Mineralogy projects
Years ago, when my university instituted a mandatory writing assignment for general education courses, I quickly found that for most students, writing meant copy and paste from the www. I gave that up and had them write a poem about a mineral instead, as I had found only one poem of geological relevance online.
At that time, the students were assigned to a particular mineral case to maintain throughout the semester. For their poem, I asked them to write about their favorite mineral in that case. There were instructions: poems had to include references to composition, color, hardness, occurrence, etc. I gave them most of the semester to complete the project. When all poems were in, I removed names, assigned numbers, and distributed all of them to the students to rank their favorite poems. In class, I presented a fine mineral specimen to the person whose poem was tops. One of the problems with the assignment was that students spent so much time working on their poem that they tended to let other assignments slide.
Attached you will find the all-time favorite, written by Shawn Maroney in 2009. Shawn gave his permission to make the poem public when it was displayed in a gallery at OU.
David London
Pegmatite Interest Group: http://www.minsocam.org/msa/Special/Pig/
Thank you for sharing, very clever approach. What became of this student?
Louis
From: London, David via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 12:18 PM
To: msa-talk@minlists.org
Subject: [MSA-talk] Mineralogy projects
Years ago, when my university instituted a mandatory writing assignment for general education courses, I quickly found that for most students, writing meant copy and paste from the www. I gave that up and had them write a poem about a mineral instead, as I had found only one poem of geological relevance online.
At that time, the students were assigned to a particular mineral case to maintain throughout the semester. For their poem, I asked them to write about their favorite mineral in that case. There were instructions: poems had to include references to composition, color, hardness, occurrence, etc. I gave them most of the semester to complete the project. When all poems were in, I removed names, assigned numbers, and distributed all of them to the students to rank their favorite poems. In class, I presented a fine mineral specimen to the person whose poem was tops. One of the problems with the assignment was that students spent so much time working on their poem that they tended to let other assignments slide.
Attached you will find the all-time favorite, written by Shawn Maroney in 2009. Shawn gave his permission to make the poem public when it was displayed in a gallery at OU.
David London
Pegmatite Interest Group: http://www.minsocam.org/msa/Special/Pig/
Dave - congratulations to you and especially to Shawn Maroney. I hope you let him know of the pleasure it gave me and surely many others. What fun!
Kind regards,
Peter
On Jun 4, 2023, at 9:18 AM, London, David via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org wrote:
Years ago, when my university instituted a mandatory writing assignment for general education courses, I quickly found that for most students, writing meant copy and paste from the www. I gave that up and had them write a poem about a mineral instead, as I had found only one poem of geological relevance online.
At that time, the students were assigned to a particular mineral case to maintain throughout the semester. For their poem, I asked them to write about their favorite mineral in that case. There were instructions: poems had to include references to composition, color, hardness, occurrence, etc. I gave them most of the semester to complete the project. When all poems were in, I removed names, assigned numbers, and distributed all of them to the students to rank their favorite poems. In class, I presented a fine mineral specimen to the person whose poem was tops. One of the problems with the assignment was that students spent so much time working on their poem that they tended to let other assignments slide.
Attached you will find the all-time favorite, written by Shawn Maroney in 2009. Shawn gave his permission to make the poem public when it was displayed in a gallery at OU.
David London
Pegmatite Interest Group: http://www.minsocam.org/msa/Special/Pig/ https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.minsocam.org/msa/Special/Pig/__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!Y-Kj36E_oMMpaOARBv-4pSFRZ-HFUtv_SXJiKYxMV1FBseEGR7JTA1_8CybKFWtbJNk2hAX-BtxQulP_Fw$

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Peter R. Buseck
\|/
@ @
----oOO-(_)-OOo--------
Regents Professor e-mail: pbuseck@asu.edu
School of Earth and Space Exploration Voice: 480-721-5938
& School of Molecular Sciences
(formerly Dept. of Chemistry)
Fax: 480-965-8960
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-1404
http://7starm.asu.edu/
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Just in case somebody is interested: on the occasion of the 2014
International year of crystallography we installed a very successful
exhibition (http://geo.geoscienze.unipd.it/cristalli/welcome_eng.html) and
in the catalog we presented a series of poems on minerals of the Spanish
poet Clara Janez (https://www.arspoetica.es/libro/lapidario_82909/).
