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The 10 Most Creative Final Exams Ever Offered

Category: By News Updates
Ah, finals. A monotonous, stressful rite of passage for high school and college students around the world. Controversies regarding their ultimate efficacy have resulted in schools as notable as Harvard purging final exams from the curriculum altogether. But educators still need a way to ensure the material sinks into their pupils’ brains, and the more innovative ones out there have whipped up some viable alternatives. Many prove far more applicable to the syllabus than a mere test, making it far easier for students to visualize exactly how everything works. Check out some of the following when searching for inspiration about creative ways to wrap everything up without lessons unsticking.



1. Allowing students to whip up their own final exams
University of Texas at El Paso’s Robert M. Esch and Mimi Reisel Gladstein published quite an interesting article in the September 1975 issue of College English. They proposed the elimination of the traditional final exam structure in favor of something far more autonomous: letting students organize their own. With the right course, such a plan would allow them to show off exactly what they’ve learned that semester in the manner most befitting their unique learning styles.

2. Advanced Newsweek


Journalism students at University of Gloucestershire spend their last week of class applying their lessons to real-world problems rather than rehashing them out through essays and exams. Advanced Newsweek challenges them to operate their very own news conglomerate, with online, television, and radio branches - and all the stressors that entails. One can easily see how this final exam alternative benefits soon-to-be graduates in the long run!

3. Service learning

Spanish students under Lebanon Valley College professor Kathleen Tacelosky partnered up with local elementary school kids (some of them around 6 years old) who speak it as a primary language for a unique final exam blending in mutually beneficial service learning. Participants from both linguistic traditions assisted one another in correcting accent and grammar issues in addition to teaching them some brand new vocabulary words. Once the educational experienced wrapped up, the college crowd formally presented a summary of what they learned from the eager youngsters from Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

4. The Great Cardboard Boat Regatta

Funny enough, a final exam of all things wound up spawning a widely beloved event drawing thousands of participants and even more viewers. Southern Illinois University art and design professor Richard Archer thought he’d challenge his students to prove their mettle in 3D with a practical, but super fun, wrap-up project. The Great Cardboard Boat Regatta asked them to design and race, well, cardboard boats. And ONLY cardboard boats! Entries also had to be large enough to fit human passengers. Archer’s brainchild proved so wildly popular, non-students began trying their hand at his test, and the idea quickly spread to different states.

5. Climate Showcase

In an effort to encourage sustainability in the community without financially overburdening Baltimore’s nonprofits, Johns Hopkins puts its environmental engineering students to work. Climate Showcase requires them to perform free assessments and inspections on these organization’s energy efficiency, and they have to visit two a week before releasing their findings. The charities benefit from the gratis advice — which saves them money in the long run — and the students learn firsthand how their lessons apply to everyday life.

6. Customized Voight-Kampff tests

Immediately, every Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Blade Runner fan has probably perked up. ACT test developer, writer, and editor Tracy Rae Bowling, back in her teaching days, once headed up a composition class with a robotics theme; specifically, they narrowed in on the resulting existential and ethics issues and the Uncanny Valley phenomenon. When finals time rolled around, she decided to take advantage of their recent foray into analyzing Ridley Scott’s film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s beloved cyberpunk classic; Blade Runner features the Voight-Kampff device to differentiate between flesh-and-blood humans and their robotic Replicant counterparts so sophisticated they could very well be organic. Students were tasked with drawing up their own rubrics meant to help Rick Deckard and the other Blade Runners make the distinction.

7. Disaster simulation

High school science teacher Kristen Mahoney struggled to make her classes realize the real-world implications behind her Environmental Systems course, because they kept questioning the lessons’ relevance. So she gave them a choice between the typical research project and paper and a 26-hour disaster simulation based on Ron Zaraza’s model — and a curious 22 out of 24 sprung for the latter. Participants received no prior instruction or warning about what the event would entail, and they found themselves faced with a chicken pox epidemic they could only quell with the knowledge gleaned in Mahoney’s class. Mission accomplished.

8. Hovercraft competition

Science may have denied humanity jetpacks for now, but freshman-level engineering students at University of Maryland are paving the road toward the best invention ever in the annual hovercraft competition. A requirement of the Introduction to Engineering Design course, they must design and construct an unmanned structure within some pretty stringent guidelines. Then compete them in a challenge whose parameters change every year.

