Here are my holiday plans: I’m staying home, alone, with an evil cat, while my wife is off gallivanting with the distant family. I’ll probably say “humbug” a lot. Maybe Christmas dinner will be a microwaved bean & cheese burrito washed down with whisky. This is my life for a while.
You might be wondering why I would willingly choose to live the life of a lonely misanthrope. It’s because I’ve got to finish developing this new course I’ll be teaching in January, and while I’ve got the skeleton done, I’ve also got to get ahead of the game, because I’ll be teaching genetics again at the same time, so Spring term is going to hit me like a truck.
I was thinking, though, that while I’m occupied with work, I might try logging all the stuff I’m doing to create a new course sort of from scratch (I do have a good textbook that does quite a bit of the heavy lifting for me). Would that be at all interesting to readers here? It’s the gruntwork of teaching, so it’s a bit different from my usual raging.
It would also be interesting to me to hear from other teachers who have to go through this process.
That would be VERY interesting.
But what are the Evil Cat’s plans?
Begging for more food, and then throwing it up; staring coldly at me; taking an occasional needle-sharp claw swipe at passing ankles; killing any living thing it encounters; waking me up at 5am; random freak-outs that require darting about the room.
As someone who is the middle of doing the same thing, I’d be very interested!
As someone who has (and likely will again) design courses I’d be interested. May get some ideas for streamlining the process…
Yes please! I’m no teacher, nor professor, and I would love the insight into how the, er, learning sausage, gets made.
I would love it! I used to teach (music, voice, piano, then special education LIFE Skills for students with developmental disabilities) and I would love to see your process even if I have a hard time understanding all your content. Please, please. If I had your address I would have goodies sent to your door. (I mean it!) For you and that evil cat!
Oh how my sons love cats and would get such a kick out of your descriptions of evilness! The oldest once showed up at my door for xmas with two in tow and the first words from his mouth after driving with them to Houston from Austin was “take these spawn of Satan!” I chuckle so hard as I recall that and the way they terrorized my two cats and destroyed our xmas tree! Such a wonderful holiday that year!
“You might be wondering why I would willingly choose to live the life of a lonely misanthrope.”
I do exactly that because I exactly am except I have ten cats.
Begging for more food, and then throwing it up; staring coldly at me; taking an occasional needle-sharp claw swipe at passing ankles; killing any living thing it encounters; waking me up at 5am; random freak-outs that require darting about the room.
That’s “executive management” for ya.
I would find it very interesting even though I’m not a teacher. I am an organizing geek though, and love to see how things get put together. I would also find it interesting to hear the Tails of Evil Cat’s Festivus. I will be spending Festivus with the in-laws and their possessed Australian shepherd. Cat stories would be a welcome change!
Hey! That’s what I’m doing for 2 weeks, except that I’ve got 2 cats and my isolation started 3 days ago! Fist bumps, PZ!
Humph. Allergic to dairy and I’ve got no whiskey. I do have some good wine, maybe I’ll make some french lentils, pop a cork and call it good enough.
Oh, awesome! I’d love that! I hope you do!
Hrmmmmm… Yes? Didn’t I just scream that at my cats? Why are you asking me again?
I have much less experience teaching than you do, and if you include single lectures & workshops (which I do, they are teaching if of a very different sort under very different constraints) then my teaching experience is well more than half teaching a single lecture at a time on behalf of another person who has responsibility for the course as a whole. That probably skews/skewed my thinking.
However, though I started from a very different place than you, and probably made many mistakes along the way that could easily have been avoided by someone with more full-term courses under their belt, I do, in fact, have the experience of writing a course from scratch. Although I got to draw on the writings of others, I even had to assemble the readings from scratch.
Finally, of course, it wasn’t a biology course.
Still and all, if I can be of help, I’d be happy to do it.
@feministhomemaker, #7:
That’s a thought. Maybe we could call a local pizza place and have them deliver to PZ. It would have to be pizza worthy of PZ, though. Maybe they have a Dominos out there?
