Nonfiction reviews/Dark Matter

[rivkat]

Dark Matter: OK, I'm three episodes in and I see that this show, too, put Firefly in a blender with more mainstream tropes.  I approve of this development, though I can't say I have any love for nu!Jayne.

Comments

[rheasilvia]

Glad to hear you like it, even if nu!Jayne hasn't grown on you! (I am interested in hearing how that goes, btw... I really, really didn't like nu!Jayne for the first half of the season or so. Like, *really* not. Now I am wondering who I can bribe to write all the slash. He grew on me like a particularly nasty fungus

[rivkat]

I hope it doesn't let us down too! I accept the possibility that I could change my mind about nu!Jayne. (I used to think Jensen Ackles was a nonentity, in Dark Angel and Smallville.)

[destina]

Thanks for the review of Howard's book. Since I'm going to be teaching a class as an adjunct in a few months (due to a fit of temporary insanity), this was very interesting to me. I've been explicitly discouraged from grading participation, and my hands have been tied regarding how I'm allowed to do it if I decide to buck the official frowning-upon participation points receive. (It can't be more than 5% of the total grade.) That point of view irritates me because it smacks of educators not caring whether or not their customers show up to learn once they've coughed up their tuition.

[rivkat]

I think that's short-sighted, though my current teaching gig also sharply limits what can be done with participation. I'm not even allowed to have a midterm that isn't anonymized! One workaround is to ask for post-class questions: after I reviewed my notes, I still had a question about ... I think this works well, and you can just give it points for turning in a question, so it's an up/down thing.

[rivkat]

I should also note that I don't think it's a "customer" mentality driving this--instead it's a fear that grading participation becomes a source of favoritism/bias and a hassle to deal with if a student challenges a grade, since unlike papers/quizzes participation can't be reviewed by a third party for objective indicia of meeting class goals or not. Most educators, in my experience, care greatly about whether their students learn, though it's possible to be ground down by a bad combination of students & administrators.

[runedgirl]

psychogeography...interesting...