I know exactly how you feel. As a Canadian, i was forced to sit through 9 long years of french classes. alas, half of my french teachers knew no french themselves. (we had 2 french teachers, 1 was french, the other was not, the one who knew french taught even grades, the one who did not taught odd grades)
I had no motivation whatsoever to learn such a 'useless, inferior language', especially since I was lucky enough to be raised in a culture that speaks the international world language. And i'm dyslexic, so i have enough trouble decoding my own language.
Even now, I force myself to go to Korean lessons, where I am the useless lump in the back of the class who just doesn't understand what is going on. I go not because I expect to learn the language; i go because I believe it is important to be able to sympathize with my students. it is important to see what techniques are effective for teaching, and which are useless.
but after giving everything i can to a student who simply refuses to learn, what else can i do?
Should I ignore those who want to be there? should those who do their work be kept from learning more because little johnny can't even write his name after 7 years?
Grades do not have anything to do with how much effort YOU PUT INTO a student. If you give students extra help, that does not make them more or less deserving of a certain grade. I agree with you 100%.
i am a complete and utter failure at math. honestly, even long division makes no sense to me. i worked my ass off, stayed after school, got extra help, studied 5 hours a night, and still only scraped by with a 53%. and that's exactly what I deserved, the work i put in makes no difference. when it came down to it, despite the effort, I could not perform.
on the other hand, high school science was stupidly easy. i 'earned' 80% for not showing up to class on a regular basis, not reading my textbook, and not doing my homework. I did next to nothing, and was rewarded with a good mark.
if a student works his ass off and fails, he fails, if he does nothing and manages to excel, he gets a great mark. tests are about performance, they are not about effort or attitude.
When a class as a whole performs badly under one teacher than under others, that points to the fact that the teacher is either harsh with grading, bad at teaching or usually a combination of the two. I am testing them on material the other teachers have covered so far. they write my test is in 3 weeks, so i wont know if i'm am a complete and utter failure as a teacher till early july.
I don't consider myself a harsh marker. i try to be very fair and unbiased about it. I have a list of what they are expected to know, and I have their performance. its a simple task of comparing the two. if you know 0%, you deserve 0%. if you know 100%, you deserve 100%.
i believe the fault lies on an educational system that hands out free marks while dumbing down tests to force students to pass regardless of performance.
I am not female, but my name DOES start with a K, and i do have man boobs...freaky...
Yes, you are absolutely correct. Having a 75% failure rate does make me sound like a pathetic teacher.
But I only see half of these kids once a week, the other half I see once every 3 weeks. and ive only been working with them for 9 months. Their other teachers have seen them every day for the bast 6 years. so clearly, I can assign the majority of the blame on them. (hey, whatever helps me sleep at night, right...)
In the country where I teach, class size is quite large (36) and they don't really fail the students. (well, technically they do, if they get less than 40%), but as I stated earlier, they fudge the numbers, turning a zero into 75%, even students who don't show up for the test get a 75%! Imagine if skipping an exam back in North America got you an automatic 75%!
People really need to come to grips with the fact that like sports, not everyone is academic all-star material.
this is why, as a teacher, I only focus on the top students in the class.
I'm sorry, but if you aren't going to try your best, then I would be a fool to waste my time trying to reach you. bugger off. Go and fail in life.
I'm a teacher, I'm in charge of teaching. The 'learning' part is your job.
If you are making an effort, I will do everything I can to help and support you. But you still suck after getting extra help, I'm not going to sugar coat things or give you an 'A for effort'. Some kids are just dim. parents need to learn to deal with it.
I'm sorry for sounding so grumpy and uncaring in this post. It's been a long 2 weeks of solid speaking/listening tests, and I just failed 75% of my 1154 students, because they can speak absolutely zero English, even after 7 years of Education.
Then I was told to make my questions easier, because if a student gets less than 40 points, they have to repeat the year, and the school administration doesn't want to deal with that, so we prevent them from failing by lowering standards.
Then I learned that my "zero" I was giving my students is actually being entered in the books as a 15 out of 20.
that's right...if you absolutely nothing, if you are complete failure as a students, who has learned nothing after seven freaken years of school, you STILL get 75% on your test. pathetic.
