Darth Honsum: CP1101 The Art of Class Participation

Module Outline

Overview
In the recent years, Class Participation (CP in short) has played an important role in our IP’s GPA scoring system. In gist, Class Participation is the marks that students are fighting for every time just to get their grades pushed up and often teacher just don’t care. 首先, for example, “某某人” from an 05IP class got somewhere 84.4 in his/her maths module earlier this year and the his/her maths teacher was not willing to do ANYTHING to help him/her to push up the grades. 其次, another 某某人 from another 05IP class got 84.4 for his/her physics module and when he/she asked his/her physics teacher for marks, the teacher was unwilling to give grace (which we always beg for) and don’t even know that 0.1 mark more will allow him to get an A+. 除此之外, there are many more examples out there which involves getting a B instead of C+ and getting an A instead of B+. This makes the grades of every IP student to be rested on the hand of our (to a certain extent) “sadistic” teachers.

WE, the IP students must not be foolish and let them control our fates!

WE, the IP students must learn to grab ANY class participation marks by hook or by crook for a few more points on our report cards!

WE must OWN IT ALL! (Grades of course… what else?)

Hence, there is a need for students to learn about Class Participation!






Module Outline

History of Class participation
Since we have only started on class participation about a year ago, there hasn’t been much data recorded except for imba students that managed to spam all the KM discussion board to a degree that KM has to be shut down for a week for maintenance and removing those spamming posts.

Types of class participation being explored
1) Asking a lot of questions – asking questions is VERY important (just like the passage given for Higher Chinese O’ Levels). Not only it opens the treasury of knowledge but it gives us marks! To ensure students ask as many questions as possible, classes of every subject will be extended from 50 mins to 1 hour 30 mins and the teacher will only get to teach for 30 mins while the remaining hour will be meant for students to ask as many questions as they can.

2) Ask smart questions - REALLY SMART questions - Quantity may not be equivalent to quality. So the level of difficulty of questions raised in class will be very important as well. However, the level of difficulty is somehow related to the time required to answer the question. Based on a research done by Dr. Onn-dray from the University of Cheemilogy, Singapore, it is theorized that X = K*(cube root of Y)^5, given that Y is the level of difficulty, X is the time required to answer the question and K is the subject-constant, a constant that is dependent of what topic that the question is asking about and the teacher who is replying the question. Eg. Philosophy will take a longer time than Maths. This theory is also known as the Theory of Cheemilogy.

Hence, he differentiated equation, which is dX/dY, maps out the rate of change of time required with respect to difficulty. These lead us to an entirely new branch of Einsteinian time-space physics: how to create negative time by creating negative difficulty.

3) Socratic Seminar – the module will teach students on the history of Socratic seminars and explore the advantages and disadvantages of Socratic seminars. Advantages: Everyone gets to come together and learn! And secondly they can just say what others just said and get some marks for Class participation. Disadvantages: Smarter people have a VERY HIGH tendency to dominate the seminar and also tend to argue on a particular subject in such minute detail that the rest have no idea what on Earth they are talking about.

Recent research also shows that choosing the correct place to sit is crucial in getting marks for CP. Why so? One of the many reasons is if the person sitting you is a very smart person and he/she has so much things to talk about and runs out of time, you can borrow his/her note and contribute to the discussion!

4) KM Discussion Boards – the bulk of the module will be on KM discussion boards. Given that students pay 30 bucks every semester, they must know how to use it! KM is not just about downloading all the MI lectures, which Mrs Tan has already taken away, and downloading all the notes when you have not been listening in class! There are so many uses of KM that people don’t know! Hence, to make students feel worthwhile spending the $30 (per semester), this module will teach most of the features and usages of KM to the students. The art of discussing online is very crucial given that as much as 5% of module grades can de dependent on KM discussions.

5) Any more? – More types will be explored in years to come.

