3 questions! fake post!

3 questions from rms10:

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

I actually read a lot of good books in 2006. I think my favorite would have to be either The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy or My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (I actually just finished Snow, and it was good, but it didn’t grab me the way My Name is Red did).

What is the biggest or most unexpected thing you’ve learned from teaching this semester?

Asking questions is really hard; Exam questions are pretty easy, because I have specific ideas of what they should be learning (gauging the number & difficulty of those questions is a different story!). But, asking questions in class that

1. elicit an answer from the class
2. cause them to actually realize something

Are very hard to ask. I’ve tried various forms of multiple choice questions (“so, given these things, what do you think the answer is”) and more basic questions (“in light of what we’re talking about, give me a property of X”), and so far it’s been hit or miss.
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I’ve been reading books & blogs on presenting and education, though, and that’s all proving very helpful.

All-in-all, though, I really like teaching; and the students seem to be learning things, too!

Where would you most like to live?

I’d like to move west eventually; either to california (not LA) or washington state. I also wouldn’t mind somewhere on the east coast (like near boston, DC, etc). Someplace that has multiple seasons and isn’t the middle of the country basically.

If you’d like 3 questions, drop me comment and I promise I’ll respond in less time than it took me to respond to rms10 (sorry!)