10 CLS : REM clears the screen 20 RANDOMIZE TIMER 30 mood% = INT(RND * 32768) 40 IF mood% = 1 THEN 50 PRINT "hello world" : REM prints hello world on the screen 60 ELSE GOTO bitch 70 END : REM ends the program
i am very disapointed by the lack of tact in a lot of these posts. I know this is slashdot, but a man died after fighting with a killer for 7 long years. if you are going to make a crude comment here, at least make it +5 funny, not the -1 stupid i have been seeing so far.
Stan, you will be missed.
Your skill and imagination were an inspiration to me through the years.
this would be quite interesting to use for audio applications. have it control various knobs on some VSTs. maybe have it lock onto a guitar, so the effects and distortion actually change based on how you hold the guitar?
also, it would be a perfect interface for a VST theremin.
These hippies are trying to destroy American oil companies! Think of all those poor oil companies...their employees have children, think of the children!
So, it's quite likely that the biofuel initiative is actually make the problem a lot worse. The biofuel initiative is also creating a giant dead zone in the gulf of Mexico due to fertilizer runoff. But don't try to tell any of this to the cult of global warming. They don't like facts interfering in their religion. Actually, anyone who takes global climate change seriously is well aware that so-called 'biofuel' does far more harm than good. But don't try to tell any of this to those who still fail to believe in global warming, they don't like facts interfering with their exploitative business models.
ok, you are right (and i mean that genuinely this time) IP theft can sometimes cost people money.
But from what I have read about this issue, 'stealing' ID often leads to more creative output and profitability overall. one persons loss is a gain for many others.
Is it right to put laws in place to protect an industry that has failed to adapt to changing marketplaces? is it right to pass laws that criminalize hundreds of millions of people to protect several thousand?
I can't say anything about China, because I haven't researched or seen it myself yet. I can talk about korea, where burnt dvd's are sold on every corner for $3 a pop. yet, movies here do turn a profit, features look high budget, like a holywood film, (without the predictable endings). and then there are those japanese manga comics that are full of stolen IP from other manga's.
I assume you have already done your research and can provide a plausible account for why I've given away some of my own IP for free. Actually, I have no idea what IP you have given away, or why. I would like to know.
I have both given away IP, and had IP 'stolen' from me. its frustrating at first, but i lost absolutely nothing because of it. steal the original, then i'd be pissed off.
there are many cases in which stealing an idea costs the original owner something. If you can't think of any, then you owe it to yourself to familiarize yourself with the music, publishing, software, and movie industries, to name a few. you are absolutely correct. no band could possibly hope to make any money by giving away its music for free and making it back playing live shows. And having songs broadcast over FM radio without royalties being paid will destroy the music industry.
A book would be impossible to sell without some sort of protection. could you imagine if the #1 best selling book of all time had no sort of copy protection?
imagine if there was free software. not just free to have, but free to use and modify and re-distribute yourself. That would completly destroy the entire software industry. I predict that if there ever was some sort of free operating system that could be an alternative to windows, it would completly eradicate microsoft's entire business in less than a year.
The movie industry would be in far better shape if no one moved out west to escape Edison's patents that prevented them from making movies. Disney would be a stronger company if they had to secure permission to use the Brothers Grim stories that their classics are founded on.
you are right. stealing and sharing ideas can not possibly lead to any sort of good, and it certainly is not profitable in any way shape or form.
psychologically the driver will feel less protected in this new concept of a fabric skin. you say that like it's a bad thing. As a result of feeling less safe, people will drive more safely.
put a big spike on every steering wheel, aimed right at the driver's neck. put one of these in every car and people will drive a whole lot better.
like the US government, nature seems to have a neat system of checks and balances in place to prevent someone from coming in and ruining everything.
Antarctica is currently so cold, it cannot snow. But it is currently melting. Along with this melting, Antarctica is heating up, and soon, it WILL be able to snow, and this snow will cause the glaciers to grow. Balance.
More CO2 in the air means plants will grow bigger and faster, and begin pumping O2 into the air. Balance.
Unfortunately, humans seem to be a lot like the Bush administration. we barge in and start screwing around with things so much, these checks and balances disappear. this is what we call a tipping point, and I believe we are nearing the point where it will be socially acceptable to crack each other's heads open and feast on the delicious goo inside.
there was a small coffee shop near my old place that had a great system set up.
they provided free wifi, no strings attached. no codes, no log-ins, no purchase necessary, just bring your laptop and enjoy free internet.
