Ryan Oldford

I’ve been using Turnitin with my IB Science students for 2 years. Generally, I like it, but sometimes, the design of the service shows its sharp edges, and I find myself wondering why I can’t do something. There’s a lot of opportunity for making mistakes in how you set things up that can’t be easily fixed, and when those mistakes stick around for 2 years…

If you’re planning on using it with IB Sciences, here’s my biggest tip:
When you set up your classes, do them as Master Classes. Master Classes seem to be designed for university courses, where one professor can have many sections with individual TAs doing the marking. You can use this to separate out the HL students from the SL students so only they get the HL only assignments (like internal assessments). Since you probably don’t have grad students who can mark for you, you can set this up by using your own name and email as the TA’s name and email.

The best way to do it (and the way I wish I’d done it this year) is to have a Core group and a HL group.
Every student in the class is part of the Core group. This is where you send assessments and IAs that everyone gets.
The HL group has only the HL students. You send assessments and IA’s here if it’s only for the HL students.

Previously, I had used a SL and HL group for each class, so I had to switch groups in the middle of marking a SL lab, which slows you down. Also, if students drop from SL to HL, there’s no way to move them from section to section (which makes no sense).

I think doing this gets around the rough parts of the service, and lets you get to the strengths of Turnitin (easier marking, plagiarism checking, etc.). If you have any tips on using Turnitin, or know of a better site or method for IA submission, let me know in the comments.

At a recent IB Chemistry jobalike, we started talking, as we always do, about uncertainty. It’s a tricky subject for students and teachers alike to work with, and the IBO’s vagueness on it doesn’t always help.

One area I’ve struggled with is uncertainty of an average. There are many methods, and it’s up to the students and/or teachers to decide which is best.

Here’s a few methods I’ve found.

Half the range

This one’s pretty simple: just find the highest value and lowest value, find the difference between them, and divide by two. It’s quick and easy, which is nice, but I don’t like it for one good reason: the number of trials doesn’t matter. If I do more trials, shouldn’t I reduce the uncertainty?

Standard deviation

If you’re using Excel (which you should be) or have a graphing calculator, this is a good one. Since it’s affected by the number of trials, it fixed the problem I have with the first method. However, I’ve heard that it’s not considered all that appropriate for small data sets, which worries me a little. I don’t think anyone would lose marks for using it, though.

Standard error

This one has you find the standard deviation, then divide by the root of the data set size. I feel like this one is overkill, but it might be a good idea.

Are there any methods I’ve missed for finding uncertainty in the average? What are your thoughts on these methods?

I’ve been teaching probability to my 6th grade math students today.

I taught them all about the D&D dice.

Including the d100.

One of my students thought it’d be best used as a baseball.

I love teaching probability. :)

The #ib tag here on Tumblr seems to be mostly for IB students. I’d love to find more IB teachers. I know I could use the discussions, and I’m sure other IB teachers could too.

Any IB teachers here on Tumblr?

One of the things I’ve been having trouble with is parent communication. I always feel like making an email to parents takes up too much time, so I wanted to use AppleScript to make a template for emails. After a lot of experimentation, I’ve finally got it.

To make this work, you’ll need to make a directory of template files in text somewhere on your computer. Edit the script so that the line “set templateDirectory to …” has the location of that folder.

The template files contain your template with tags that will be replaced. Those tags are surrounded like this: [—tag—]. The template file has to list them in the first line, separated by semicolons. That line will be removed, but any tags not in that line won’t be replaced.

The script will ask for the subject and recipient’s email address, then will ask you how to replace each tag. It’ll then make a Mail message window with your message. You can make any needed changes or additions, then send it off.

Here’s the script:

(*
Mail Message Template Script
Created by GetTeachingDone (www.getteachingdone.com)

Templates must start with list of tags separated with semicolons
Tags are formatted as follows [--tag here--]
Script will prompt for text to replace tags
*)

-- Set default location of template files (edit as needed)
set templateDirectory to "/Your/Template/Folder"

-- Dialog to get template file
set templateFile to choose file with prompt "Select template file:" of type↵
{"public.plain-text"} default location templateDirectory

-- Get text from template file 
set accessTemplateFile to (open for access templateFile)
set templateText to (read accessTemplateFile for (get eof accessTemplateFile))
close access accessTemplateFile

-- Get list of tags
set textLines to paragraphs of templateText
set tagLine to item 1 of textLines
set emailTextLines to (items 2 thru (count of textLines) of textLines)
set oldTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to linefeed
set emailText to emailTextLines as text
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldTIDs
set tagList to splitLine(tagLine, ";")

-- Get subject and recipient email address
set emailSubjectResult to display dialog "What is the email subject?" buttons↵
{"Cancel", "OK"} default answer "" default button 2 with title "Email Subject"
set emailSubject to text returned of emailSubjectResult
set emailAddressResult to display dialog "What is the recipient's email?" buttons↵
{"Cancel", "OK"} default answer "" default button 2 with title "Recipient's Email"
set emailAddress to text returned of emailAddressResult

-- Get replacement text for each tag, then replace
repeat with theTag in tagList
    set dialogTitle to "What should replace this tag: " & theTag
    set tagReplaceResult to display dialog dialogTitle buttons {"Cancel", "OK"}↵
    default answer "" default button 2 with title "Tag Replacement"
    set tagReplace to text returned of tagReplaceResult
    set emailText to replaceText(emailText, theTag, tagReplace)
end repeat

-- Open Mail message and populate with template and email address
tell application "Mail"
    activate
    set theMessage to make new outgoing message with properties↵
    {visible:true, subject:emailSubject, content:emailText}
    tell theMessage
        make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties↵
        {address:emailAddress}
    end tell
end tell

-- Handlers

-- splitLine - Handler to split text into delimited chunks
on splitLine(theText, theDelimiter)
    set oldTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to theDelimiter
    set splitText to every text item of theText
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldTIDs
    return splitText
end splitLine

-- replaceText - Handler to replace string in text with replacement string
on replaceText(theText, theOldString, theNewString)
    set oldTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to theOldString
    set fixingText to every text item of theText
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to theNewString
    set fixedText to fixingText as text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldTIDs
    return fixedText
end replaceText

And here’s an example of a template file.

[--student name--];[--class name--]
My name is REDACTED, [--student name--]'s [--class name--] teacher. I'm↵
emailing to tell you that [--student name--]'s achievements in class have been↵
unacceptable and worrying.
If you would like to meet about this issue, please feel free to email me at↵
foo@bar.com. Thank you for your time.

Hope this helps! If you have any suggestions for this script, add them in the comments.