Re: Yay or Nay

[Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

If, as the article suggests, the students have already been taught and
tested for the spelling and grammar basics and the objective of the class
and test is their organizational and composition skills, then it is
probably not a big deal if spellcheckers is allowed.   When I was in
school, once we had been taught basic math we were allowed to use reference
tables for the calculations during trig and calculus classes, and nobody
expected us to reprove all the base geometric theorems every time we had to
perform a higher level proof.  The key question is whether the
spellcheckers are really just catching typos and
absent-minded colloquialisms or if they're masking gross deficiencies in
the basics that shouldn't exist at the levels the students are now.

Gene Kim-Eng



On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:27 AM, B.J. Smith <bjsmith -at- ucar -dot- edu> wrote:

> While my initial reaction was that this is a bad idea, I don't see much
> difference between this and a student spell-checking any other paper or
> written assignment. More people would do well to know how to use this
> technology to improve their communications.
>
> When you want to know if someone can spell, you can administer a spelling
> test.
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