I once asked them why they don't charge or limit the internet. their reason was simple. 'running wifi is dirt cheep, the only expensive part is setting up and maintaining a system for charging customers to use it. and if you want to be competitive, the price is so low the profit you make only covers the cost of maintaining that system.'
free wifi with no oversight is just less bother for them, and it makes no difference to their bottom line.
now i live in korea (south) and every single coffee shop, hair salon, bus station, restaurant, etc. has free wifi, most have computers that are free to use, too. so in korea, the young people can very easily not use email while they drink their coffee.
one one hand, i have to agree with you, terrible teachers must be gotten rid of ASAP.
on the other hand, when I first started teaching (ESL), I sucked royally, I was absolutely terrible, a complete waste of everyone else's time and money.
but after 3 months, I got better. after 8 months, I became great at my job. It takes time to learn how to be strict, fair and attentive.
Everyone goes in with the attitude that they are going to be the cool teacher that the students all love, it takes a while to learn that you are not there to be their friend. You are their teacher, it is your job to demand (and earn) their respect.
It's a very hard job and not everyone is able to do it.
but if you can't figure it out in 6 months, you fail, goodbye, may your village regain its idiot.
When XP first came out, the only good thing about it was that it wasn't ME; it was uber slow, crashed apps constantly and tons of HW and SW just wouldn't run on it. I hear this a lot, and I distinctly remember holding out on XP for a few years, because 98 was 'good enough'. When I bought a new computer, winXP only added $6 to the system price, so I bought it, expecting to hate it, format and install 98. but i was stunned, XP was actually good! stuff worked, but it was windows...a windows that works? i couldn't believe it. plug and play didn't require restarts, hardware often worked without installing drivers. a program crash didn't take down my whole system, it was great.
im not an MS fanboy, i run ubuntu at home, but I do have to call BS on your accusation, and give MS credit for releasing one (and only one) decent OS in the 20 years they have been around.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha! sorry for the mean mental image.
I know exactly how you feel. As a Canadian, i was forced to sit through 9 long years of french classes. alas, half of my french teachers knew no french themselves. (we had 2 french teachers, 1 was french, the other was not, the one who knew french taught even grades, the one who did not taught odd grades)
I had no motivation whatsoever to learn such a 'useless, inferior language', especially since I was lucky enough to be raised in a culture that speaks the international world language.
And i'm dyslexic, so i have enough trouble decoding my own language.
Even now, I force myself to go to Korean lessons, where I am the useless lump in the back of the class who just doesn't understand what is going on. I go not because I expect to learn the language; i go because I believe it is important to be able to sympathize with my students. it is important to see what techniques are effective for teaching, and which are useless.
but after giving everything i can to a student who simply refuses to learn, what else can i do?
Should I ignore those who want to be there? should those who do their work be kept from learning more because little johnny can't even write his name after 7 years?
there is a point where you must cut your losses.
you are absolutely correct.
the way a person writes on teh internets is the best way to judge their grasp of the language.
i am a complete and utter failure at math. honestly, even long division makes no sense to me.
i worked my ass off, stayed after school, got extra help, studied 5 hours a night, and still only scraped by with a 53%. and that's exactly what I deserved, the work i put in makes no difference. when it came down to it, despite the effort, I could not perform.
on the other hand, high school science was stupidly easy. i 'earned' 80% for not showing up to class on a regular basis, not reading my textbook, and not doing my homework. I did next to nothing, and was rewarded with a good mark.
if a student works his ass off and fails, he fails, if he does nothing and manages to excel, he gets a great mark. tests are about performance, they are not about effort or attitude. When a class as a whole performs badly under one teacher than under others, that points to the fact that the teacher is either harsh with grading, bad at teaching or usually a combination of the two. I am testing them on material the other teachers have covered so far.
they write my test is in 3 weeks, so i wont know if i'm am a complete and utter failure as a teacher till early july.
I don't consider myself a harsh marker. i try to be very fair and unbiased about it.
I have a list of what they are expected to know, and I have their performance.
its a simple task of comparing the two.
if you know 0%, you deserve 0%.
if you know 100%, you deserve 100%.
i believe the fault lies on an educational system that hands out free marks while dumbing down tests to force students to pass regardless of performance.
hmmm...weird.
I am not female, but my name DOES start with a K, and i do have man boobs...freaky...
