Final Astronomy Grades...Finally

I hope you are all getting some well-deserved rest now that finals are over. I have graded all of the Galileo papers finally (except for four students whose files were corrupted on Blackboard) and uploaded the scores to Blackboard. You can now see your final grade for the class on there. I made only a two minor changes to the grading since I felt both the Galileo Writing Grade and the Clicker Questions were a bit low compared to the other components of the course:

[1] In addition to the points listed on the Galileo Paper Rubric that I gave you, I awarded 4 points for working hard enough to write the full six pages that I requested. (The high score on this was 100% by a student who wrote the best paper I have ever read for this game. Good work!)

[2] I dropped the lowest 4 clicker question scores. This brought the high score on that from a B+ up to an A.

Once I have the papers from the four students with corrupted files, I will grade them and then submit all of the grades to OnTrack.

Thanks again for making this such a great semester. I really, truly enjoyed it.

The Trial of Galileo and Notre Dame's 2009 Commencement

I am currently finished grading one-fourth of your Trial of Galileo papers and thus have been reflecting a lot on that game. While standing in line at McDonald's yesterday, I was watching the closed-captioning of a speech that seemed to be taken directly from this game!

As you may be aware, President Obama gave the commencement speech at Notre Dame University yesterday. Some faculty, students, and alumni protested, believing that the President's policies conflict with those of the Catholic Church. The president of NDU, Reverent John Jenkin's, introduced President Obama with a speech that both cited the Second Vatican Council and the President's earlier statements.

When you are finished with your exams and have settled down for the summer, I strongly encourage you to read Jenkin's speech (or watch a video of it) and reflect on the strong parallels between it and the debate that took place in the 1600s.

Have a great summer!