Valuable skills

Today's lab on mapping the magnetic field went pretty well content-wise, but there were a couple of procedural WTF moments. First of all, I gave a quiz on error analysis at the top of the class like I said I was going to. It took me less than ten minutes to make up the problems and solutions, so I figured it wouldn't take people very long to get them right; they were what I'd consider pretty simple. Well, apparently not; out of five people who took the quiz, we had two scores of 1/5, and I have a feeling that they got the one point purely by guessing on the one question that was a 50/50 shot. That was disheartening, but if I made the quizzes any easier I'd get bored with them. I can't exactly change the subject matter, anyhow.

And speaking of the number five, it's also odd that we had five people taking the quiz, for there are six in my section. One worthy soul missed class the last time around, then emailed me asking to go over the material I'd covered. Since I work in the tutoring center Tuesday and Friday afternoons anyway, I figured it was no big deal, and I basically retaught everything to him in ten minutes. (It only took about 30 to do it during class; there just wasn't that much.) This was around 1 PM today. Said worthy didn't show up to class until about 3:55, by which time we'd finished the quiz. I don't know where he got off to in the intervening hours; the tutoring center is in the same building as the lab, so I don't know why he didn't just stick around since he knew there'd be a quiz, but... whatever!

Finally, there was the poor soul who needed me to walk him through sending an email with a file attached. I... don't really know what to say about that, except to wonder if it's 1995 again. I understand that not everyone has a computer at home, likes the things, etc etc -- but it's 2007 and you're a university student. Like it or not, a certain level of computer fluency is no longer optional, and knowing how your email works is one of the most basic of skills. I really hope this does not become a bigger headache when we start using LabView to take data on things... like we do next class, in fact.

I give up

Everyone else has a damn Blogger, so now I have one too. I suppose that I'll remain true to my title and post about the physics lab I'm teaching this summer.

Friday's class: Lab manuals still aren't in, and won't be until Monday-ish, so I taught them about error analysis basically off the top of my head. Out of five people, about two were obviously paying attention, one guy was more or less asleep in the back, and the others are a mystery to me. We'll see if their quiz grades on Tuesday bear this out. I told them repeatedly what I'm going to be asking them, so really nobody has any excuse.

Technically speaking, we're supposed to be doing a lab on Ohm's Law on Tuesday, but since I've never seen the lab manual and won't until the day before the lab, who knows what's going to happen? This will be fun for everyone. Thank God for the Monday setup meeting.