{"id":722,"date":"2012-08-20T21:18:33","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T01:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cedarsdigest.wordpress.com\/?p=722"},"modified":"2012-08-20T21:18:33","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T01:18:33","slug":"what-i-did-on-my-summer-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/uncategorized\/what-i-did-on-my-summer-off\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Did on My Summer “Off”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi folks, been a while since I blogged at ya. School starts in a few short weeks (on Labor Day for us), so I thought I would \u00a0briefly fill you in on what I have been up to this summer. I have longer posts for each of these planned, so stay tuned in the next week or so for more details.<\/p>\n

\"Bored
Picture by flickr user eltpics<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I taught summer school. It is always interesting teaching summer school, which at Randolph-Macon tends to be much lower class sizes (mine was 7), but the students aren’t always the most motivated. I taught General Psychology and tried, with some modifications, a re-do of my big experiment in redesigning this course (described in this earlier post<\/a>). My first post this week will be reflections on this experience.<\/p>\n

I also supervised a research student on a project of her own devising. Her step-father owns an art gallery, and she was interested in how spacing and labeling of art influences aesthetic \u00a0judgments. So I got to read a bit about the psychology of art, which was kind of cool. We tried a replication of a few well-known effects with a new twist (actual paintings, not computer projections) had trouble recruiting subjects, and failed to replicate. Oh well, that’s research. She did a fantastic presentation at the end, which made me all kinds of proud.<\/p>\n

\"GM
International Grandmaster Maurice Ashley<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My kids did a few different camps, but for one of them, if you volunteered, your kids could go free. So I did. As the people who were running the camp pondered how to assign the volounteers, they found I had some relevant expertise, I was basically bumped up to a teacher and had my own group. So I found myself teaching 5-7 year-olds how to play chess for a week. As a bonus, I got to talk to an International Grandmaster (Maurice Ashley<\/a>)about perceptual illusions, chess illusions and the mind-blowing fact that the Earth itself is moving faster than just about any object moves on Earth. As you might have picked up, a big theme of my (college) teaching is picking up lessons from other teaching situations, and this was no different. It was exhausting, but fun, and a little eye-opening.<\/p>\n

I’ve been planning the first new course I’ve taught in a while, and it is a newer new than I have ever taught before. It is called “Kids These Days” and it is a collaboration with fantastic English professor <\/a>here at Randolph-Macon who specializes in children’s literature. It is a First Year Course (part of our\u00a0First Year Experience<\/a>) and is creative, \u00a0interdisciplinary, team-taught class. Typically biting off way more than I can chew, I will be taking twenty lucky 18-year-olds (mostly) on a magical mystical journey through the history of science, and of psychology, through the lens of how psychology has explained those fascinating creatures we call children. \u00a0I’ll have a lot more to say about this in a post coming up, but I am really excited, and more than a little nervous teaching something where there is no textbook and no existing framework. But ultimately, this kind of experimentation is why I love my job.<\/p>\n

I have also dreamed up a way to get into the movie business. I have always liked playing around with movies, and have wanted to make a few when I find the time. This semester, I aim to make a series of short videos, integrated into my First Year Class, called the Art and Science of Being a College Student. My hope is to interweave direct practical advice (the first one will be “How to Write an Email to A Professor”) with a bit of the science of psychology (in the email case, I will summarize James Pennebaker’s excellent research on language). So, keep your eyes peeled for some of those.<\/p>\n

Thanks for your patience loyal readers, stay tuned, there will be blog!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi folks, been a while since I blogged at ya. School starts in a few short weeks (on Labor Day for us), so I thought I would \u00a0briefly fill you in on what I have been up to this summer. I have longer posts for each of these planned, so stay tuned in the next…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,32,1],"tags":[57],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-psychology","category-uncategorized","tag-personal"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Pqh9-bE","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/riener.us\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}