Analysis of Class participation

All forms of class participation will be analyzed and by analyzing negative examples, students will learn not to repeat their mistakes. Negative examples would include: Asking dumb or lame questions (e.g. Eesha), keeping quiet throughout 2 hours of Socratic seminar or repeating what has been repeated for 3 or more times and no posting on KM frequently even if you don’t know how to post something. Some of these analyses done by students are considered as surprise test and marks will be counted for their module grades.

Module Assessment
1) Worksheets (10%) – Students will be given comprehensions with passages based on previous posts and compositions written by their seniors or other famous authors. Comprehensions will be similar to Higher Chinese O levels with lots of personal response questions, and questions about the literary skills of the writers, little questions will be copy-and-paste forms as this defeats the purpose in understanding these well-written works.
2) On-the-spot response (20%) – Students will be given 5 minutes to prepare on a topic given by the teacher. This forces the students to think on the spot and stretch their minds to the fullest. This is because students have to be prepared for the situations where they just have to crap on the spot during Socratic seminars or when the students only have several minutes left to post something on the KM discussion boards.

*Under the joint-collaboration with the University of Cheemilogy, a simulator would be designed and built by Dr Phuah-2-rong (PhD in higher order social skills) to simulate real life situations where quick-thinking would be put to test, i.e. when 10 different girlfriends wants calls you and demands to have dinner with you

3) Question-based assessment (20%) – On a particular day, most probably during assessment week, the teacher will walk in and teach the class about a particular topic of ANY SUBJECT. Students are required to think of AS MANY questions as possible in the remaining hour. Students have to strike a balance between the quality and the quantity of the question as these two aspects in questioning are given equal weightage. (If the teacher chooses to talk about philosophy… there is a slight tendency that students get higher marks, as most students tends to ask more)

4) Muscle Fitness test (20%) – Given that students have to raise their hands often to ask questions, there will be fitness test to test the fitness of the arm muscles of the students. Students will be given 1 minute to raise their hands as much as possible. Their hands must be as straight as possible as students will have to attract their teacher’s attention during classes, if their hands are not straight, then that “raise” will not be counted. The scoring system is as follows:

60 times ---> 20%
55 times ---> 18%
50 times ---> 16%
…
10 times ---> 0%
5 times ---> -2%
0 times ---> -4%

Do not be astonished by the number of hand-raises a student has to do to get full 20%, in our interview with Dr Onn-Dray, we learned that he did a staggering amount of 120 hand-raises in just 1 minute! What’s more, he is the current world record holder for the most number of hand-raises in 60 seconds! The record he set was 150 hand raises in 60 seconds and he is challenging his own record next year by aiming to do 50 more!

5) Essay (20%) – Students will have to write a 1000 – 2000 word essay about class participation and its importance. *Note: there will be NO plus minus 10% in the word count though it is quite hard to spot students that exceeded the word limit. The following is a sample essay structure:

- Introduction (开头)

- Reasons (原因)
o俗语说: “吃得苦中苦，方为人上人” raising up your hands very often can be very tiring, but makes you a better person
o “心灵的空虚，充足精神上的需要” class participation enriches one’s spiritual life, something that money cannot buy

- Effects (影响)
o Students will be stoning in class
o NJC will not be as vibrant, though its vibrancy now is quite limited already
o Student’s arm muscles will not be as developed. This is crucial to male students as they need to prepare for NS.

- Suggestions (建议)
o Parents must force their children to raise their hands more and teach their children the importance of class participation (灌输真确的价值观)
o Schools have to give all-rounded education and not just focus on knowledge-based learning (不能一味灌输书本上的知识)
o Government should organize more events to promote the importance of class participation and the drastic effects to its economy, military and society.
o The media should come up with educational programmes to teach students how to use the KM even MORE effectively. (spamming of discussion boards will be censored by the government)

- Conclusion (结论)

6) Class inparticipation (10%)
Ultimately, we come to class inparticipation. Class inparticipation in the class participation module is judged according to a student's skill in not participating in the class, since it is absurd to have class participation in class participation. Students are judged according to their skills in stoning, mugging, and doing everything except speaking up. The module tutors believe this is essential, because of Dr Oon-dray’s proposition that "should there be matter, there is anti-matter.” It is impossible to make students realize what class participation about without an anti-class participation.

