Dear Friends,
I recently posted about the robo graders that aren't concerned with meaning or accuracy of quotes, but only with long words and acceptable grammar. Barb Fister, who I love, writes in this blog that, "Pearson, a textbook company that markets
a robo-grader, disagrees, saying
essentially that any student clever enough to game the system deserves to score
well. Education is learnig how to follow rules, to play the game. Truth and
meaning are irrelevant and so don’t count."
There are some really great quotes in this piece. I especially liked the idea of "quote farming."
Barb also writes that, "I
recently I
saw on Mashable
that Cengage has bought a clever software product that lets
you harvest quotes from sources for which citations are automatically created,
and dump it all into a screen where you rearrange and stitch them together
without actually, you know, having to read those boring papers."
She concludes, "Soon we will not only have robo-graders, we’ll have robo-writers, with students
guided toward previously-digested quotes that earn companies extra cash."
Read more here:
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/robo-research-robo-writing
Cordially,
Harry
Harry E. Pence
SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus
SUNY Oneonta
From: Teaching Breakfast List [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Greenberg, Jim
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 7:13 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Status of Computer's Ability to do Grammer Checking
TBers,
I am sometimes asked by faculty or students, "how good are computers at checking grammar?" Well if they were really good, you'd never see a grammar error in my posts!! Still, there are grammar checking services that are getting "pretty good." Here
is the latest of them, thank to Dr. Mohammad for passing this along to me. I also posted a recent review of this service.
A review of it can be found here:
Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center
Milne Library
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820
phone: 607-436-2701
fax: 607-436-3677
Twitter: greenbjb
"Ignorance is curable, stupidity lasts forever"