it seems arrogant to insist that the only students who are worthy of my time and respect are those who slave away at my assignments 24-7, pausing only to eat, sleep, pee and bathe.

True. I cringe a little when I look back at the first few years of my teaching.

One of the most useful things I was ever told as a teacher is that most students aren’t like you were as a student – most are content with Bs, as they have other things in their lives that are more important to them – and your class isn’t as important to all of them as it is to you. Given that, even as a school-loving student who did well, I was myself not always inclined to work on my assignments (preferring instead to spend hour doodling or practicing the guitar, or just hanging out), it seems arrogant to insist that the only students who are worthy of my time and respect are those who slave away at my assignments 24-7, pausing only to eat, sleep, pee and bathe.

Honestly, that sort of work ethic is simply not sustainable in the long run, and it tends to result in the sort of manic-driven people I find uncomfortable to be around. So why would I demand that of my students?

I know of some instructors who have their students rate each others’ in-class presentations using clickers–much like Matt L suggested above in an online environment, evaluating the presentations using different rubric categories. The anonymity of the students doing the evaluation works well since a lot of students aren’t comfortable publicly critiquing each other (even when doing so would lead to more meaningful discussions and learning) and those students who are too comfortable publicly critiquing their peers have their voices balanced by the ratings of the rest of the class.

I’m also reminded of Gardner Campbell’s use of Twitter in the classroom to have students contribute to backchannel discussion during student presentations. There was no anonymity involved, but the Twitter platform did seem to make it easier for students to provide useful feedback on their peers’ presentations. I can see the retweet functioning like an anti-”next”: If a positive comment is frequently retweeted, then the student doing the presentation knows his or her peers approve of the presentation.

Have the class read sample passages of (anonymous) student work on-line. Then ask the students to rate them the excerpts for evidence, relevance, argument and style. The should then have to say why it is bad or good. You could rate them on the quality of their feedback..

I just wanted to remind people that if they can avoid using attachments in the first place, do so. Obviously, if one’s transmitting forms or the like where the format is important, or a multi-page document, that’s one thing. But I get so many attachments that, after I download them, open them, and read them, prove to be little more than a few lines of information (like an event flier) that could just have been easily typed into an email.

If it’s in-line text, then it’s a matter of a few seconds to scan, decide, and keep or delete the email. If it’s an attachment – especially if it’s an attachment that’s not compatible with my software – it’s a waste of time and hard-drive space, and I will not think well of the person who did it that way.

The other thing to be wary of is the so-called Healthy options. I also like DD’’s reduced fat blueberry muffin, and one might think that because it is “reduced-fat” and on their “healthy choice list” that it is actually healthy. I was shocked when I looked up the “Reduced-Fat Blueberry muffin online and saw that it has a whopping 450 cal –it is a generous size, but the regular muffins are only 60 cal more. I’m not saying that 450 calories will break the bank, but my point is that just because an item is healthier than other items on the menu doesn’t mean that it is healthy. My egg-white turkey-sausage flatbread is only 280 cal in comparison.

Second: “How embarrassed am I that the staff at place X recognizes my voice, and at places Q, Y, and Z they know my order by heart?”

Sigh.