I would definitely be interested in the course writing. So far I’ve either followed someone else’s syllabus with a few tweaks, or I’ve taken a well-regarded textbook and selectef topics.
Don’t throw tradition out the window. You should have ramen noodles for Christmas dinner.
Don’t get me started on whisky vs. whiskey. That’s a religious argument.
Now I’ve got a cat on my hands/belly/lap making it not merely very difficult to type, but impossible to get up and get my lunch out of the microwave.
:sigh:
Evil things. Clearly I do not like them at all.
Depending on the time commitment required, I’d be very interested.
Ditto to Jonathan. I am doing the same thing in a somewhat different discipline. I would love to see how people on the squishy side do things.
Sure.
We are going to need some diversions while watching the end of American civilization.
I see a consensus coming. Sounds interesting.
—
Almost a homage to how your blog started, PZ. :)
(I found it around 2005, liked it right away)
It’s been a while since I engaged in that exercise, but those were good memories. Go for it.
No, it’s not! There’s only one korrect speling!!!1! Any others are hearsay!!!!!1!!!1!11!!
Whiskey is how you spell the second shot.
Whisky is how you spell the fourth shot
wWhiske is how you spell the sixth shot
wiskeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!@!!! is how you spell the eighth.
I’d like to see more discussion of course design in blogs. About half of my blog has discussion of course design:
https://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/circuits-course-table-of-contents/
https://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/freshman-design-table-of-contents/
Ooooh, thanks Kevin Karplus! I don’t know if my knowledge of technology is advanced enough to understand your freshman design course, but you’ve done a great amount of linking and with my google-fu I think I can figure out the meanings for most of the terms I don’t understand.
Crip Dyke@22, Yer didna spill ta shits, I means spell da shoots, makes ta spoils ya shorts, wells, yer ken wats ya meat. Mint. Meant. The beetles are fer dunking, ah, drunking, ah boots, bootles, ta! Sloths, er shoots, is fer wim—ingerlishershits. Burgles, ah bagpipfulls, bogles, er, them thar those things is ah, round, another, ya and yes and yeahs and evens and even odds see vou pissla, ta’s fog, frog, for ah, moars wasser!
Longtime reader, first time poster. As a postdoc who will theoretically have to design a course someday I would be very interested in how the sausage is made.
I am constantly teaching adults both in night classes and the work place . I would be very keen to see the nuts and bolts of your prep work.
I am a graduate student, and I teach biology at the college level (as a TA). Course development would be interesting for me as a novice instructor.
Definitely interested. Once my PhD is done I have to start producing course material and developing courses.
Creating a new course sort of from scratch …
This is how a cat would do it.
1. Initiate the singularity.
2. Tell the Eschaton or HAL 9000 or whatever to do the work.
3. Eat a bird, go back to sleep.
But…how do you spell the “w” thingy if you live on an Island *between* the two Celtic bastions of alcohol civilization?
Xmas food: Lutefisk! In huge quantities!
PZ @3.
Wow! Apparently, our cat Cosmo has a long-lost identical twin! Who’da thunk it?
Why a burrito if you already have whisky?
Because drunk and flatulent is more entertaining than just drunk
In terms of organising ideas I use a little app called Zim desktop wiki which is free and takes about 1/2hr to start being useful.
Being free of course it wont work on iPads but for people with computers they own its quite good fun.
You can sketch things out and work through stuff and before you know it you’ve got a product!
http://www.zim-wiki.org/
Kevin@23
Wow. And thanks!
I feel for the cat.
The cat: I leave for a few days, and she suddenly realizes who feeds her. She’s sitting in my lap right now, purring, and making it very hard to type.
This is all part of her long-term evil plan, I’m sure.
Teh Evil Cat probably missed the slap–slap of tentacles on the keyboard, but that doesn’t explain her sniggering…
@birgerjohannson #31:
You live on the Isle of Man?
But to answer your question, you spell it the same as the label on the current bottle…
madtom1999@35, Thanks for the pointer to
zim. Not sure it that is what I‘m looking for, but at first glance / play, it seems viable.