Exams! With Guns!

But wait, there's more (journalists) piling in on the VCE exam SNAFU seen first here, with a great quote:

Yarra Valley Grammar student Shannon Dowling assumed she had not studied hard enough when she saw the robot. "I went through a thought process something like this, 'What's that thing? It's definitely a robot. But it's on my history exam, so it's not a robot. But it can't be anything else. LOOK AT THOSE GUNS!' I stared at the image long and hard. It was extremely off-putting because you just don't expect there to be a mistake on your exam, especially one like that."

Yes, Shannon.  I'm with, like, let's ask for people who can set the exam to the standard they mark it to, eh?  (Obviously after the 'look at those guns!' thought, of course.)  But don't worry:

New guidelines governing the use of internet-sourced material in exams will also be issued after an altered version of the artwork Storming the Winter Palace by Nikolai Kochergin appeared in the VCE History: Revolutions exam.

Or "That was embarrassing.  Can we not do that again next year?  There's bound to be journalists on us if we manage a third year running foul-up"...

James

Enhanced History Exam

Quite rightly, we all like to be able to laugh at the exam compilers whenever the rare chance eventuates.  Today we can share a particularly enjoyable example of an exam-board failure, thanks to The Age.

 This is not the correct image, grabbed by a VCAA drone off the interwebz rather than sourced properly.

"THE VCE exam body has been left red faced after a doctored artwork depicting a huge robot helping socialist revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution was accidentally included in this year’s year 12 history exam taken by 5700 students.

 This is the correct image.

"Storming the Winter palace on 25th October 1917 by Nikolai Kochergin, which depicts events during the October Revolution, which was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917.
But when students opened their exam this morning they found an altered version of the work with what appear to be a large "BattleTech Marauder" robot aiding the rising revolutionaries in the background.
...
"A spokesman for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) said the image was 'sourced and acknowledged by the VCAA as coming from the Internet'.
'The image has been altered but the alteration of the image won’t impact on the students’ capacity to answer the examination question,' he said.
'The VCAA will monitor students' answers to ensure that any student who has been distracted by the image will not be disadvantaged.'

 This is NOT history.  It is 'A BattleTech Marauder' - you know, made up.

"It is the second year running that the  Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority has been embarrassed by problems in its end of year exam papers.
Last year popular columnist Helen Razer accused the VCE exam body of plagiarism and breach of copyright after the English exam featured on tattoos by the Melbourne writer without her permission or acknowledging she was the author."

Tut tut tut...  Hey kids, don't lift stuff from random websites for your work, and use 'impact' sparingly.  Just like the VCAA.

James

EDIT:  'But Wait, There's More!'

You're *not* the centre of the universe

From the great xkcd, puzzled that an older civilisation would have got naming rights for much of the world, and understandably puzzled by using relative locations.

(And for those in the northern hemisphere, please also learn 'north' does not = 'up'.)

James

Fab! Fabbri

They're back (at the Mediterranean Wholesalers - see here) so we snagged some. We weren't able to go home in a Fabbri truck, seen on the Boston food website here:

But we found some fascinating Fabbri history here and here, the latter being the official website, which has a range of remarkable period advertising here.



Better than roses, pearls?  But of course!

James