9 .Musical revue

It makes sense that a musical theater class would conclude itself with a slam-bam spectacular, like the showcase presented by University of Rochester’s Kim Kowalke. Students cobbled together their own performance of more recent showtunes and titled it “City of Strangers,” and they invited the public to both showings for free.

10. Q&A participation

Rather than writing up a final exam essay, enrollees in the Introductory Sports and Recreation Management course at Tiffin University were required to submit questions to a mandatory question and answer session with an industry professional. Miechelle Willis, Ohio State University’s Senior Associate Athletic Director, answered queries regarding day-to-day running of college athletic programs as well as special events.

 

Indonesia earthquake: Why no tsunami this time?

Category: , By News Updates
Wednesday's Indonesia earthquake was similar in magnitude to the devastating 2004 quake, but there was no tsunami. The difference? Location. 


A powerful earthquake and aftershock struck the Indian Ocean off of northern Indonesia Wednesday, triggering tsunami watches and evacuations throughout the Indian Ocean basin, from Australia to Kenya.

The first temblor, a magnitude 8.6 quake, struck at 2:38 p.m. local time, along a segment of a fault on the sea floor some 269 miles southwest of the coastal city of Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh province. A second, 8.2 magnitude quake struck two hours later roughly 120 miles south of the first quake's epicenter.

Both quakes occurred at relatively shallow depths – 14 miles and 10 miles – beneath the sea floor, according to data gathered by the US Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

So far, the quakes appear to have done little damage and caused no fatalities, although people felt the shaking as far away as the east coast of India. In Banda Aceh, many residents streamed into the streets when the shaking began, according to press reports from the city.

Memories of the disastrous December 2004 earthquake and tsunami remain fresh. The event left 230,000 dead throughout the Indian Ocean basin as the tsunami in some locations reached heights of up to 90 feet.

Though both of Wednesday's large quakes join the magnitude 9.1 event in 2004 event as “great” earthquakes – the strongest of six categories – the initial temblor Wednesday reportedly pushed only a 30-inch-high surge of water onto Indonesia's west coast.

In addition, the 2004 event released nearly six times as much energy as the first quake that struck on Wednesday and some 22 times more energy than the second.

The difference? Location, suggests Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center.

The 2004 rupture occurred along the northern reaches of a subduction zone that hugs the west coast of Indonesia and defines the arc of Indonesia's islands.

The quake occurred in a section of the zone where a vast patch of crust known as the Indian plate is sliding beneath the much smaller Burma plate. Quakes along such subduction zones tend to generate the planet's most violent temblors because the surface areas sliding past each other are large.

Researchers estimate that the patch of the subduction zone affected in the 2004 quake covered an area roughly the size of California. The amount of slip along the length of this patch was 50 feet.

Along the deep-sea trench that marks the subduction zone, the quake lifted the overlying crust several yards. The sudden upward shove along the length of the rupture zone generated the enormous tsunamis the region experienced.

Today's quakes occurred farther offshore and on a different type of fault, Ms. Vaughan explains.

The faults involved Wednesday are so-called strike-slip faults that sit squarely on the Australian plate, another of the plates forming the subduction zone off Indonesia. Strike-slip faults tend to be vertical cracks in the crust. This means that the plates usually slide by each other without radically altering the height of the sea floor.

By contrast, the thrust faults along a subduction zone run diagonally downward from the sea floor as one plate slips under the other. This increases the possibility of disturbing the height of the sea floor. It also means the area of the surfaces sliding past each other is much greater than during a strike-slip rupture.

“We've had a series of these occur since 2004,” Vaughan says, referring to undersea quakes on the Australian plate. The most recent occurred in January – a magnitude 7.2 quake whose epicenter was only about 13 miles from that of the 8.6 quake on Wednesday.

The faults involved in Wednesday's quakes are oriented in the same direction as the general direction of travel the Australian plate itself is following, suggesting that the ruptures are tied to the plate's movement, although to some degree the event also may represent the crust's continued adjustment to the major change the 2004 event brought to the region, Vaughan says.

 

Japanese Students Not Hot on Study Abroad

Category: By News Updates
Study abroad isn’t just a luxury, these days it’s a rite of passage for many students around the world. While more and more students in Asia and the U.S. are venturing overseas, a recent survey shows that just 57.2% of Japanese students, once the prototypical image of expat learners during the bubble, are interested in an overseas academic experience.

