Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Precisely! A Writing Exercise for Science and Engineering Classes

Julie Reynolds and Steven Vogel "Precisely! A Writing Exercise for Science and Engineering Classes". Journal of College Science Teaching: MarApr 2007; 36, pp.30-33

This exercise is designed to demonstrate to students the importance of precision in language. The students dissemble a device and write instructions on how to reassemble it. A classmate must then reassemble the device following the written instructions and give feedback about whether or not the instructions were clear.

One students comments: "Overall, I think the exercise was extremely useful and I did learn things that I will apply to the writing of my thesis." p. 33

Cheers,
Pat the Librarian

Update August, 2007

1. I am pleased to say that the Physics Grad Society (PGS) sponsored a session for me with the new grad student class at Cornell as part of the orientation program. Thirty grad students attended--a mixture of new grad students and "older" grad students. I hope that this session will become a permanent part of the new physics grad student orientatiion program at Cornell.

2. While surfing the net, I came across this page "Writing for a Math Class". It might be helpful in planning for integrating information literacy into any science class.

http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/writing/index.asp#instructor

3. My tutorial "Mining the Hidden Web" , which I give at every AAPT meeting filled far in advance of the summer meeting in Greensboro. As usual, it was a lively and interesting session. One web site new to me is teachertube.

http://www.teachertube.com/

4. I also like the video "Databases" on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nik3pyJwaYI

Cheers,
Pat the Librarian