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

Just got back from the system sports fest, where up to eight schools from the NCR/Laguna/Cavite area competed. Surprisingly, our team, despite having the least number of members, won in half of the events and thus was best overall, but more about that after I’ve talked about how my Friday was.

Returning to where I left off yesterday, I started the discussion on the fourth cycle of nature to all my classes yesterday, seasons, after the establishing activity about ellipses. I was able to reach the part about differences between sunrise and sunset at different latitudes especially during the solstices. The usual reactions ensued about the fabulous nightlife in Alaska with sunset and sunrise being 21 hours apart.
This is actually a table that I display row by row on acetate, that also garnered the same complaints about copying the whole thing down, and which led to a suggest to just photocopy the transparency.

Which is why I don’t put everything (except for the illustrations of the constellations) on visual aids. Lazy crammers will always think to just reproduce the teacher’s own notes, when MY years of teaching have shown that note takers in class recall more during the exams. So when I write it on the board, they are forced to write it in their notebooks. Luckily no one (that I have seen) has turned technology to his or her convenient use and just photographed what I write on the board. Thankfully I think digital image resolution in phones isn’t that fine yet.

I concluded all three lecture-sessions with a lead-in to the galaxy simulation exercise, now that we have discussed periodic motion in the universe. This time, unlike in previous terms, I also told them that the video camera and film could be shared with other groups, instead of forcing them to bring 8 to 10 cameras per class.

The only difference was that in my 1250pm class, I had them perform the ellipse activity for the first half of the class, and scheduled the analysis for the second half.

Not surprisingly, with this class, there were people who went out of the room after the period had started, because they didn’t bring the materials for the activity and would just buy them at that moment from the bookstore. And this is the class wherein I asked them to designate someone to bring the pack of thumbtacks and the ball of string/yarn for the entire class, instead of one pack and ball per group, which seemed a waste to me.

At least the person who brought the yarn delivered. They didn’t have any thumbtacks though because the bookstore was out of stock. I could have just gotten a box from the department, I doubt it would have been misappropriation of supplies, but knowing how irresponsible this class was I didn’t want to have to ask them for the tacks back afterwards. So I just told them to take their chances “borrowing” unused tacks from the several bulletin boards along the corridors and between buildings. They were able to produce them, although I don’t know if they were unused or if they removed posters to get them. And I don’t know if they returned them.

Which brings me to what I thought would be the most difficult part of the day: dealing again with the student who cheated. But I guess I’ll be recalling that incident on electronic paper next time, when, hopefully, I’ll be a little less subjective.