Monday, December 14, 2009

My Office


Here is where I work. Here's a tour from left to right. On the left is one of my servers. It serves my research methods ideas database (private, sorry) and sometimes others (e.g., for candidates for our job searches). Next is my window air conditioner, possibly the most important piece of equipment of all, given our hot summers along with the fact that the building is not cooled from Thursday night until Sunday mornings in the summer. The gooseneck lamp, too, is vital as my eyes get older. The small television is connected to the local cable system and comes in handy when I am doing mechanical work such as grading tests from a key. It stays off when I'm trying to write. It's on top of an old 13" RGB monitor (just in case I ever get another Apple II+) and it's on top of a large speaker. The huge 24" screen belongs to my three-year old, ailing, out-of-warranty iMac. It can no longer be trusted, alas. About once a week it decides to enter an endless loop featuring the spinning Mac pinwheel icon. Fortunately, restarting it seems to kick it out of its misery. There are two phones. The one nearest the foreground no longer has a working line connected to it. It used to be connected to our long gone modem server (remember those days?). That phone is gone now, freeing up some desk space. The scanner between the phones only scans slides now; it's main scanner bulb is weak, plus it costs more to buy the bulb than to buy a new scanner. The stereo works and the wire hanging down from the ceiling is its FM antenna. It's in the only orientation that will receive a good signal. Under the scanner is a 12 port router connecting all of the computers to the Internet and to the local printers. Barely visible on top of the router is my next to last cell phone. It only serves to forward my calls to its number to my new phone. Last on the right is one of the world's fastest System 9 laptops. It was built as aG4 OS X machine but its hard drive died. At about the same time one of our G3 laptop's boards crashed. You can guess the rest, the G4 now holds the G3's old drive, presto. I use that laptop for my old HyperCard materials and for Mac WordPerfect files. So, believe it or not, nearly everything here has a purpose. The office chair is mine. We bought it at an auction long ago. It's more comfortable than it looks. Good thing, I spend lots of time on it. The drawings on the wall are mostly my daughter's work. The stuff behind the iMac is mostly notes to myself along with some wistful thinking about motorcycles. Fortunately I don't really want another one but I will take a two-seater sports car.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Poster Session

The Research Methods II class had their first ever poster session today. Students presented their research projects for about an hour in their classroom. Students from other classes and faculty viewed the posters and interacted with the authors.

In chapter 12, we describe some of the dynamics of poster presentation:

  • "Poster sessions usually take place in large rooms equipped with easels and large blank poster boards. Presenters are assigned a poster board, and they use it to post materials describing their research. After they post their materials, presenters stand next to their poster and wait for viewers (their audience) to file by. Interested viewers may pause, read the posted materials, and discuss them with the presenter. Poster presenters usually have copies of a complete report to give to those who are interested."
Here are some pictures of the event:



Kudos to Dr. Brittney Schrick, the new instructor of our Research Methods II class, for putting on the poster session.