Archive for June, 2015

Should Academics be (Facebook) Friends with Students?

Posted in Biographical, Education with tags , , , , on June 30, 2015 by telescoper

I noticed a short article in the Times Higher last week about a small survey that concluded that more than half academics count students among their Facebook friends. It’s actually a very small survey – of 308 academics, all based in America – of whom 54.4% admitted being “friends” with students.

For those of you who don’t use Facebook, a “Facebook friend” isn’t necessarily an actual real-life friend, it’s just someone else on Facebook with whom  you agree to share information, photographs, music and other stuff. Different people have different policies with regard to whether to accept or decline a friend request (or indeed initiate one). I only ever accept requests from people I know in another context, for example, which restricts the number of people who get to see my Facebook scribblings. Others are less selective and have many many more Facebook friends.

One of the things about Facebook is that people do sometimes share quite personal things, and sometimes things that might be quite compromising in a work context, e.g. pictures of themselves ina  state of inebriation. I suppose that’s why it’s a rather  contentious whether a member of academic staff in a University should or not be “friends” with their undergraduate students. I know many of my friends and colleagues  in academia flatly refuse to befriend undergraduate students (in the Facebook sense) and indeed this is the advice given by some institutions to staff. Most wouldn’t have a problem with having social media interactions with their graduate students, though. The nature of the relationship between a PhD student and supervisor is very different from that between an undergraduate and a lecturer.

There is a point on social media where professionalism might be compromised just as there is in other social interactions. The trouble is knowing precisely where that boundary lies, which is easy to misjudge. I’ve never felt that it was in any way improper to be friendly to students. Indeed I think that could well improve the students’ experience of education. If the relationship with staff is too distant students may not  feel comfortable asking for help with their work, or advice about wider things. Why should being “professional” mean not treating students as human beings?

One can take friendliness too far, however. There have to be some boundaries, and intrusive or demanding behaviour that makes students uncomfortable should be avoided.

I’ve thought about this quite a lot since I joined Facebook, which was in 2007. What I decided to do is simple. If a student initiates a friend request, I usually accept it (as long as I actually know who it is). Not many make such requests, but some do. More often, in fact, students send friend requests after they’ve graduated, when they perhaps feel liberated from the student-teacher relationship. On the other hand, I never initiate friend requests with students, for fear that they might feel pressured to accept it. It’s much the same as with other interactions.  For example, I rarely visit the extensive Student Spaces in the School without being invited there for a specific reason. If I did I’d just feel I was intruding. Many universities don’t bother to provide study space for their undergraduates, so this is probably only relevant here in Sussex.

Anyway, that’s my response. I know it’s a sort of compromise, but there you are. I am however interested in how other academics approach this issue. Plus, I haven’t done a poll for a while. So here we go:

 

 

SpaceX – the Anatomy of an Explosion

Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on June 29, 2015 by telescoper

Yesterday an unmanned Falcon-9 SpaceX rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. All seemed to go well. At first…

Here’s a super-slow-motion video of the terrifying explosion that engulfed and destroyed the rocket:

I’m no rocket scientist – and no doubt a full expert analysis of this event will be published before too long – but it does seem clear that the problem originated in the Stage 2 rocket. I fancy I can see something happen near the top of the rocket just before the main explosion started.

It’s not easy putting things into space, but we shouldn’t stop doing things just because they’re hard.

 

It is important that the DfE publish correct science content in their GCSE subject content

Posted in Education with tags , , on June 28, 2015 by telescoper

You would think that the people in the Department for Education who draft the subject content for GCSE science would know stuff about science…

Sadly, it seems not…

Sadly, it seems this is not the case…

Teaching science in all weather

Yesterday I posted this reaction to the publication by the DfE of the GCSE_combined_science_content (copy taken – original link here). Others, including @alby and @hrogerson have written and commented about this as well.

[Another update: in the comments Richard Needham from the ASE has reminded me that over the next few weeks QfQual will be using these documents to ratify the Exam Boards’ science GCSE specifications. Not a good situation.]

[An update: the DfE released the GCSE_single_science_content in another document (original link here). Some of the errors below including the kinetic energy formula have not made it into this document and the space physics is obviously only considered interesting enough for the triple scientists. I will check the rest.]

I thought it relevant to post some specific points (just from the physics section – which didn’t even appear correctly in the table of contents). Now…

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Stonewall and After – in Praise of Drag Queens

Posted in Biographical, History, LGBT with tags , , , , on June 28, 2015 by telescoper

Despite not being able to go to the big event in London yesterday, it’s been a very memorable Pride Weekend, preceded as it was by the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States of America that the right for same sex couples to get married was protected under the constitution. The White House responded to the judgement in appropriate style:

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I’m tempted to quote Genesis 9:16, but I won’t.

My facebook and twitter feeds have been filled with rainbows all weekend, as is my wordpress editor page as I write this piece. It’s been great to see so many people, straight and gay, celebrating diversity and equality. Even a Dalek joined in.

Gay Dalek

I’m a bit more cynical about the number of businesses that have tried to cash in on  Pride but even that is acceptance of a sort. It’s all very different from the first Pride March I went on, way back in 1986. That was a much smaller scale event than yesterday’s, and politicians were – with very few exceptions – notable by their absence.

