (some other schools start this week, and then the next)...i've been picking up a yo more and more. i think it is becoming a meditative tool for me. just to let it all go, and focus on something else.

in my search for fun new meditative tools; i came across this little guy from yo yofactory. the quarter is for reference of size. it came with the blue bag, and in one of those cheap plastic 'balls' you get from a gum ball machine. it is a challenging yo.

since it is only the diameter of a quarter; i'm able to keep it in my pocket, and no one would be the wiser.

amitabha...

what is an...

education? rather; what becomes the 'college's' best interest? your eduction? your advancement? do they care about your knowledge in a given subject?

no.

it is a business. a money maker. that's it.

at a recent college meeting...oh; i'm sorry, i didn't mean to type college; let me re-type that...at a recent company meeting (yes, company. and i use that word because a dean used it in the meeting...the company), i was told by somebody 'high up' about not only proving something for our students, rather i should say customers; because that is what companies have...customers. just like 'insert major cow mentality here'. so not only dealing with our current customers, but also the children of our customers, because those are our future customers.

i had to hear an hour long speech on 'authentic assessments'. the definition give: "simply testing an isolated skill or retained fact does not effectively measure a student's capabilities. to accurately evaluate what a person has learned, an assessment method must examine his or her collective abilities. this is what is meant by authentic assessment. authentic assessment presents students with real-world challenges that require them to apply their relevant skills and knowledge." it goes on to state: "'fairness' does not exist when assessment is uniform, standardized, impersonal, and absolute. rather, it exists when assessment is appropriate-in other words, when it's personalized, natural, and flexible; when it can be modified to pinpoint specific abilities and function at the relevant level of difficulty..."

what these bleeding hearts want to do is move away from our good old system of grading and evaluating students based on right or wrong. did you get the problem wrong? then it's wrong. rather 'they' (a word on them later) wants the instructor to use rubrics. now...i'd love to get into a long rant on what a rubric is, but i don't have the time or patience. the short view...it's another way of grading. of saying wrong. the standardization is replaced with another standardization. i had another talk of this at another 'company' meeting, and a bunch of people just walked out...me included. it's bullshit.

'they'. who are 'they'? who runs the (for idealist sake) the college? educators? nope. business men and women. not those who have your intellectual develop in mind, but only so far as your 'intellectual develop' keeps money coming into their company.

to educate (from the dictionary on my mac): give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to.

i was assaulted the other night with words like critical thinking, higher thought, to have the students go beyond...i teach philosophy...how much more am i able to go? well; maybe all that doesn't apply to me?

all hail the company...

amitabha...

it is the...

case that morality is just in fact based on your surroundings/society? what then happens when no one is around?

scientists in the netherlands found out in a little experiment that they performed.

what would happen if you were left alone?

amitabha...