In case anybody is interested I can send the extract of the catalog
concerning the poems, with the Spanish and Italian versions.
Cheers
Gilberto
Il giorno lun 5 giu 2023 alle ore 14:35 Peter R. Buseck via MSA-talk <
msa-talk@minlists.org> ha scritto:
Dave - congratulations to you and especially to Shawn Maroney. I hope you
let him know of the pleasure it gave me and surely many others. What fun!
Kind regards,
Peter
On Jun 4, 2023, at 9:18 AM, London, David via MSA-talk <
msa-talk@minlists.org> wrote:
Years ago, when my university instituted a mandatory writing assignment
for general education courses, I quickly found that for most students,
writing meant copy and paste from the www. I gave that up and had them
write a poem about a mineral instead, as I had found only one poem of
geological relevance online.
At that time, the students were assigned to a particular mineral case to
maintain throughout the semester. For their poem, I asked them to write
about their favorite mineral in that case. There were instructions: poems
had to include references to composition, color, hardness, occurrence, etc.
I gave them most of the semester to complete the project. When all poems
were in, I removed names, assigned numbers, and distributed all of them to
the students to rank their favorite poems. In class, I presented a fine
mineral specimen to the person whose poem was tops. One of the problems
with the assignment was that students spent so much time working on their
poem that they tended to let other assignments slide.
Attached you will find the all-time favorite, written by Shawn Maroney in
2009. Shawn gave his permission to make the poem public when it was
displayed in a gallery at OU.
David London
Pegmatite Interest Group: http://www.minsocam.org/msa/Special/Pig/
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.minsocam.org/msa/Special/Pig/__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!Y-Kj36E_oMMpaOARBv-4pSFRZ-HFUtv_SXJiKYxMV1FBseEGR7JTA1_8CybKFWtbJNk2hAX-BtxQulP_Fw$
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Peter R. Buseck
\|/
@ @
----oOO-(_)-OOo--------
Regents Professor e-mail:
pbuseck@asu.edu
School of Earth and Space Exploration Voice: 480-721-5938
& School of Molecular Sciences
(formerly Dept. of Chemistry)
Fax: 480-965-8960
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-1404
http://7starm.asu.edu/
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
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David,
This poem is awesome. As I read it, I can visualize the illustrated book. What fun it would be. Thanks for sharing, and what a great idea.
- Brad
From: Louis Cabri via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 12:19 PM
To: London, David dlondon@ou.edu; msa-talk@minlists.org msa-talk@minlists.org
Subject: [MSA-talk] Re: Mineralogy projects
Thank you for sharing, very clever approach. What became of this student?
Louis
From: London, David via MSA-talk msa-talk@minlists.org
Sent: Sunday, June 4, 2023 12:18 PM
To: msa-talk@minlists.org
Subject: [MSA-talk] Mineralogy projects
Years ago, when my university instituted a mandatory writing assignment for general education courses, I quickly found that for most students, writing meant copy and paste from the www. I gave that up and had them write a poem about a mineral instead, as I had found only one poem of geological relevance online.
At that time, the students were assigned to a particular mineral case to maintain throughout the semester. For their poem, I asked them to write about their favorite mineral in that case. There were instructions: poems had to include references to composition, color, hardness, occurrence, etc. I gave them most of the semester to complete the project. When all poems were in, I removed names, assigned numbers, and distributed all of them to the students to rank their favorite poems. In class, I presented a fine mineral specimen to the person whose poem was tops. One of the problems with the assignment was that students spent so much time working on their poem that they tended to let other assignments slide.
Attached you will find the all-time favorite, written by Shawn Maroney in 2009. Shawn gave his permission to make the poem public when it was displayed in a gallery at OU.
David London
Pegmatite Interest Group: http://www.minsocam.org/msa/Special/Pig/