Kids Improve Writing Online

Re:Writing better? by Dlugar · 2004-02-06 19:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

However, grammar is still poor, as most kids are not taught the rules of the english language, I'm learning more about sentence construction in my German class than I have in English over the past 13 years.

I went to a lecture by John Searle a couple of weeks ago, and he made the statement that "You never really learn grammar until you study a foreign language." I think that's very true--I honestly don't think "English grammar" should be taught in schools--teach them Latin, or German, or any other language for that matter--and you'll end up teaching them more about English grammar than they ever would have otherwise learned.

Dlugar

--
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go

Re:Writing better? by forevermore · 2004-02-06 19:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

I can definitely agree with this. Though I grew up bilingual in English and Spanish (I had the fortune of growing up for at least a few years of my childhood outside of the US, immersed in South American culture), I learned more about English grammar and linguistics in the 2-3 years of German I took before/after college (long story short, the "after" was pretty much just for fun).

In college, and a good one at that, many of my professors were amazed that more than half of students still didn't understand the differences between "its" and "it's", "their," "they're" and "there," or "your" and "you're". I even ran across the occasional student in grad school who had this problem. It's a sad day when students at some of the top schools in the country don't even understand their own language.

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Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers

As a homeschooler... by EmbeddedJanitor · 2004-02-06 19:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

We teach our kids at home, as do thousands of families through the world. I have nothing against teachers, I think it amazing how they manage to do as well as they do, shepherding thirty kids along. However they clearly don't have opportunities to expand each kid's personal interests. The fundamental principle of homeschooling is to have, and provide, the freedom to allow each kid to retain that curiosity we're born with.

It is no suprise to me that the kids participating in online forums are doing well, when they're doing things they want to do they will put in more effort and energy. It is a given.

--
Engineering is the art of compromise.

Re:Writing better? by Ray+Radlein · 2004-02-06 19:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

Grammar is largely the outward manifestation of orderly thought in a given language. You don't notice English Grammar for the same reason that a fish doesn't notice the water. You've had all your life to slowly absorb the lesson that some ways of arranging words in English sentences just don't work.

I'm a kid in a similar situation, and I agree - by miradu2000 · 2004-02-06 19:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm 17, and senior editor of a website that is read by about? 13,000 people a day, and trust me, my writing skills have greatly improved. I write daily news and reviews, and over the last 5 years working at this site have developed a unique style.

There are two things that have contributed to my becoming a better writer: One, writing lots - my "hobby" has made me write more than I would of ever written normally at this stage of my life, and two, when you are read by 15,000 people, a couple people out of those 15000 point out every little error you make.. and I have learned from those errors.

My main focus is reviews and analysis of blah, and the experience i have gained online has shown up well in school through my commentary's and other literary analysis thatI do, my english grades are much improved over where they were several years ago, and each year get better. (If only I could make these skills blatently evident in college applications *cough* columbia's fu foundation *cough*).

School, in tandom with the web have made me a much better, and much closer to a college level writer. I think the key thing about the web is that it has removed the age barrier. I started in 7th grade, and I wrote from a kids perspective. As I grew up, my writing also grew up to the point that now only do I do the writing, I also run much of the site. I don't think that most of my readers know that I am still in highschool. I am infinitly grateful for the web to have presented me with thise opportinities. I frankly don't know where I would be without it. (I started using the web in '93... thanks to a brand new school with a brand new computer lab)

IM Doesn't Directly Harm Writing Ability by oobob · 2004-02-06 20:04 · Score: 5, Interesting

Even though many have disparaged the effects of IM on schoolchildrens' prose, some kids are actually becoming better writers by participating in online communities.

I don't get why people say this. You could claim that IM faciliates poor English, but I don't see this as an direct effect. How could a program turn words and structure into that s*** you find in chatrooms?

