The light at the end of the tunnel
I’m not saying that the village where I live looks like this all the time, but occasionally, it does … and it’s quite nice when it does.
Let’s continue my “photo posts” series with two portraits of Albus who is a German Shepard, which is pretty obvious to most people. Although big, he is a wonderful and very kind dog, who seems to be very fond of children … and cats … but the cats are not fond of him.
For those who speaks Swedish: jag antar att alla andra vet om detta men “schäfer” betyder bokstavligen “fåraherde” … det är mindre än ett år sedan jag lärde mig detta !!
Kime no kata
Jag insåg plötsligt att det är ganska sällan att jag lägger upp några av de bilder jag tar. De hamnar oftast på något annat konto, på nåt ställe där ingen hittar dem eller så laddar jag inte upp dem alls.
Det vore nog bra om jag ändrade på detta, så jag börjar med en bild ur dem samling jag sitter och redigerar just nu. Denna är en ögonblicksbild från en gradering till 5:e dan i ju-jutsu kai, det som du ser är en händelse i katan Kime No Kata som ska utföras just till 5:e dan (det är den enda katan i hela systemet numera).
Datavetenskap 30 år
Under året har Datavetenskap firat 30 år och den 4 december var det lite speciellt. Anställda och före detta anställda bjöds in till ett litet event på eftermiddagen följt av en kombinerad jul- och 30 år middag.
Eftermiddagens event var att fyra personer berättade om sina erfarenheter från att ha jobbat/studerat vid institutionen. Christina Igasto berättade om hur gått från att vara student/doktorand i Umeå, till att nu vara chef på en stor myndighet i Australien. Bosse, Lennart och Erik gav en översikt om institutionens historia.
För mig var det intressant att höra hur programmen skapades. Jag pluggade/jobbade i Luleå under samma tid och där var (är?) historieskrivningen rätt annorlunda. Mitt intryck, jag har egentligen inga insikter, var att Luleå tyckte att det fanns en informell överenskommelse mellan vilka program som skulle erbjudas i Luleå och vilka som skulle ges i Umeå. Sedan så bestämmer sig Umeå för att gå in på områden som Luleå ansåg vara deras. Jag uppfattade det som att det var många i Luleå som var rätt upprörda.
Neglect is expensive
Sigh, just discovered a few things that’s going to cost me some money.
I have a couple of flashes that I used to use a lot, this meant that I had a fair number of AA batteries. About 1.5 year ago I bought a Godox flash with a special battery (+ one extra battery) and I’ve been using that flash exclusively since then. This means that my AA batteries have been left unused since then … and uncharged.
Yesterday, I decided to try a camera that I haven’t used in a long time, so I put the camera batteries in the charger, and also started to charge my AA batteries. And … very sad face … it seems like all my AA batteries are dead, I’ve tried several different chargers but the batteries don’t take any charge at all.
Even worse is that the camera batteries doesn’t seem to charge either, when I put the first one into the camera - after charging it - I got a message “This battery can’t be used”.
In short: look after your batteries!!
Students who cheat
Sigh, here we go again. It’s time to look at what some students have done (a possible case of plagiarism), try to decide if I should make an official case of the whole thing and send it to the Disciplinary Board, or just tell them to avoid doing this again. Every so often I get the feeling that they time these things deliberately, just so I have more to do when I’m already really busy.
But these things make me sad. Allow me to explain: One part of my job is to handle all cheating cases at my department. This means that:
- I need to get the course responsible teacher to lay out what has happened in a way so that I understand what has happened.
- review the evidence,
- interview the students, and get their explanation of what has happened,
- decide if this is a case of actual cheating or just some kind of mistake,
- in some cases, document what has happened and hand it over to the Disciplinary Board.
What makes me sad is that the students don’t seem to understand the consequences of being discovered cheating. During my interviews, they usually explain the entire thing with “We were collaborating to finish the assignment before the deadline, then we made individual solutions based on our discussions”. These individual solutions frequently contain the same texts with the same formatting, the same spelling errors, code that is all but identical, solution design that are exact copies of each other, etc., etc. In short, to meet the deadline, they take the decision to cheat. But they fail to consider the following:
- The university-wide rule is that you can do every test three times, this includes assignments, written exams, or anything else that is a part of the examination. This means that they can just say, “Opps, I can’t hand in this before the deadline. OK, I do as much as I can, and then finish it before the next deadline”.
- If they get caught cheating, they will be temporarily suspended from any kind of course work at the university. This might result in missing exams, missing a whole course, missing assignments, etc., etc. This in turn will affect the number of “course points” (ECT) they get, and this might have consequences for student loans, etc. It might also influence if they can follow the suggested course work for their program, or if they have to wait a year before being able to complete a course. All this can delay their graduation!! In short, a minor problem suddenly coursed some real problems for the students.
So, while the sentencing might seem “lax”, the ripple effect might cause real difficulties in the future. Fortunately, this is a worst-case scenario, the usual result is that they will be temporarily suspended, and then they have to do spend extra time catching up.
And yes, we try to explain these things to the students, but unfortunately not all of them seem to listen/understand.