Suggested supplementary materials:
- Salonpass or other sorts of pain relieving creams for arm muscles
- Calcium and Iron supplements for development of strong bones
- 5 in 1 DVD of documentaries on social relationships and communication skills produced by Dr Phuah
- Book: “How to ask smarter questions”, Eesha Shah, 2006
- “An idiot’s guide to Socrates”, anonymous, 1995
o Note*: to know more about Socratic seminars read page 117 ONLY (just that 1 page out of 1000 pages)
- “报章读后感合集”, 明日, 2003 – 2005, though this is in Chinese, but the structure of essay writing is essentially the same, students may chose to use some of the 常用句 from the book in their essays. The writing techniques are also important. E.g. 反复，排比，引用，举例

************

H3 Class Participation
Selected students that excelled in the module of CP1101 will be given a chance to take H3 Class Participation. These talented students learn much more about Class Participation (like duh) and may even have the honor to work with Dr Onn-Dray and Dr Phuah, assisting them with their respective research areas.

Dr Onn-Dray is currently working on a new type of energy drink to allow students to raise their hands for one full hour! If successful, his students will also have the opportunity to design an advertisement (which requires the team to write a 10000 word creative brief and come up with a visual ad that last for 10 seconds – Dr Onn-Dray has run low in funds after spending the bulk of his sponsored money on the research itself)

Dr Phuah is currently working on a newer and better version of the simulation program that he wrote a few years ago. His current research would require students to work out the probabilities of different number of girlfriends trying to call you at the same time and requesting for the same thing (i.e. dinner or a 3 hour French-kiss in a public toilet) and the finding ways to increase the probability of a particular event to happen i.e. French kissing.

On top of research attachment, students are required to write a 5000 word thesis on the morality of actively participating in class. A sample topic would be: Given that if some students tend to be more active than others, they will get to learn more, and depleting the chances of other students. However, this defeats the MOE’s idea to give a fair education to everyone! Will promoting class participation be an act of utilitarianism? Or it is based on the virtue ethics that everyone has with them as they grow in a particular environment?

H3 Class participation also the student to do more than 60 hand-raises per minute, hence it is decided that PT-Trainer Dan Hong will be invited to give PT to those that are on the brink of failing. Mr Dan Hong has already planned out a programme to train student’s fitness and most importantly to train their arm muscles which must be perpendicular to the shoulder. Some of Mr Dan Hong’s ex-students said that Mr Dan Hong can do 300 jumping jacks non-stop even when the temperature is only 10 degree Celsius and he is wearing only T-shirt and shorts!

upgrading plans

as you all might have realised, boredlela is a blog "for the bored people, and by the bored people". that's why we always come up with stupid stuff to help bored readers overcome their boredom (and ours, too)

so here's the deal. if youre seriously bored, you can contribute to this blog by coming up with:

a title for our blog replacing the "we have seriously no idea what to name this blog", since that was, implied by itself, randomly created without much thinking.

a slogan for our blog

an advertisement (nope, please dont do it the LA way. do it the boredlela way. this is for those who seriously have nothing better to do.)

a better description for our blog

any other good suggestion you can think of

PLUS, you can also donate to the owners of this blog** :))))))))))))))))))))))) :::::::::::::::::::::)

Paypal/NETS/ez-link/government bonds not accepted

in return, you get, uh, heartfelt thanks from us, and... something to do when youre bored.

**just kidding.

Beanbag: Emophilia the Hereditary Disease

Introduction
Emophilia is the name of the hereditary genetic illness that impair the individual’s ability to enjoy life. Genetic deficiencies affect mental, emotional and spiritual aspects so as to compromise normal thinking. Consequently, the individual's physical activity is influenced, and this difference in physical activity is one of the telltale signs of emophilia. When an emophiliac person (or emo person in short) is pissed, he or she will stay pissed, and continue to be excessively pissed for a very long period of time. In serious cases, no piss-stimulus is required to trigger off an emo spell.

