Archive for November, 2008

Name that grade

November 1st, 2008 | Posted in studies | No comments |

NEW YORK - Certain initials may look better than others as monograms but they can also have an impact on how well a person performs in a sport or at school, according to a new study. Researchers who studied the impact of initials found that baseball players whose first or last name starts with the letter K, which signifies a strikeout, tended to strike out more often than other players. And students whose names start with the letters C or D, which denote mediocre marks in some grading systems, did not perform as well as other pupils with different initials. More: Name initials ...
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Now open

November 1st, 2008 | Posted in meta | 2 comments |

I've started a dissertation webtext. Whereas the Ungrading blog is the place where I toss around every academic idea I'm working with, the webtext is the actual dissertation-in-progress in electronic format. It's still technically a blog with 20 posts and a commenting function, but the presence of the CommentPress system enables me to create a linear text while still enjoying the benefits of paragraph, section and whole-text comments. In short, you'll see more writing here, but it'll be better sorted and organized there. So check it out! My proposal (already approved) will appear there in a few hours, followed by dissertation ...
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It’s the red pen’s fault

November 1st, 2008 | Posted in studies | No comments |

Cognitive Daily discusses the findings of two interesting studies that suggest that simply seeing the colour red makes us perform worse on tests. The articles discuss a couple of elegant studies by a research team, led by psychologist Andrew Elliot, which confirmed that seeing red makes us tend to do worse on tests. They then set about trying to understand why. In a second study, students were given test booklets with the title in one of several possible colours. Interestingly, those who had booklets with red titles tended to choose easier questions... More: Mind Hacks: Seeing red can really affect performance
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Remark

November 1st, 2008 | Posted in meta | No comments |

"Seems like people usually talk about power as a zero-sum game – somebody has it and somebody else doesn't. But in some cases a teacher might gain a little power and a student might gain some, too. It's not really taken from anybody." – Tom Newkirk, in response to my dissertation proposal
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Catching on

November 1st, 2008 | Posted in CommentPress | No comments |

There's a new user of CommentPress in comp-land: Glenn Blalock and CompPile are using it to allow comments on roundtable statements from the WPA 2008 conference.
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Here goes!

November 1st, 2008 | Posted in meta | No comments |

Okay, I'm starting to send people here, so let's get started on this blog! Things will gradually start appearing here soon.
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