Yes, you are absolutely correct. Having a 75% failure rate does make me sound like a pathetic teacher.
But I only see half of these kids once a week, the other half I see once every 3 weeks. and ive only been working with them for 9 months. Their other teachers have seen them every day for the bast 6 years. so clearly, I can assign the majority of the blame on them. (hey, whatever helps me sleep at night, right...)
In the country where I teach, class size is quite large (36) and they don't really fail the students. (well, technically they do, if they get less than 40%), but as I stated earlier, they fudge the numbers, turning a zero into 75%, even students who don't show up for the test get a 75%!
Imagine if skipping an exam back in North America got you an automatic 75%!
People really need to come to grips with the fact that like sports, not everyone is academic all-star material.
this is why, as a teacher, I only focus on the top students in the class.
I'm sorry, but if you aren't going to try your best, then I would be a fool to waste my time trying to reach you. bugger off. Go and fail in life.
I'm a teacher, I'm in charge of teaching. The 'learning' part is your job.
If you are making an effort, I will do everything I can to help and support you. But you still suck after getting extra help, I'm not going to sugar coat things or give you an 'A for effort'. Some kids are just dim. parents need to learn to deal with it.
I'm sorry for sounding so grumpy and uncaring in this post. It's been a long 2 weeks of solid speaking/listening tests, and I just failed 75% of my 1154 students, because they can speak absolutely zero English, even after 7 years of Education.
Then I was told to make my questions easier, because if a student gets less than 40 points, they have to repeat the year, and the school administration doesn't want to deal with that, so we prevent them from failing by lowering standards.
Then I learned that my "zero" I was giving my students is actually being entered in the books as a 15 out of 20.
that's right...if you absolutely nothing, if you are complete failure as a students, who has learned nothing after seven freaken years of school, you STILL get 75% on your test. pathetic.
a better solutio would be to learn French and INVADE Quebec. you would be doing both yourself, and the rest of Canada a huge favour.
This person will be a valuable member to your team, they will do anything, ANYTHING, to get the job done
Sincerely, Unnamed Government Agency.
the problem with that is that the publishers don't learn anything.
they still see sales for their product despite the stupid DRM they cripple their programs with.
the ONLY way they will learn is if you STOP BUYING DRMed PRODUCTS!
I used to pirate my games and software. Now I either avoid games, or use FOSS, or stick to publishers that have not evil DRM schemes.
to sum things up:
men:
10 CLS
20 PRINT "hello world"
30 END
women:
10 CLS : REM clears the screen
20 RANDOMIZE TIMER
30 mood% = INT(RND * 32768)
40 IF mood% = 1 THEN
50 PRINT "hello world" : REM prints hello world on the screen
60 ELSE GOTO bitch
70 END : REM ends the program
i am very disapointed by the lack of tact in a lot of these posts. I know this is slashdot, but a man died after fighting with a killer for 7 long years. if you are going to make a crude comment here, at least make it +5 funny, not the -1 stupid i have been seeing so far.
Stan, you will be missed.
Your skill and imagination were an inspiration to me through the years.
this would be quite interesting to use for audio applications. have it control various knobs on some VSTs. maybe have it lock onto a guitar, so the effects and distortion actually change based on how you hold the guitar?
also, it would be a perfect interface for a VST theremin.
These hippies are trying to destroy American oil companies!
Think of all those poor oil companies...their employees have children, think of the children!
I cannot prove that I have consciousness
But you think, therefore, you are...I thinksorry, I should have clarafied that.
anyone who takes global climate change seriously is well aware that biofuel made from ethenol made from corn does far more harm than good.
But from what I have read about this issue, 'stealing' ID often leads to more creative output and profitability overall. one persons loss is a gain for many others.
Is it right to put laws in place to protect an industry that has failed to adapt to changing marketplaces? is it right to pass laws that criminalize hundreds of millions of people to protect several thousand?
I can't say anything about China, because I haven't researched or seen it myself yet. I can talk about korea, where burnt dvd's are sold on every corner for $3 a pop. yet, movies here do turn a profit, features look high budget, like a holywood film, (without the predictable endings).
and then there are those japanese manga comics that are full of stolen IP from other manga's. I assume you have already done your research and can provide a plausible account for why I've given away some of my own IP for free. Actually, I have no idea what IP you have given away, or why. I would like to know.
