Medina, John. “Chapter 11: Gender.” Brain Rules. Seattle: Pear Press, 2014.

I chose Quizlet this time because I’ve been wanting to give it a try ever since I saw a classmate use it for reading notes. Because this chapter is fairly heavy in genetics information, as well as stereotype busting, I thought a quiz might be a fun way to present some of this information that might not be so familiar to those who are new to biology. (Keep in mind that I began my college career as a biology major, so this sort of material just fascinates me.)

Medina covered some of the basics, but also went into a scary-level amount of genetic detail, so I decided to create a quiz that hit the major milestones. However, a quiz format of this type really doesn’t successfully get at some of the arguments being made by Medina about stereotypes, nature vs. nurture and learning or workplace functions. Because of this realization, I was reminded of our readings that critically explored assessment practices and the limitations (and even mutation powers) of machine scoring. In this case, even though this quiz activity might not be grade-based, the limitations of the kinds of knowledge that can be successfully studied / explored through this tool become obvious. And THAT reminds me of our readings about meaning making, student agency, and knowledge hierarchies. That said, when thinking of how I might use this in a classroom of freshman writers, I would imagine it might be useful to prepare for class discussion, or as a tool with which a class might collaborate to create their own sets of reading quiz questions to pool for a class-wide quiz & discussion guide.

I can embed the code for several of the activities. The basic flashcard (click on the card to flip it to see the answer):