Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

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

Yesterday I finally submitted all the grades to two whole sections who had the week to be able to submit requirements, either the documentation of the robots they made throughout the term, or finishing their final project for the course.

Thankfully, when I approached the head of the registrar’s office about it, she said instead of having to submit one form per student (as is the procedure) I can just pass one letter per class, to make it less additional work.

Of course one of my fears came true, which was as the deadline neared, the groups in my Energy Conversion class would ask to downgrade their initial proposal to something simpler to finish faster, but which also pulled down their grade.

It couldn’t be helped though, as I was not present in the lab the whole time to look over them in their progress, which would have been like a virtual whip to them, and I couldn’t be too strict on them because it was not their fault that the school being closed due to two days of class suspension and the finals week not being moved gave them less time to work.

This was also the reason I had to restrict my structural revisions to matters of safety, such as filing down the point of a nail used as an electro magnet, and covering with electrical tape any exposed un-insulated wire in their set up.

For one group, I thought they were going to submit a Styrofoam car with wheels taken from the robotics construction kit, but thankfully for their water-pressure powered vehicle they eventually glued a plastic bottle onto a toy car.

They just used the light weight robotics set-up to demonstrate first that the principle works.

Let’s just hope that in the next Innovation Week exhibit, their projects will prove to be Integrated School durable, which has been the bane of every good project demonstrated so far.

@@ In other news, Ephraim approached me for academic advising today, first assuming that he passed Introduction to Robotics. Either way I told him he could not, because he hadn’t taken up some of the courses whose theories would be used in the application of robots, such as switching theory, computer circuit fundamentals and interfaced computer systems. That left him with only ten units to enroll in, including his Waterloo, computer programming (intermediate) which is the pre-requisite to the first subject of robotics.

Session 1803 really should consider a change of course or a change of school. Class dismissed.