I present: your child's homework!

[Jester]

I had one class in school where we were required to use the internet as our only source. We had to identify the specific sites we used, but the topic was pretty open, it just had to be as accurate as we could make it. He did it to prove to use that the internet was an unreliable mechanism for research.

The class I had where we had to produce a paper using only internet sources was a junior level political science class, and he was not out to prove the unreliability of the net, but rather to show us what a good tool it CAN be. (This was in the early 90's, too.) We had to cite every web source we used, by the way, so he could go check it later if he wanted to. It was damn hard, especially for the subjects we had. I don't remember mind exactly, but I know it had something to do with the fall of the USSR, and the impact that had on either Russia or the world (it's been a few years, kids!).

Keep in mind, while the wikipedias and googles of the net are unreliable, there is a LOT of good source material online, including (but not limited to) the online versions of the encyclopedias so many of you are citing. The trick, of course, is FINDING the good material. And that is what separates the good and hardworking net researchers and the lazy wikistudents.

[Lace Neil Singer]

The whole point of assignments like this are to learn how to do research. I loved doing research (maybe I was a weird kid) so I would have the Britanica and any other book I could find spread out on the floor. If the diorama couldn't be built with popsicle sticks and craft paper it wasn't getting made in my house (no trips to the craft store for spendy supplies).

Same here. ^^ I also used to love drawing pictures of whatever my project was about, or colouring in maps. XD I remember having a dinosaur project in primary that sent me into euphoria; at the time, I had a huge dinosaur obsession going on and had loads of models, books etc in which to do my project with. XD I got an A.

[worddork]

Hear for let's it Dyslexia!

When I was in School we had a set of Funk&Wagnel's that my brother and I used for all our porjects. The school we went to asked for rough drafts which our mom would type up for us (only while we were in 4th -6th grades, when we still did the peck and sreach method).

(ok with math i needed extra help and sometimes i would do the calculations and dad would write them down) it was very hard on me cause i have dyslexia.

I am as well, but I did not learn this until freshman year of high school, so my family delt with my math issues by getting permission from my teachers to use graph paper for my homework, this way the numbers stayed in nice straight columns. Spelling was a whole different problem, let's just say pocket dictionaries are never removed from my backpack.

[queenbb]

i didnt find out i was till frosh year either. i was tested several times, they prefered us to use graph paper for math, and yah forget the spelling. i was good at other things, and they said i would probably never learn to type. i finally concoured that one when i was in college and i needed to learn ms dos word perfect and type more than 22wpm i did all my home work on the puter, typed out my notes, i got even better when i started chatting on line. im up to about 45wpm now and 60 unclocked or more when im not transcribing.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I remember those days.

It's amazing how fast things have changed in the 10 1/2 years since I graduated from HS.

10 1/2 eh?

In 2008 I'll be out of HS for 20 years. Give it another 10 years and things will change a whole lot more until we can't see any resemblance to the way things were back then.

*goes back to popping Advil and counting gray hairs*

[Geek King]

10 1/2 eh?

In 2008 I'll be out of HS for 20 years. Give it another 10 years and things will change a whole lot more until we can't see any resemblance to the way things were back then.

God's truth, that.

I'm over 10 years out of college. Let me give you some of the truths when I graduated.

-Pascal and C (no + or ++) were the languages to know for programming. Something called Visual Basic was just catching on.

-We still had to use numeric format (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) to call up web pages. No DNS in wide use.

--A 15" monitor was badass huge. We had one 21" screen in the lab for page layout work done by the publishing/editing classes.

-CD-ROM read/write drives were just out, still very expensive.

-Bubblegum Crisis was the big anime series. Almost no one was into anime. One small shelf at Suncoast was what you had, and half of it was porn.


I'm sure others can top me, just giving some examples.

-Grown men would gather in the dorm lobby to watch Animaniacs and MST3K

[greensinestro]

10 1/2 eh?

In 2008 I'll be out of HS for 20 years. Give it another 10 years and things will change a whole lot more until we can't see any resemblance to the way things were back then.

*goes back to popping Advil and counting gray hairs*

I graduated 17 years ago, and it amazes me that the younger generation of folk I work with can't spell or use proper grammar worth a shit. I work with a few people that whenever they note an account (when they feel like it, that is), the notes look exactly like the street lingo they use on their own time. It's also really sad when the customer gets an e-mail copy of this, too.

[sms001]

They should do it the old-fashioned way, the way a bunch of kids in my dorm did it when I was at ASU: pay a dorm-mate who is good at writing to write your paper.

This is actually how I really realized that teachers are (gasp) real humans. I did a butt load of papers for others in high school. Because they were paying customers, I always did the other kids work first, so when it was time to do my own, it was almost always a rush job. But because of teacher perception, I consistently got better grades on what were, objectively, worse papers. I eventually realized that the teach was grading the person as much as the paper.

