Troubles, troubles

02.22.2005

First, I wasn’t able to send email out. From anywhere. None of my settings changed, but I couldn’t send email out from either the campus wi-fi, or the Rocket Star wi-fi. Other people, it seems, were having the same trouble. We could receive email, but not send. Regardless of platform (Mac v. Windows), regardless of servers, and regardless of email client. Very odd. Nothing on slashdot.org about this. I could send webmail, and my Treo worked. But not through a wi-fi network on a laptop. Very, very weird. But it’s working at my home wi-fi network. Anyone have any idea what this was about? Or did this happen to anyone else?

Second, seems none of my 345 students read the one chapter assigned for today. So instead of a discussion on the difference between ethnic political movements in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru, we were reduced to me lecturing point-by-point what the chapter said. All very basic knowledge. I now have two options for Thursday:

  1. Do nothing but lecture, take no questions, just read through a pre-written lecture, stopping to wake people up, perhaps even walking up & down the aisle.
  2. Do nothing but randomly call on people and ask very specific questions about very specific (but obvious) elements of the chapter.

I’m leaning towards option #2, since it also gives me a chance to see who (if anyone) read the chapter. Option #1 is, clearly, the more radical & antagonistic of the two options.

Third, still no STATA license from university computing services. Grrr.

And don’t forget. Call WIDR 89.1 FM tomorrow (Wednesday) from 7-8pm (269-387-6303) if you’ve anything to say about our university president.

Posted by Miguel at 07:09 PM

Comments

I would lean toward the second option too. N.

Posted by: Nenad at February 23, 2005 07:34 AM

I agree with you and Nenad. Another tool that you might want to use with this group is the quiz. I know it sounds so...secondary schoolish. But if these folks won't read the text, you might have to motivate them a bit. Calling them out individually will be a little bit embarrassing for some, but that too may motivate folks to read the text. ...or stay home if they haven't read it. But why the hell are they in that class in the first place if they're not going to do the reading? (sigh)

Posted by: j.scott barnard at February 24, 2005 08:26 AM