History
The first record of (EDIT)emophilia* is in Egyptian burial records which tell of an emo Pharaoh, Khanvintrietphien, who ruled really really terribly. The Pharaoh abolished the mandala-ish/patron-client political system, and replaced it with despotism (which was dam screwed cos he was a freaking emo despot). It should be noted that he was so emo, that not even the Jedi Master Chamie Jinn could stop him. Historians commonly refer to this period as the "dark abyss".

Jedi Master Chamie Jinn

After Khanvintrietphien’s death, a 5-day coup followed, in which each and every one of his children was butchered and burnt in Thebes (thus resulting in the invention of the campfire). A new Pharaoh ascended the throne, and the Egyptians attempted to erase the records of this incident from their history. It is believed that the 5-day “cleansing” of the emo gene from ancient Egypt was unsuccessful, due to the escape of one of Khanvintrietphien’s 5000 daughters, Telizabethayereo. By the strength of her feet and her trusty camel-steed, Telizabethayereo escaped to the neighbouring lands of Nubia, where she got caught in the earliest recorded nuclear test ever. Experts say that radiation from the blast mutated the emo gene, weakening its emo effects on the individual. Rumours say that Telizabethayereo survived the nuke, and managed to pass the new, watered down emo gene on to future generations.

In the 12th century, the Chinese expert in muscle aches, Kloria Ghoo, wrote of a muscle-aching family whose males predominantly exist in a moody state. However, she failed to elaborate further in her research paper, and therefore only scored a C, consequently missing an A plus by 0.002%.

Then, in the 1800s, Dr. Hason Jo, a physician who was allergic to Philadelphian cheese, wrote an account about "an emotional disposition existing in certain families." He recognized that the disease was hereditary and that it affected males. He was able to trace the disease back to a woman, Lazel Hee, who settled near Johor Baru in 1720. He attempted to go back in time using his prototype time machine, but failed miserably and died.

The first usage of the term "emophilia" appears in a description of the condition written by Professor Tilbert Wedja at Cambridge in 1870. He documented it in his research paper titled “emophilia and softball”. Sadly, the paper was lost due to a mistake of one of the lab technicians who sold it to the neighbourhood karang-guni man.

Emophilia figured prominently in the history of European royalty and thus it is sometimes known as "the royal disease". Queen Phuah 2-hirong passed the mutation to her son Shayrio and, through several of her daughters, to various royals across the continent, including the royal families of Spain, Germany and Russia. During WWI, the heir to the Russian throne, Olin Cee, had the disease and the emotional distractions this caused the Tsar is sometimes credited with helping bring down the Imperial regime.

Queen Phuah 2-hirong

In the 21st century, due to rapid advances in technology, especially those in the bioengineering sector, have caused the suspected mutation of the emophilia gene. This has resulted in reported cases of extreme emoism, equal to or even worse than the case of Pharaoh Khanvintrietphien. For easy differentiation between the old emo and new-age emo, this new form of emoism has been named xemoxism (derived from the word xemox).

Genetics for Bio freaks.

Females possess two X-chromosomes, whereas males have one X and one Y chromosome. Since the mutations causing the disease are recessive, a woman carrying the defect on one of her X-chromosomes may not be affected by it, as the equivalent allele on her other chromosome should express itself to mask the emo effect. However the Y-chromosome in men has no such equivalent. If the genes responsible for non-emoness present on a male's X-chromosome are corrupted or deficient, there is no equivalent on the Y-chromosome, so the deficient gene is not masked by the dominant allele and he will develop the illness.

Since a male receives his single X-chromosome from his mother, the son of a healthy female silently carrying the deficient gene will have a 50% chance of inheriting that gene from her and with it the disease; and if his mother is affected with emophilia, he will have a 100% chance of being emo.