The survey, published by the Japan Youth Research Institute, polled over 8,000 students from China, South Korea, Japan and the U.S. in 2011. Even though 58.1% of Japanese students had been abroad, they ranked lowest of the four countries in terms of interest in a study abroad experience. In comparison, 82.4% in South Korea and 62.5% in China and were interested.

So why has enthusiasm waned in Japan? It’s not economic reasons, as only 19.5% of Japanese said that money was a barrier. And it’s not because they’ll miss home – only 10.3% said that was a consideration, compared with 30.4% of Chinese, 54.2% of Koreans and 58.1% of Americans.

The biggest reason that Japanese students cited for not wanting to study abroad was that life in their home country was easier at 53.2%, followed by “language barrier” and “lack of confidence in living alone” with 48.1% and 42.7% respectively, three criteria that the other students also ranked highly.

It could be due to apathy among Japanese boys. Some 20.4% of Japanese high school boys surveyed said they had no interest at all in study abroad, the highest of any of the countries surveyed. In comparison, 65.9% of Japanese girls said they were very or somewhat interested.

The lukewarm enthusiasm for study abroad in Japan is not a surprise given other recent data. Up from a low in 1986 of only 14,297 students, the number of Japanese study abroad students has been declining since it hit a peak of 82,945 in 2004, according to the OECD. In recent years, their Asian counterparts seeking an academic experience abroad have surged, and 2.25 million Chinese studied abroad in 2011.

The survey gives some indication of why this might be so when it breaks down the reasons that students do want to study abroad. While all of the 42.1% of Japanese students who wanted to study abroad said they one day wanted to work in an international setting, only 14.4% said going abroad would help them get a job. That’s much different from the goals of Chinese students, many of whom gave better academics abroad and better chances of being hired as incentives for leaving home.

Most Japanese companies have fixed hiring schedules and only accept graduates immediately after they have left school. The rigid system could be a deterrent to Japanese students, compared with their Chinese, Korean and U.S. peers who don’t face such strict hiring practices and might be more flexible to study abroad while at university.
 

Don’t buy a new MacBook Pro right now, slimmer 15″ notebook on deck

Category: By News Updates
13 inch MacBook
If you're shopping for a new laptop, patience is extra virtuous at the moment


Apple is a company that launches products like clockwork, so it's safe to assume we aren't exactly reading the rumor-steeped tea leaves when it comes to its regular hardware updates. According to reliable Apple blog AppleInsider, some major authorized resellers have found themselves suddenly shorthanded when it comes to stock of Apple's mid-sized high-end laptop, the 15" MacBook Pro. When Apple stops shipping a given product, it's the telltale sign of a refresh just around the corner.


It would be no surprise if the company decided to reinvent the MacBook Pro line, which now looks decidedly huge in comparison to the svelte MacBook Air line of ultraportable notebooks. After doing away with the MacBooks of yore, Apple has positioned the MacBook Pro line as its more heavy-duty portable computing family, but benchmark tests show that the MacBook Air runs circles around just about everything out there.

If Apple is indeed getting its ducks in a row for a refresh, a 15" version of the MacBook Air - which is currently only available in 11" and 13" models - could be very much in the cards. Aside from trimming down the MacBook Pro's chunky design considerably, such a notebook would likely sport a solid state drive, the non-mechanical harddrive that's mostly to thank for the MacBook Air's remarkably zippy performance.
 

Amazon makes the recipe for humanity available in the cloud

Category: By News Updates
It's becoming more and more popular these days to back up your data to the cloud. Your iPhone does it. Your tablet does it. And one day, perhaps soon, your doctor could be able to send a backup of you to the cloud.

The concept sounds far fetched, but that's exactly what Amazon and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are up to. The collaborative effort is called the 1000 Genomes Project, and has already compiled 1,700 human genomes - essentially, the recipe for making 1,700 different people. Previously, this kind of data was only available to researchers by mailing data disks back and forth. The Amazon initiative now makes all that data available to genetic researchers via the Amazon cloud.

Already, the project has amassed 200 terabytes worth of data on human DNA, and is on track to add another 100 terabytes' worth of data soon. Researchers believe that by having so much data on human genetics readily available, they'll be better able to home in on the role genes play on disease. According to Matt Wood, head of the project at Amazon, "This is the seed to create a tree of data."