HAZARD CITY
Updated
05/26/2009
The lucky citizens of Hazard City live on a river a few miles downstream from a volcano, near an active fault. The CD-ROM that comes with your textbook contains all information required to assess certain concerns regarding these (and other) hazards. Some projects have links to the Web for supplementary materials.
First, back up your CD-ROM. I burn an image to my hard drive and keep the original in a safe place, and run the projects from my hard drive. Every semester at least one student loses the CD, has it eaten by the dog, used as a discus by a 4-year-old, or stolen from a student computer cluster. These exercises count for a full quarter of your final grade. Students who fail to submit Hazard City projects usually fail the class (do the math. One semester, a student who did all assignments but missed both the midterm and final exam actually passed (with a D).
I suggest you do not wait until the last minute to begin Hazard City. Students who submit just before the deadline tend to score half what students who turn work in several days early score. It pays to get all answers correct - double points! Turning in all assignments on time and scoring 2 or 3 perfect worksheets during the semester usually means an "A" for Hazard City.
If your textbook arrived without a CD-ROM or with a broken CD, contact the vendor immediately! I specify in my bookstore order that used books MUST include the CD. I especially want to know if the bookstore sells used books without the CD. This does happen with Amazon.com all the time so buyer beware!
If you lose your CD or have other difficulties, contact me immediately (utnet email, NOT WebCT email) and we can look for a solution. This has happened before and there are several ways to get Hazard City to you with little effort, but you need to let me know that a problem exists!
Each project report must be submitted in the form of the worksheet included in the project. This is an example of a worksheet. Click on the thumbnail to enlarge the image.
There are several ways to submit Hazard City projects. Some students fill out the worksheet and scan or capture the image. An image can be pasted to a Word document and attached to WebCT email. Other students reproduce the table in Excel, listing only the correct responses, rather than circle the correct responses or filling in the blanks. Hazard City projects are graded with 1 point for each correct answer. You must submit an image of the worksheet with your answers unambiguously indicated or a replica of the worksheet with headings for each field (column) and labels for each record (row). You need not explain your reasoning - your job is to deliver to the mayor the answers, not explanations he will probably not understand.
The mayor of Hazard City. His twin brother and intellectual equal is mayor of Townsville.
Filling in all the cells in this example earns you nothing, even though some cells contain correct answers. Yes, a student did try that, stating that all sites listed in one project were 'at risk'. When having to select either-or or true-false, you must demonstrate some ability to recognize degrees of risk.
Software on our office computers has not been updated for several years. I am using Microsoft Office 2003. I cannot open documents in default formats written by Office 2007 (thank you, Bill Gates!). The fix I downloaded from Microsoft did not work. If you use Office 2007, use the "save as" option (File menu) and select a 2003 format. I will try again with the Microsoft update.
I can open images and prefer .jpg format. I can open bitmaps but those files are enormous! Save space on your computers and save images for my class as .jpg, never as bitmaps (.bmp).
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