In fact today is the anniversary of the event commemorated by Pride. It was in the early hours of the morning of Saturday June 28th 1969 that the Stonewall Riots took place in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. There are few photographs and no film footage of what happened which, together with some conflicting eyewitness accounts, has contrbuted to the almost mythical status of these demonstations, which were centred on the Stonewall Inn (which, incidentally, still exists).  What is, I think, clear is that they were the spontaneous manifestation of the anger of a community that had simply had enough of the way it was being treated by the police. Although it wasn’t the first such protest in the USA, I still think it is also the case that Stonewall was a defining moment in the history of the movement for LGBT equality.

One of the myths that has grown up around Stonewall is that the Stonewall Inn was a place primarily frequented by drag queens and it was the drag queens who began the fight back against intolerable  police harassment. That was the standard version, but the truth is much more complicated and uncertain that that. Nevertheless, it is clear that it was the attempted arrest of four people – three male (cross-dressers) and one female – that ignited the protest. Whether they led it or not, there’s no doubt that drag queens played a major role in the birth of the gay liberation movement. Indeed, to this day, it remains the case that the “T” part of the LGBT spectrum (which I interpret to include Transgender and Transvestite) is often neglected by the rest of the rainbow.

I have my own reasons for being grateful for drag queens. When I was a youngster (still at School) I occasionally visited a gay bar in Newcastle called the Courtyard. I was under age for drinking alcohol let alone anything else – the age of consent was 21 in those days – but I got a kick out of the attention I received and flirted outrageously without ever taking things any further. I never had to buy my own drinks, let’s put it that way.

Anyway, one evening I left the pub to get the bus home – the bus station was adjacent to the pub – but was immediately confronted by a young bloke who grabbed hold of me and asked if I was a “poof”. Before I could answer, a figure loomed up behind him and shouted “Leave him alone!”. My assailant let go of me and turned round to face my guardian angel, or rather guardian drag queen. No ordinary drag queen either. This one, at least in my memory, was enormous: about six foot six and built like a docker, but looking even taller because of the big hair and high heels. The yob laughed sneeringly whereupon he received the immediate response of a powerful right jab to the point of the chin, like something out of boxing manual. His head snapped back and hit the glass wall of a bus shelter. Blood spurted from his mouth as he slumped to the ground.

I honestly thought he was dead, and so apparently did my rescuer who told me in no uncertain terms to get the hell away. Apart from everything else, the pub would have got into trouble if they’d known I had even been in there. I ran to the next stop where I got a bus straightaway. I was frightened there would be something on the news about a violent death in the town centre, but that never happened. It turns out the “gentleman” concerned had bitten his tongue when the back of his head hit the bus shelter. Must have been painful, but not life-threatening. My sympathy remains limited.

I think there’s a moral to this story, but I’ll leave it up to you to decide what it is.

Open Day in the Sun

Posted in Uncategorized on June 27, 2015 by telescoper

Just back from a day on campus at an Open Day for potential students at Sussex University (and an afternoon getting on with work). I think the day went well, and it was nice to get some good weather for a change!

Anyway here’s a picture I took as things were starting to wind down this afternoon.

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Now I am going to make myself something to eat and chill out with a glass of wine..

It is so ordered..

Posted in LGBT, Politics on June 26, 2015 by telescoper

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I never expected to be moved to tears by the eloquence of a court judgement, even if the margin was as narrow as it could have been (5-4).

Reading Day

Posted in Uncategorized on June 26, 2015 by telescoper

Taking a day off. Work-life balance and all that. Still, I am making use of time by catching up on some reading..

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I’m Prayin’ Humble

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , on June 25, 2015 by telescoper

I haven’t posted any Jazz for a while and given the apparently controversial nature of one of my recent posts, what could be better than a track called I’m Prayin’ Humble?

This Gospel-influenced Swing Era classic was recorded in 1938 by Bob Crosby’s Orchestra and it features the red hot plunger-muted trumpet of  Sterling Bose. For those of you who weren’t aware Bob Crosby had a brother called Harry who went by the nickname of Bing. Anyway, his band (Bob’s not Bing’s) had a very distinctive sound all of its own, and some fine soloists.

Sussex University Memories – MAPS in 1989

Posted in Biographical with tags , , on June 24, 2015 by telescoper

I was at a meeting this afternoon doing some planning for a nice event coming up next month – of which more anon – when I was reminded of this photograph, taken one sunny day on the University of Sussex campus way back in 1989. It shows staff of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences which was MAPS, acronymically speaking, in those days; now it is MPS. The picture is taken from a very interesting website of the history of physics at Sussex.

800px-MAPS_photo_1989_colour

I was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Astronomy Centre in those days. I wonder who can spot me in the picture?

Men in skirts? Why not?

Posted in Uncategorized on June 24, 2015 by telescoper

I’ve often thought that, especially in this weather, a skirt would be rather comfortable.

Anyone know where I might be able to buy a nice manly skirt?

I’ve always said that in the future men will wear skirts (dresses) as much as women. I’m still trying to explain myself why during all these centuries men didn’t dare to wear a skirt (respect goes to Scotland men)?

Wearing skirts has so many advantages – it’s comfortable, it makes your skin breathe, it gives you more freedom when you move… What is so wrong with that? Man have ugly legs? So what? There are lots of women with ugly legs too and they are allowed to wear skirts. Men have something women don’t (you know what I’m talking ’bout)? So what? It’s even more on show when they wear skinny jeans or any other tight kind of trousers – if you want to stare you stare!

Just don’t tell me that there must be something to make women and men different! As if you can’t distinguish a woman from…

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