0th Day of Summer Vacation: in which we read about multiple choice testing

Hi everyone! Long time no see... it's been a crazy busy year, mostly positive, but still just leaving me with almost no time in which to blog.

Today, I handed in my last official things at noon. So it's not really the first day of summer vacation, but I thought I'd establish a good habit. I'm not going to make myself blog every day, as that's clearly unrealistic, but maybe four times per week would be doable.

This afternoon, I took an accidental nap, drove a friend to the airport, did a small grocery run (and forgot the shopping list, and thus only got 4 of the 8 things that were on it), and read the first half of Learning and Assessing with Multiple Choice Questions in College Classrooms by Jay Parkes and Dawn Zimmaro. It's a little dense, but mostly quite readable and I'm getting a lot out of it. My plan is to skim the first time (this is the stage I'm currently in) and the read more closely while taking notes the second time. Currently my favorite part is that all the examples are being drawn from a statistics classroom and a science classroom, which means that I actually understand most of the questions being used as examples.

I have a long to-do list this summer and doing some casual professional development is high on that list. I took out five books from the library and I might be back mid-summer to pick up more.

I've got a few restaurant and book reviews planned for the rest of this week. Stay cool, stay dry, stay hydrated...

Ten on Tuesday: 10 thinks (things) I loved about summer camp

I did not get to attend a "traditional" summer camp... my mother had no idea why anyone would want to live 8-to-a-cabin and spend the day learning to ride, swim, kayak, and shoot a bow and arrow. (Also, I'm an only child and she had some difficulty letting go.) I did ultimately go away in the summer, twice: the first time to Northwestern, where I studied Algebra II, and the second time to Hampshire College, where I studied advanced math.

Did I love it? Yes, I did! For all the following reasons...

1) Math
2) Surrounded by smart people
3) Lopsided boy-girl ratio
4) First kiss
5) Friends for life, or at least through the college era
6) Finally got my asthma correctly diagnosed
7) Friends who are boys
8) Counselors who were Really Smart Girls/Women
9) A look at life in an academic community
10) The confidence to leave home and go far away to college

I should probably explain a bit more. I spent my adolescence in a small, insular town in Indiana. Academic success was not encouraged in girls. Plus, I had acne, a mild stutter, and terrible social insecurity. Getting away for two summers really gave me a sense of what the wider world was like. When I applied to elite colleges on the East Coast, I actually knew some people who were doing the same thing, unlike my classmates in high school. Going to summer camp literally changed my life and I'm so grateful to both programs for giving me financial aid and all the encouragement I needed.