10 1/2 eh? In 2008 I'll be out of HS for 20 years.

Class of '78

goes back to popping Advil and counting gray hairs

Don't worry, that whole counting thing gets boring after a while

Quick threadjack DGC - tried Mattie's Perch (from the Wine! thread) and liked it quite a bit, thanks.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Class of '78

You're in good company . . . my b/f graduated in '78. Even though he acts like he's still 18, his body has been telling him otherwise.

Don't worry, that whole counting thing gets boring after a while

I noticed that. Tonight I've dealt with cramps in the fingers of my left hand. You know you're getting older when you pop your joints and you can hear the pop from across the room.

Quick threadjack DGC - tried Mattie's Perch (from the Wine! thread) and liked it quite a bit, thanks.

Glad you liked it. And that reminds me I need to pick up another bottle or two tomorrow after work.

[solemnwarning]

God's truth, that.

I'm over 10 years out of college. Let me give you some of the truths when I graduated.

-Pascal and C (no + or ++) were the languages to know for programming. Something called Visual Basic was just catching on.

C is a great language, I code in it
VB is too slow and unportable :P

-We still had to use numeric format (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) to call up web pages. No DNS in wide use.

No DNS?! What is this? Early ARPANET?!

--A 15" monitor was badass huge. We had one 21" screen in the lab for page layout work done by the publishing/editing classes.

-CD-ROM read/write drives were just out, still very expensive.

And now I've got a pair of 19" CRTs on my desk ^^
(And a DVD burner)

Do all you people getting drunk under that rock remember this too? o_O

[Seshat]

-Pascal and C (no + or ++) were the languages to know for programming. Something called Visual Basic was just catching on.

Modula-2 for a teaching language, C was The language to know. Prolog for AI, and Miranda for a functional language.

-We still had to use numeric format (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) to call up web pages. No DNS in wide use.

What's a web page? We were receiving internet access as reel-to-reel tapes with UUCP protocol from the bigger university upstream.

--A 15" monitor was badass huge. We had one 21" screen in the lab for page layout work done by the publishing/editing classes.

21" monitor? Keep dreaming. We did have Macs - black and white only.

-CD-ROM read/write drives were just out, still very expensive.

'big' games were produced with many floppies.

-Bubblegum Crisis was the big anime series. Almost no one was into anime. One small shelf at Suncoast was what you had, and half of it was porn.

A-ni-me? What's that? Oh! You must mean Speed Racer and Battle of the Planets. Kid's cartoons. I used to play Princess when my brother and I played that.

My first job out of Uni was nursemaiding two Vac 11/730s and a PDP-11 that interfaced to a card reader. When I left the job, we'd upgraded to the just-out IBM AS/400 series and a dot-reader that only read pencil.

We had colour macs, but the monitors for the AS/400 series were greenscreen or amber. Interfacing between the two networks was possible with a third party and semi-experimental interface box.

[K'Z'K]

I can recall exactly one school project my mother helped me on. When I was in third grade, we had to do a diorama on the Pilgrims (I lived in Massachusetts). I made a house and yard out of gingerbread and candy. Mom helped with making the gingerbread pieces and putting it together, but I did all the decoration, even lacing licorice around hard candies to make a fence. It was also my idea, inspired by the scale model of our house we had made the year before. It got an A *and* was delicious.

Now I'm teaching college (well, I'm a TA, as I'm a grad student)--the darn kids can't even figure out that when I say "no web pages" I actually mean "no web pages." I'm rewriting the guidelines for next semester to make this crystal clear. No really, Joe's Web Page is *not* a reliable source of scientific information, even if he gives it a spiffy title and sounds authoritative. No, Wikipedia does not count as peer review. And yes, governmental sites are known to be biased.

I can guarantee I will still get web pages.

-K'Z'K, spending her Friday night posting her students' grades online because they can't possibly be expected to keep their own records....

[zzapp the witch]

Geek King---NARF!

I was the only girl in college that would hang out doing her homework in the lounge with all the guys.

(I don't know, Brain, where can we find rubber pants our size this time of night?)

[ArenaBoy]

Off topic: Animaniacs was my favorite TV show, HELLLLOOOOO NURSE!

[DGoddessChardonnay]

And now I've got a pair of 19" CRTs on my desk ^^
(And a DVD burner)

Do all you people getting drunk under that rock remember this too? o_O

I do recall just a bit of COBOL and a smattering of RPG-II, both of which were taught in high school 20 years ago. Or rather, I used to be able to recall it.

BASIC . . . about the only thing I can recall from that is how to look up the contents of the drive using C:/Dir command. And I'm not sure if I recall that right, as I have barely used it since the 80's.

You know the saying "Use it or lose it?"

I think either I lost it or it ran away. *hiccup*