I think kids are just farking lazy. While IM allows them to write horrible sentences without being screeched at by teachers, implying that poor prose is caused by IM is a stretch. These are the kids who, don't know when to, use commas, or won't use the correct words, even if they're forced. IM just allows that trend to solidify into habit, since they're all chatting instead of watching TV or talking on the phone. Think about it: if computers didn't exist, when would these people write at all?

wold u disagre?

In high school, I offered a classmate (in the accelerated English class, mind you) the chance to break my physics bridge if he wrote a pro-choice paper, mainly because I was sick of hearing his Christian ramblings during class. I'm undecided on abortion, but I wanted to understand how someone like him would argue against his beliefs. I saw a perfect opportunity to challenge his arrogant moral zeal, the same flavor that makes the rest of the world hate us and makes me want to break his face. When I saw his draft, I almost cried. The writing was so unstructured that I could hardly understand anything. The kid couldn't conceptualize a thought he didn't agree with, much less express it in a quasi-coherent form.

When I started using IM, my anal-retentive friend would scream at me if I didn't include puncuation, or capitalize my sentences. Now, I can't stand when others don't do the same, and my writing has benefited tremendously. If I write a paper and check it once, I catch most errors, and figure out more effective ways to arrange sentences. Your ear will learn syntax and structure, even if you don't. Writing benefits writing, and the only harm inflicted by IM is allowing kids to write how they want. If you read any number of high school papers (my dad used to teach 10th-11th grade English), you'd understand. The difference between those papers and IMs? Well, they capitalize their sentences, and they're considerate enough to include periods.

Slashdot has helped my writing skills! by quantaman · 2004-02-06 20:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

Seriously!

No, it hasn't really improved my grammar or spelling (sorry grammar nazis), but through the obscene number of posts I've made since I've started contributing to slashdot discussions I have refined my writing skills. In my quest to come across intelligently and post something that people will want to read I've gained valuable communication skills. For evidence I simply consider how much better I do with respect to karma than when I first started posting, sure the karma bonus helps and I've probably learned to be a bit of a karma whore (why post something that no one will read) but I do believe a significant increase in the number of my comments that get modded up is due to writing skills I have improved by posting to slashdot.

As well I've even tried writing short stories and posting them on my site, not that they're any good but it's fun to put up something that someone might read (even if it's only a couple friends who give pleasently baised reviews:). I don't get to write as much as I'd like to but I've found I very much enjoy doing it and I am sure I never would of started if it was not for the ability to post them online even though no one will read them but a couple friends who I could have given them to anyway.

It doesn't matter if it's posts to slashdot or short stories on my site, the online community has inspired me to write things that require thought and that cannot help but cause my writing abilities to improve. Now I merely await the trolls who shall flock to point out that this post isn't well written at all (hey it's 1 am here!).

--
I stole this Sig

Henry Jenkins by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-06 20:10 · Score: 1, Interesting

Henry Jenkins has been featured on Slashdot before over the years. Most notably, for defending "different" kids to Congress through his essays and papers. He defended goth, punk, geek and nerd kids when we were all under attack during the aftermath of Columbine. He also was quick to stand up and intelligently combat anti-videogame loonies who wanted to impose massive restrictions on them and blame every ill in society on them.

Henry Jenkins is incredibly intelligent, well-spoken and puts his effort into a lot of things that a lot of *us* find very important.

The point of learning Latin by Serious+Simon · 2004-02-06 20:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

Having taken Latin classes for six years, many years ago, I have sometimes pondered the point of learning a dead language.
I came to the conclusion that by learning Latin I actually learned a lot about my own language (which is Dutch, by the way).

In fact, exercises almost exclusively consisted of translating from Latin and not the other way around.

An interesting aspect of Latin is that the grammatical structure relies more on declinations (word endings); and word order in Latin sentences does generally not correspond to that of the translation in e.g. English or Dutch. Translating a Latin sentence involves looking up unfamiliar words, and figuring out the grammatical functions and relations of the words in the sentence. After the analysis comes the synthesis: writing a grammatically correct sentence in Dutch (or English, etc.) that accurately represents the meaning of the Latin sentence. I am sure that the skills thus learned are also helpful when it comes to expressing original thoughts.

