h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You know I always called it the Hokey Cokey...

No, really? The hokey cokey?! I love it. I don't think they would let small children sing it that way, though.....

Hey, is that my goggles? What were they doing in the Linen Closet?
The Hokey Pokey song has been foolishly enough translated to Boogie Woogie in Norwegian...

{[caer csd] We call it the Hokey Cokey here and I now have that running around in my head, I would prefer A Groovey Kind of Love.

No1 son spent yesterday mindlessly filing in his temping job. The filing was supposed to take the best part of 3 weeks, it took him 3 hours, I suppose his English degree hasn't been an entire waste of time. They are not expecting him to turn up again today, because apparently nobody else from teh agency came back for a second day. So they will be in for a pleasant surprise.

Having contested and asked for a remark of No2 son's History A level after his coursework was marked as unclassified, when his tutor said he should get a good grade for it, we are faintly reassured about all the other complaints received. His examing board is OCR who are currently in the news for downgrading results. }

[Amy]

[kin]

[note here]

I plan to make a table with researchers and their time zones, to facilitate for myself and others figuring out when our friends can be expected to be online - help would be appreciated over here: U203563

[not here]

d'E - in answer to your question about why a new researcher rather than a new entry - I thought people might see the Time Zone user on the who's online list - might save me some nagging - and the 'new this week' will possibly attract some ACEs too...

...but I can't see the h2g2 Researcher Time Zones user online? /Titania

I can. Click on ID, then look at the very bottom of the list.

so can I - now, that is...

I could see researchers with higher user numbers than mine! And it took more than 30 minutes for Time Zone to show up...

[lli]
whose new business cards came in with serious typos
and has joined Titania's time zone project with great approval

Okay, the bomb wasn't in the linen closet, which is good since the closet was full of interesting objects we wouldn't want blown up. Is there still a bomb? Because I'd feel much more comfortable in a bomb-free atmosphere. And I worry that as an Atelier greenhorn, someone will toss the blasted thing to me and say catch. The old last one in first one out rule.

[{Courtesy}]

Fairly confident that there is no bomb, as the bots gave us the thumbs up ........ of course the thumbs up could have been that they found the bomb and they are letting us know that there definitely is a bomb

Great idea on the Time Zone project.

Courtesy

Any brownies deemed safe by the CLIbots are fair game for sharing.

Just moved desks at w*rk and now I sit at the edge of an isle with high traffic. I *hate* when people shoulder surf me when I am workin... errrm reading the guide.

Caer, pardon my ignorance, but what does it mean to have one's grades be unclassified? Is that the same as incomplete?

I jammed something under my nail last night, and now I feel it all the way up my arm. Ouch!

{[caer csd] Anything to do with nails is sooo painful! Hope its fading a bit now MR.

Unclassified means that the work was less than 10% of the overall marks for that piece, a polite way of saying 'failed'. I can't remember the exact % the coursework was of the overall A level, but it's usually about 30-40%. The whole sorry exam mess is rapidly becoming a furore with the Education Minister making statements and schools and colleges threatening to sue, because quite a few students have lost Uni places through being downgraded. }

So the grading is entirely at the teacher's discretion? Or is there some sort of year-end test?

Teachers mark it, following agreed standards, and then it's moderated ie checked for accurracy of marking by the examining board, who are at liberty to change the mark if they see fit.

What's happened is that they have introduced an AS level, which is taken at the end of the first year of the two year a level course. Obviously, since you've only studied for it for half a the time, it's a bit easier. Or should be. Apparently, maths was a killer, whereas psycology was very easy. But it counts for half your marks. So it's buggered up the final A level scores, and as they were already worried about the whole 'more people getting good marks' business, they've decided to arbitarily shift the goalposts, to make it more difficult to get a good mark, so that only the 'right amount' will.

Unfortunately, they don't seemed to have even gone about this in a very principled way, but have just written of various students coursework entirely, totally disregarding the original markers' recomendation. Not because they were wrong, but because they needed to fudge the statistics.

I'm sorry your son is caught up in this mess, Caer.

well that's just ed up, isn't it?