I have both given away IP, and had IP 'stolen' from me. its frustrating at first, but i lost absolutely nothing because of it. steal the original, then i'd be pissed off.
no band could possibly hope to make any money by giving away its music for free and making it back playing live shows. And having songs broadcast over FM radio without royalties being paid will destroy the music industry.
A book would be impossible to sell without some sort of protection. could you imagine if the #1 best selling book of all time had no sort of copy protection?
imagine if there was free software. not just free to have, but free to use and modify and re-distribute yourself. That would completly destroy the entire software industry. I predict that if there ever was some sort of free operating system that could be an alternative to windows, it would completly eradicate microsoft's entire business in less than a year.
The movie industry would be in far better shape if no one moved out west to escape Edison's patents that prevented them from making movies. Disney would be a stronger company if they had to secure permission to use the Brothers Grim stories that their classics are founded on.
you are right. stealing and sharing ideas can not possibly lead to any sort of good, and it certainly is not profitable in any way shape or form.
for fscks sakes, ideas are not property!
if you steal property, the original owner loses something.
if you steal an idea, the original owner loses nothing.
someone, please, get these asswipes out of office. either the ballot box or ammo box will do.
put a big spike on every steering wheel, aimed right at the driver's neck. put one of these in every car and people will drive a whole lot better.
like the US government, nature seems to have a neat system of checks and balances in place to prevent someone from coming in and ruining everything.
Antarctica is currently so cold, it cannot snow. But it is currently melting. Along with this melting, Antarctica is heating up, and soon, it WILL be able to snow, and this snow will cause the glaciers to grow. Balance.
More CO2 in the air means plants will grow bigger and faster, and begin pumping O2 into the air. Balance.
Unfortunately, humans seem to be a lot like the Bush administration. we barge in and start screwing around with things so much, these checks and balances disappear. this is what we call a tipping point, and I believe we are nearing the point where it will be socially acceptable to crack each other's heads open and feast on the delicious goo inside.
there was a small coffee shop near my old place that had a great system set up.
they provided free wifi, no strings attached. no codes, no log-ins, no purchase necessary, just bring your laptop and enjoy free internet.
I once asked them why they don't charge or limit the internet. their reason was simple. 'running wifi is dirt cheep, the only expensive part is setting up and maintaining a system for charging customers to use it. and if you want to be competitive, the price is so low the profit you make only covers the cost of maintaining that system.'
free wifi with no oversight is just less bother for them, and it makes no difference to their bottom line.
now i live in korea (south) and every single coffee shop, hair salon, bus station, restaurant, etc. has free wifi, most have computers that are free to use, too. so in korea, the young people can very easily not use email while they drink their coffee.
I have a fugitsu lifebook series A, 1.6ghz AMD sempron (I still consider THAT to be modern hardware) and XP is up and running in under 45 seconds.
I also dual boot, and Ubuntu takes about 2 minutes to load.
(oh, and I am trying to troll here)
it would appear that you are doing something wrong with your windows set up, and i'm doing something wrong with my ubuntu setup.
the problem is that education is a lot like cocaine, the more you have, the more you want.
If you don't have any, you won't want any.
Thats why its critical to start them when they are young and keep them in until its too late.
one one hand, i have to agree with you, terrible teachers must be gotten rid of ASAP.
on the other hand, when I first started teaching (ESL), I sucked royally, I was absolutely terrible, a complete waste of everyone else's time and money.
but after 3 months, I got better. after 8 months, I became great at my job. It takes time to learn how to be strict, fair and attentive.
Everyone goes in with the attitude that they are going to be the cool teacher that the students all love, it takes a while to learn that you are not there to be their friend. You are their teacher, it is your job to demand (and earn) their respect.
It's a very hard job and not everyone is able to do it.
but if you can't figure it out in 6 months, you fail, goodbye, may your village regain its idiot.
When I bought a new computer, winXP only added $6 to the system price, so I bought it, expecting to hate it, format and install 98. but i was stunned, XP was actually good!
stuff worked, but it was windows...a windows that works? i couldn't believe it.
plug and play didn't require restarts, hardware often worked without installing drivers. a program crash didn't take down my whole system, it was great.
im not an MS fanboy, i run ubuntu at home, but I do have to call BS on your accusation, and give MS credit for releasing one (and only one) decent OS in the 20 years they have been around.