I love the end of the semester. It is a time to reflect on the knowledge that my students have gained new insights into English and have mastered the language and art of writing. Or its just another example that some of my students dont really try.
Lets take a look at one of my students, whom I had such good hopes for.
“Showing the similarities and differences should be known by students when dealing with high school and college because high school students must know the differences and similarities between high school and college to prepare themselves for what is to come in life if these students want to become successful. Education is important when dealing with life. The similarities and differences of education in high school and college could result to being very different and very similar. Attendance is a big key to having great success in life. In high school and college the comparisons and differences will show how important attendance can be in these educational stages. Cost in high school and college does not hold great similarities, but the differences are great. Education, attendance, and cost have many similarities and differences in high school and college.”
whew.
my god. I asked the student how could this happen. His answer was “something went wrong with the computer.” This leads me to ponder. Hmm I am a linguist, sort of. I know computers, more than sort of. Clai and I have discussed this question often. Could we create a program that mimicked language?
With examples like the one above, I am pretty sure we could. I mean seriously. How many times can one repeat differences and similarities?
So then a wonderful idea came to mind. Let get rid of the students. Teachers can ask a program for 25-50 papers of varying lengths and of varying quality where they will grade them for a paycheck. It seems perfect to me. Cut out the middle man.
just something I was pondering while I read more of the adventures of similarities and differences between two uniquely similar and different things.
they will be reading plato next time.
Wilbur
oh man… that’s terrible! That’s always the excuse: “It was the computer.” Someone gave me a little poem titled “Ode to the Spellchecker” the other day… I really need to post it on my journal, because it reminds me of student papers. Keep working on that program. I’d LOVE to cut out the middle man. ha ha ha Mel
Sure sure, let us examine this little birdie in this respect. What if the child you just got this paper from never went to school to begin with. He wouldn’t even have questioned the similarities and differences inherent to both unique institutions as college and high school. In fact there would be no college and high school in existence because people don’t need computer programmers… people need information. Also I don’t get the Plato statement… Your next class will read Plato or is it the case that you assuming you class now will go on to read Plato by themselves? Computers are tricky systems… “Tricksy computerses…” they can confound and bewilder even the genius’ of our times. I typed a whole report on Nietzsche woke up this morning and realized what i had typed and what the computer printed out were vastly different… gaping logical errors and inconsistencies and huge content gaps… so I?m re-editing… I shouldn’t have edited at 4:00 last night… Apparently I cut too much.
Make me a program that will analyze conversations from “Sex and the City.” Preferably by today. Shit, I’ll never get anything done. At least I turned in my translation to Anderson.
Why don’t we make a program that will GRADE student papers? That would be oh so much more helpful to me….
The other night I was watching the LINK channel. A most interesting news item came from India. They have a special project called “the hole in the wall.” What they did was put three computers in windows on a building. It fits the entire window. The controls are located to the right of the computer. During the day they open the windows and it is available for all the children in their poorest area. One young man came up. With trial and error it took him five minutes to understand what to do with the computer. This young man was a school dropout around the age of 12 to 15. Even younger children begin to come around and play on it. Their theory was that even the poorest child can learn if he has the exposure. One person asked, Then why do we have teachers??? Well, no one answered the question during the program, but they continue to praise the concept. Will we all be replaced??? They did predict that when computers first became available here. This is something to think about.
at least when my students read plato we would have interesting discussions and the papers were intriguing