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Teaching, Learning, and SF Adventures
Jun. 14th, 2019 09:42 pmA good portion of this week was taken up teaching Introduction to Linux and HPC and Advanced Linux and Shell Scripting for HPC. They were a good class and quite switched on, even for people who were coming in with a relative lack of familiarity. It's a steep learning curve, but on the basis of the questions they asked (I tend to run classes more of an "interactive workshop") they were well on their way. Next week I have a repeat of the classes for immunologists at the Peter Doherty Institute. In my copious spare time at work, I've slipped in another conference presentation abstract and have continued work on my planned course for regular expressions, which I have been somewhat remiss in finalising - plenty of additions on speeding up grep added today.
In other teaching-related activities have expressed my displeasure at the intellectual laziness of the HPC Certification Forum in their continuing suggestions to use multiple-choice questions as summative assessment for the certification. I have argued, with backing in education theory, that they should be using actual practise on a real HPC system as a test of HPC system competency. For what it's worth my MHEd supervisor at Otago University agrees with the approach that I'm suggesting. Meanwhile I am making some progress with the last unit of my MSc at RKC/Salford for the dissertation, however, it seems that they have stuffed up my residency enrolment in Zurich; just as well I hadn't booked the tickets. For people teaching a postgraduate degree in information systems they're not very good at it.
All this aside, did manage to go out during the week, specifically for the Twilight Zone Movie at The Astor (and also an opportunity to visit Duke The Cat). The film was basically in the style of four of the old-style TV episodes, so it wasn't exactly all guns blazing, but it did have some nice plots with a dash of the macabre - and especially so given that people died in its production. Regardless of what is on at the Astor for me it is very much an opportunity to spend some time in front of a classic large single screen cinema and absorb the trappings of an old and slightly frayed deco beauty; after home and work it's probably the third most likely place one is to find me. The following night was science fiction adventures of a different fashion, with a session of Megatraveller, which involved dealing with the treasures of the Sindalian Empire - which turned out to be bacterial and nuclear weapons; whoops. I get the feeling that the ante of this story is arcing up and the poor ol' PCs are going to be on the receiving end of everything going wrong.
In other teaching-related activities have expressed my displeasure at the intellectual laziness of the HPC Certification Forum in their continuing suggestions to use multiple-choice questions as summative assessment for the certification. I have argued, with backing in education theory, that they should be using actual practise on a real HPC system as a test of HPC system competency. For what it's worth my MHEd supervisor at Otago University agrees with the approach that I'm suggesting. Meanwhile I am making some progress with the last unit of my MSc at RKC/Salford for the dissertation, however, it seems that they have stuffed up my residency enrolment in Zurich; just as well I hadn't booked the tickets. For people teaching a postgraduate degree in information systems they're not very good at it.
All this aside, did manage to go out during the week, specifically for the Twilight Zone Movie at The Astor (and also an opportunity to visit Duke The Cat). The film was basically in the style of four of the old-style TV episodes, so it wasn't exactly all guns blazing, but it did have some nice plots with a dash of the macabre - and especially so given that people died in its production. Regardless of what is on at the Astor for me it is very much an opportunity to spend some time in front of a classic large single screen cinema and absorb the trappings of an old and slightly frayed deco beauty; after home and work it's probably the third most likely place one is to find me. The following night was science fiction adventures of a different fashion, with a session of Megatraveller, which involved dealing with the treasures of the Sindalian Empire - which turned out to be bacterial and nuclear weapons; whoops. I get the feeling that the ante of this story is arcing up and the poor ol' PCs are going to be on the receiving end of everything going wrong.