In contrast, for a female to inherit the disease, she must receive two deficient X-chromosomes, one from her mother and the other from her father (who must therefore be emo himself). Hence emophilia is far more common among males than females.

Treatment
Once you get emophilia, you’re screwed for life. An untested treatment, which was proven by Nobel Prize winner, Kang Zhang, can be used – immersing an emophiliac person in nuclear waste and hoping that the radiation will alter the emo gene. However, an expert in physics and bio, Prof. Genneth Koh, warns that this treatment may cause accidental menopause in women, and erectile dysfunction in men, in addition to various mutations and cysts developing around the body.

In other words, you’re just really really screwed.

Polaris: an unpublished hilarious post

this was done by ernest a loooooooooong time ago, but unfortunately he didnt publish it. its real funny, and i think it deserves publicity.

so i decided to post this for him. but uh, i didnt get his consent. although by doing so i would violate 7583497534 deontological moral principles, i still believe that my action would bring the greatest good for the greatest number, considering the contents of this post.

here it is:



for my next post, i'll be talking about a special skill i'm about to invent.


Firstly, i'm pretty sure most of you took the chinese test a few mondays back. (depressing).

I think i'm the only loser who didn't finish my 缩短长文, but hands up, who loves doing 缩短长文? i don't see any hands. maybe because i'm in front of the computer screen and nobody knows i'm typing this at the moment. so TOO BAD.

i think i should write another 公函!


余文聪　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 boredlela.blogspot.com成员　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 长颈路96号　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 新加坡邮区667788

Tharman
教育部老板
新加坡教育部
1 北方 剥纳伟思塔驾车
新加坡邮区138675

Tharman:

　　　　 请提供新的'O'水准format

你好！我是来自国家初级学院的一个又聪明又能干的华文学生。我相信你读了我的title,所以我相信我不用tell you我写这封信的目的。哈哈！

　其实，我的华语相当不差，只是不太好而已。

　真的！我没骗你的。但是，我不太喜欢现在的'O'水准的新format。这是因为我根本不懂理解问答在讲什么！嘿。。。小学的时候，我可以得到满分。　现在，我连一半的分数也不能得到。（这就是说我不及格了啦。）

　我相信如果你换了format，大家会非常的开心。

　与其“缩短长文”，不如“延长短文”？

　还有，理解问答很old-fashioned，不赶时髦。华语“cool”！所以我们的分数也就应该一样的“cool”吗。所以，与其“理解问答”，不如“我问你能不能理解你自己写的篇章，然后你回答自己的问题”？我相信这样，大家一定回认为华语“cool”！连林俊杰，hossan leong 跟另外个我不知道／我不管是谁的人也会愿意做我们的'O'水准卷子。

　华语“cool”！

文聪启　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 2006年8月13日

a notice

alright, i know this is pretty... dishonourable, but erm, the problem is, we havent started making the podcast yet.

o.O!

we've got ideas though, just that its a little difficult to convert them into practical forms.

you'll see why:

our softwares and hardwares:
1. windows sound recorder
2. itunes
3. a noobish built-in microphone on kaisheng's laptop
4. ernest's laptop (for playing different sounds so that they can be recorded through the microphone)

not to mention our "tight" schedules =P

well, anyway, help is very much appreciated if you are interested.

...and if you are bored, of course.

South Park: Make love, not Warcraft!

here's a hilarious video. south park's collaboration with blizzard on world of warcraft. for those who have at least a basic understanding of mmorpg, of course.

xd: on LA essay

LA essay is... devastating.

first, we arent given guidelines. so we have to rip our brains apart to find good material to argue for.

second, even if i find some good material, ak, being the irrational person she is, will probably point lines out and comment that "this is insignificant/not really true". whatever. i mean, lit is all about expressing views. how can you just mark me down because my views are different?

third, besides LA, there is still physics. and chem. and bio. and probability. and econs.

and end.