In which mac 'n' cheese, formative assignments and quiz rounds are fed back...

Schlurp, yum.
Image by mallydally

It came to me yesterday, whilst eating copious amounts of exceedingly yummy, real American mac 'n' cheese in hono(u)r of the lovely Emily's birthday, that I have neglected this blog for a while. Whilst I will claim assignments, the truth is that they were handed in 2 weeks ago, and simply stressing about the results is NOT a productive use of one's time. It certainly doesn't excuse my recent lack of procrastinating on Blogger.

In any case, I'm pleased to announce that the work that went into the assignments was largely heading in the right direction, and I'm generally pleased with the results, especially as they're my first pieces of academic work in well over a year. However, there is no room for complacency, as these were only "formative" assignments, and therefore do not count - they exist purely for feedback.

Bad feedback, good feedback.
Glasvegas = usually bad.
Image by adaylikesunday

This in itself I find A Good Thing. Masters is a whole new level, especially after time away from studying, and it's great to have the opportunity to work up to the important summative assignments (which DEFINITELY count). But in that case, you have to actually receive feedback on what you've done, because I'm nowhere near perfect yet (shocker). In one case, the assessor's feedback was meticulous: detailed, comprehensive and clearly tailored to each person's work, despite the fact that each piece was one of 40 or so. In another case, the written feedback was there, but we will also have a one-on-one with the assessor to discuss areas for improvement. And the third case?

Now, this blogpost is certainly not intended as a forum for bitching or slagging or vilifying anyone, so I refuse to partake in any of the above. But as we are required to put in a lot of time and effort, it is so disappointing when a) your result isn't necessarily the one you hoped for and b) constructive suggestions for improvement are not really forthcoming. Feedback seems to be a recurrent issue throughout institutions, departments and levels of study, which only highlights its importance to students of all descriptions. However, there's also a large element of helping yourself get out of holes, so I see a LOT of pre-prep and chasing lecturers in my immediate future.

Quiz goddess.
Image from accessinterviews.com

In other news, the reading load remains relatively under control, I'm planning to start a reading journal to keep track of what I've actually been sifting through, and I'm starting to gather ideas together for assignments and dissertations. Myself and Becky F, the other crazy person taking Directed Readings in Syntax, have plans for a very exciting (read: geeky) project for the Spring term and, AND...I've just managed to quiz, buzz and somehow inveigle my way onto the University of York University Challenge team for 2012! As captain! Can I follow in the giNORMous footsteps of Trimble, Guttenplan and Chan (apologies to the Manchester captain who actually got it instead of Trimble, but...)? This remains to be seen, but Leonhardt, Virgo, Haines and Woods will give it a bloody good go. I wonder what kind of feedback we'll get from Paxman...?



Will those eyes be boring into us soon?
Image from Wikipedia



Thing 10: Nota Bene, or else please, don't bother noting at all...

Thing 10 is the first time I have ever used online note-making/file organisation tools, for want of a snappier way of referring to them. As I about two weeks behind, I have tried to keep my observations as unbiased as possible (even though I couldn't help reading Gareth's hilarious reflections here)...

Pushnote. Before I even signed up I wasn't sure of how much use it would be to me. Luckily this was cleared up for me quite soon: it is of absolutely no use whatsoever.

Who are your notes for? And why would anyone want
to read them? Photo by styro

The main problem is that it seems to have cause and effect round the wrong way. As Aidan notes, it is self-defeating from the off if you view people's comments on sites you visit, as the site itself is there to be viewed and explored, and can probably speak for itself far more eloquently than most Pushnote users. As an example, the comment "a wholly remarkable site" on the BBC homepage constitutes nothing more than wholly remarkable hyperbole. Furthermore, the stream of {un}consciousness from 'friends' commenting on any old site is not as effective a way of sharing links as, say, Twitter or Facebook. This is probably exacerbated by the fact that my stream consists almost solely of Stephen Fry who, love him as I do, seems to get a little bit overexcited and just mark everything as 5-starred. I find that his link suggestions on Twitter have far more impact, not least because they're at one remove from the site, and therefore must have taken a little more consideration. (Having said that, one of my favourite Pushnote comments was on twitter.com, and read "this one [site] is good if you have capacity for digital noise". Exacte.) In fact, there are so many things that I could say about the pointlessness of Pushnote that it's pointless to even keep going.

So, if you haven't already guessed, I won't be using Pushnote again. It adds absolutely nothing to my use of the internet. Would Evernote fare any better?

From the off, the premise seems to make a lot more sense. I interpreted it as a kind of mixture of a bookmarking site and a kind of scrapbook for photos and bits of text - essentially what I've been using Google Docs for, as I mentioned here. It looks more professional than Pushnote and is clearly better developed in terms of the FAQ pages and suggestions for ways to link it in with other products (plus, like many others, I love the little elephant logo)! There is some new lingo to deal with - the slogan "remember everything" grates, and it took me a little while to realise that 'folders' are now called 'notebooks'. There are also some little issues which slow you up, for example the fact that there is no way to cancel or abort a new note if you decide it's going nowhere, and the fact that it doesn't copy across the complicated layout of some websites very well. It takes a little bit longer to familiarise yourself with than Pushnote, but then again it's a far more sophisticated programme (sorry, couldn't help it!) One of the features that I particularly like is the facility to email things to your account through a special email address (which is alterable if it starts receiving spam), though the fact that you have to enter locations by latitude and longitude smacks of a bit of self-aggrandizing nerdery.

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways...but Evernote
shows promise. Photo by .Bala

In summary, it's not perfect by any means, but I think that it could develop into a useful tool for me. It could even come in handy for my postgraduate studies next year, as it seems a more friendly and flexible way of dealing with links at the beginning than just ramming them straight into a bibliographic program.