Monthly Archives: February 2019

MiamiLaw Student Wins National Writing Award

Congratulations to Elizabeth Montano, whose note The Bring Your Own Tampon Policy: Why Menstrual Hygiene Products Should Be Provided for Free in Restrooms is one of ten student papers to receive a Burton Distinguished Legal Writing Award. The Burton Awards are a “Non-Profit, Non-Commercial program, held in Association with the Library of Congress, with Lead Sponsor Law360 and Co-Sponsored by the American Bar Association.”

Posted in Law School, U.Miami | 1 Comment

Pixel One Battery Replacement is Possible!

One of the more annoying things about the Pixel 1, aside from the Google Assistant that I had to disable on privacy grounds, is that it’s a sealed case — so no way to replace the battery. This started to become an issue a few weeks ago. It wasn’t just that battery life had gotten noticeably worse, you expect that after a couple of years, it was that the battery would go from c.20% to dead without any warning.

It turns out, however, that there’s an entire chain of Google-certified phone repair joints with the silly name of ubreakifix that will replace the battery in a Pixel in a couple of hours for about $80. That’s a lot cheaper than buying a new phone. I was afraid the thing would have horrible scars from being pried open, but no. “We have tools” the tech told me smugly, and it indeed there’s no sign the case has been opened, but battery life is 50% greater than it was last week.

So now I’m likely good until Google orpahans the phone, which could come as soon as in October, at which point supposedly they’ll stop doing patches for it. The idea of course is to make me buy a new phone. Sadly, it will probably work. I hope the Pixel 4 is better than the Pixel 3 or I may to switch to Samsung.

Posted in Shopping, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 4 Comments

We Robot 2019 Video Promo

The good folks in A/V re-purposed some footage we shot for incoming students, and now we have a We Robot promo:

I think the camera adds at least ten pounds…

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We Robot 2019 Preliminary Program

We have an action-packed lineup planned for We Robot 2019. The main conference is April 12-13, with an optional workshop day on April 11. I’ve put the schedule below; you should register now for We Robot 2019 if you haven’t already.

Continue reading

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I Think You Can == Good Pedagogy

Via Slashdot,

A huge study at Indiana University, led by Elizabeth Canning, finds that the attitudes of instructors affect the grades their students earned in classes. [Note: Link didn’t work for me, article may not be generally available yet.] The researchers conducted their study by sending out a simple survey to all the instructors of STEM courses at Indiana University, asking whether professors felt that a student’s intelligence is fixed and unchanging or whether they thought it could be developed. Then, the researchers were given access to two years’ worth of students’ grades in those instructors’ classes, covering a total of 15,000 students.

Via Ars Technica:

The results showed a surprising difference between the professors who agreed that intelligence is fixed and those who disagreed (referred to as “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset” professors). In classes taught by fixed mindset instructors, Latino, African-American, and Native American students averaged grades 0.19 grade points (out of four) lower than white and Asian-American students. But in classes taught by “growth mindset” instructors, the gap dropped to just 0.10 grade points. No other factor the researchers analyzed showed a statistically significant difference among classes — not the instructors’ experience, tenure status, gender, specific department, or even ethnicity. Yet their belief about whether a students’ intelligence is fixed seems to have had a sizable effect.

The students’ course evaluations contain possible clues. Students reported less “motivation to do their best work” in the classes taught by fixed mindset professors, and they also gave lower ratings for a question about whether their professor “emphasize[d] learning and development.” Students were less likely to say they’d recommend the professor to others, as well. Is it possible that the fixed mindset professors just happen to teach the hardest classes? The student evaluations also include a question about how much time the course required — the average answer was slightly higher for fixed mindset professors, but the difference was not statistically significant. Instead, the researchers think the data suggests that — in any number of small ways — instructors who think their students’ intelligence is fixed don’t keep their students as motivated, and perhaps don’t focus as much on teaching techniques that can encourage growth. And while this affects all students, it seems to have an extra impact on underrepresented minority students.

I wonder how this applies in law schools?

Posted in Law School | Comments Off on I Think You Can == Good Pedagogy

More Later

I’m really busy, so this is just a tease, and device to force me to write more later.

1730s-1740s
1790s-1840s/50s
1850s-1900s
c. 1966-c. 1974

Most people probably don’t know what those dates signify. In a future post or posts I will have two things to say about them. One is utterly unoriginal, but quite important, and concerns the gap between the first line and the second. The second is utterly speculative, and concerns a fifth line in the sequence above.

Back to work.

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on More Later