50 shades of graphite November 1, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, teaching.Tags: colors, grading, pens, pink
2 comments
This seems like an odd thing to ponder, but it makes sense to my currently sleep-deprived brain: does anyone know how people tend to react to ink color? I know a lot of my students get upset when they see red ink. I tend to use gel pens, however, and use a lot of pink and orange in particular for grading. The funny thing is, they almost seem to think this is neat or cute. (This is somewhat surprising as most of my students are male: I would’ve expected them to roll their eyes at me for being stereotypically female because I use a pink pen…) Lime green is another popular color.
Honestly, though, it seems like they react far more positively if I stay away from using the dreaded red pen. They’re also more likely to read my feedback. Last year, they requested me to use pink in particular when one student chuckled about his comments being written in that color. I told them there were other possibilities, too. No, they wanted pink.
Has anyone else observed this?
And yes, I’m aware the graphite is used in pencils and not pens. I just couldn’t come up with a more catchy title.
Old-fashioned tech November 12, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in writing.Tags: pens, writing
6 comments
Inspired by Massimo who was inspired by Cath.
Stealing IP to talk about IP October 25, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in teaching.Tags: intellectual property, lab notebooks, lab reports, pens
2 comments
This week, I decided to talk with my students about keeping lab notebooks and writing lab reports. I figured it would be good to find additional references for my students, so while I was surfing, I came across Colin Purrington’s excellent commentary on lab notebooks. (Penn State also has a good reference site for engineering writing.)
I was particularly amused by the experiment showing that gel pens used some of the most resistant inks as I’m a huge fan of Zebra Sarasa pens. (No, I’m not getting paid by the company, but I wouldn’t mind if I did. Or at least a few free pens…) ;-)
Anyway, I was looking at something later, and I saw a familiar looking chart…and it turned out to be the one from Colin’s page. It was in a video discussing keeping notebooks to protect intellectual property…used without attribution.
How ironic. Colin embedded the video in a blog post of his own. Go check it out. :-)
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.