I like gimmicks in my teaching. I’m not sure that it is always good that I like gimmicks, and I certainly don’t claim that you gotta get a gimmick. I hero worship the brilliant lecturers of yesteryear such as Mike Deakin and E. R. Love, as well as schoolteacher equivalents (about whom I must write), who were entirely free of gimmicks. But I am not them and I like the gimmicks. For me, mostly, I think they add value. Continue reading “The Power of BISS”
I’m not sure I really feel like writing this post, particularly since I’ve already written it once: readers could simply read this PoSWW (and this WitCH would also not hurt), and I could go back to watching the Australians cheat at cricket. After the recent “right angle” screw-up on SM1, however, this post might be useful and the cricket will have to wait.
To be clear, this post is intended to be a challenge concerning VCAA’s bad writing, not a bad challenge to VCAA’s writing. But we’ll see; perhaps it will end up both.
I’ve attacked VCAA’s writing plenty often. Even when the focus of a post is some falsehood or absurdity, it is difficult to ignore when the falsehood/absurdity is wrapped in terrible writing, which is typically the case; Burkard’s and my 2022 exam critique had a section devoted to VCAA’s “poor writing”, and many other sections strayed into that territory; and I have had dedicated posts on both VCAA’s lesser and greater literary offenses. This post goes in the opposite direction; it is a challenge to identify VCAA’s good, or at least better, writing.
“We always aim to assess fairly and look to award marks rather than take them away.”
It is one thing for VCAA to be anal-retentive assholes, and it is another for them to lie through their teeth about it. Continue reading “VCAA’s Utterly Predictable Dickishness”
The bird problem was a question on Victoria’s 1979 HSC Applied Mathematics exam. I raised the question in my 2020 Mathematics in Hell talk (at 35:45), in order to contrast it with the “hardest” 2019 Specialist Mathematics Exam 2 question (QB5). It is a nice problem (which I still haven’t solved) but, for the time, was just another nice problem. The bird problem hardly deserves its own post but the problem was raised again by frequent commenter Red Five on a recent post. So, what the hell. Maybe I’ll post some others from the era (and go back and polish off the TNDOT).
Have I mentioned previously that I hate NAPLAN? Perhaps one can detect a hint, here.
I loathe NAPLAN, and I loathe the reporting and commentary on NAPLAN. It is not quite as bad as my title declares but it is damn close. To do a Lincoln, some of the people are wrong about NAPLAN all of the time, all of the people are wrong about NAPLAN some of the time, and most of the people are wrong about NAPLAN most of the time. Continue reading “Everyone Gets Everything Wrong About NAPLAN, Always”
This one is on a question and a half from the 2025 Western Australian “calculator assumed” Mathematics Specialist Exam (not yet posted). One of the questions was queried because Haese apparently screwed up a similar question, and the query was whether WACE might screw up similarly. We’ll have to wait and see. However that query plays out, regular readers will quickly spot the entirely separate reason to be here.
That was a hell of a show.
It was never the plan for me to go see Lady Gaga. Although she is obviously an excellent songwriter and singer and performer, I had never paid Lady Gaga much attention and it was going to be Ying taking Eva and Lillian. But, the way the tickets turned out – two seats here and two seats there – it made sense for me to join the party. I am very very grateful that I did. Continue reading “It Was Pretty Gaga”
My very first concert was just short of sixty years ago, to see Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. My father and my brother Jeff were also big fans of the TB, and so it was a great thing to do. I can remember very little about TB’s performance except for the trombonist doing some probably obvious but, for child-me, funny goofing around. For some reason, I better remember the warm-up acts, Bev Harrell, and Bill and Boyd. Harrell, whose name I (and pretty much everyone) had long forgotten, sang very prettily and undoubtedly sang her lovely minor hit, What Am I Doing Here with You. I also really enjoyed the gentle harmonies of Bill and Boyd, and I have a specific memory of their very pretty Cloudy Summer Afternoon.
I remember the concert more as a shared experience with my brother and father than as a musical event. Why? Maybe that is natural. But maybe it is because we were far from the action in a large and cavernous venue. That venue was the heritage listed Festival Hall. Continue reading “The Dead South at a Dead Venue”