Re:The point of learning Latin by TomV · 2004-02-06 22:10 · Score: 5, Interesting

"Latin is a language
as dead as dead can be.
It killed the ancient Romans,
and now it's killing me."

Nonetheless, I honestly believe that learning Latin at school has genuinely contributed to my coding. It's a wonderfully rigorous and structured language, but one which uses that rigour and structure to describe the real world. The strength of Latin is its unforgiving structure, while the strength of English is its flexibility.

Apart from anything else Latin lessons gave me a clear understanding of terms such as 'syntax' and 'parse', of proper sentence construction and the importance of precision in language.

I also feel there may, in some sense, be an added benefit, which manifests in a variety of ways, some obvious and some far more subtle, to be gained from the study of a language, even a language which is no longer current, vernacular or in any sense idiomatic, from which not only are a great many of the present day languages of Europe clear derivatives, but which was also the nearest thing to a universal language for many centuries, in which it would be, were that language to be more widely used today, considered entirely reasonable to construct sentences of great structural complexity, far beyond that displayed in current English, containing a range of subsidiary clauses, embedded phrases, hypothetical diversions and clearly structured formations such as the dreaded Ablative Absolute, with the consequent benefit of a remarkable precision in the expression of far more complex constructs in a single structural unit than might be possible in a language tending towards a shorter, more atomic, style of construction.

On the other hand, there's readability to consider... ;-)
Re:The point of learning Latin by CRCulver · 2004-02-07 01:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

In my expierience, translating Latin to something alive usually involved a considerable amount of guessing because Latin lacks structure.
Maybe because you are thinking in English and applying its paradigms when you should be thinking in Latin?
There are many reasons why Latin as we are/were tought it was never a spoken language.

So you don't think languages which encode meaning in endings can be spoken languages? You might have a glance at Finnish; an earlier poster explained how Finnish word order is also often arbitrary and it uses complex noun morphology like Latin. Or take Hungarian, my favourite, a language arguably more complex than Latin with both word-endings and postpositions, free word-order, and frequent lack of subjects or objects making one dependent on context. Among purely IE languages, the Slavic languages still preserve a lot of the complex noun morphology of the early Indo-European languages, but they are spoken daily by millions with no problems.

Classical Latin was never a daily spoken language, though people could understand easily recited classical Latin, look how much poetry was composed it it. Vulgar Latin, however, the language of the uneducated masses, was just as complex as classical Latin until a relatively late era.
Re:The point of learning Latin by CRCulver · 2004-02-07 03:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

And if you want to learn a dead language just for the sake of the learning... wouldn't Esperanto be a better choice?

Geez, I just wrote an entire post responding to myths about Esperanto, and right away someone brings them up again. Esperanto isn't dead. In the past three years I a) worked in an office where Esperanto is the language in use, and b) carried on a love affair with a girl with whom Esperanto was our common language. I speak it daily, and most of my social circles use Esperanto.

As far as learning a dead language, that really depends on what one is interested in. I'm a classics major, so obviously Latin is Real Important for me. I also want to do graduate study in IE comparative philology, so I'm currently learning two dead languages for the sake of learning a whole lot more dead languages.

I disagree by Seft · 2004-02-06 20:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

Firstly, writing isn;t improving due to some fan fiction. Writing is improving due to the fact that people are reading more. Whereas 5+ years ago kids could get away almost entirely without reading, now they *have* to read to use the internet. This is especially true for those who will be reading more serious pages. Improved writing is a result of an improved vocabulary, logically this has to be the case. Equally, grammar is declining simply because it isn't being taught. If you have ever taken a modern language, you will agree that you learn far more grammar in a year than you will have ever learnt in english. Solution? Get children learning a second language early.

Most People Can't Spell by NixLuver · 2004-02-06 20:26 · