Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

In my 230pm class, I showed them the questions before I took attendance. One student said that the twenty horizontally straight lines were a little difficult to read, but I said that was the largest font size I could find. I know she was a bit offended because she said I should ignore her suggestion then.

Another student (female) asked - entering the room with the questions already on the screen - if she could just photocopy the questions afterwards, as I had expected with any transparency I project on the screen. I told her she could but the questions for the test on Friday will still be projected on the screen.

When a student (male) commented that the students could just be given individual copies of the questions on Friday, I said that this type of test was part of a study on how well students did on different methods of giving exams. I assured them that this was the only time they would have the test questions projected on the screen.

They were able to answer all the questions, although I had to remind them again about how to solve the more difficult questions, the ones asking the time/s when a certain constellation is visible. I wrote on the board the same procedure that I had already given them when we first discussed that type of question. But that’s the purpose of the review after all: to make sure that all the students are clear on how to answer the questions.

There was one student who only gave his index card yesterday. He was able to recite also, but when I checked my records I was not able to check his attendance for three of the seven meetings we have had so far. That is a failure on his part if he tries to complain to me about the bonus he will receive (if ever due to attendance). He should have been the one to notice earlier that his classmates were submitting index cards, and were being called from their index cards.

Just to be sure I also wrote on the board my consultation hours. The same male student from earlier looked at the range of times I had listed and asked, “Sir, are those the times when you are visible?”

I also received another batch of astronomy related articles, although some of them were just photocopies, of articles that they had found on their own or of the same ones that their classmates got I’m not sure. Now I realize I should have told them at the start of the term about there being higher points for unique articles not submitted by other students. Either way though, there is a minimum bonus for articles that several students have submitted.