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

Returning to my discussion about the students asking for excused absences in my classes, they, in fact, had a letter they were supposed to have signed. Their teacher in Filipino requiring them the event, did not want to sign the letter because it was not in the language she taught them. Other than that, the two students asking not to attend my class were not even required. They were just asked to model by their friends. But their Filipino teacher did excuse them in her class, even though it was not in the time of the event.

Last time I also mentioned another disreputable practice that another teacher here is apparently practicing.

It’s dragging students into this multilevel marketing scheme he’s in. Not only is he questionably getting people who have no personal and steady source of income for his own profit (let’s leave out the question for now whether there is grade compensation involved), but he is bringing them to his seminars under dubious circumstances (telling them it is a football varsity meeting or a P.E. survey).

Of course there is also the dubious use of classrooms (not officially reserved, most likely) for their seminars.

This one, just like the first teacher, again, has to be reported by the students to the proper authorities (such as the dean) to be investigated.

The Advanced Mathematics class was the last one before their hands on exam. I told them this time to emphasize on the last example, which was the product of to sinusoidal functions instead of the sum or difference, just so they can see the pattern of getting the amplitude scale, time shift and time scale of the resultant functions.

I recommended looking at different functions, even though I did not give it to them.

I also already made them draw lots as to the times they will be taking the twenty minute exam. It would have been thirty minutes per exam if there were a third more computers to work with than there are without the working software.

On the fifth day of the tenth week of classes they had the first original competition in the Introduction to Robotics class. This is based on a local kid’s game where a kid has to pass a line another kid is guarding. The groups or robots have to have two modes or programs: defensive and offensive, when they are guarding the line or trying to pass the line another team is guarding.

There were six teams, where the one with the most wins would get the perfect grade for the project (4.0), and the last placer would get a grade of one-point-five, no matter how many losses they incurred.

Of course there were teams who used brute strength in their programming, just going straight forward at the line (using the timing of the programmer’s pressing of the On button) during offense, and just letting their robot move back and forth across the line during defense (either using touch sensors when the robot hits the wall, or after a certain time has elapsed).

Of course there was a standard width and length their robots had to have.

But I’ll continue this tale next time. I just heard the bell. Class dismissed for now.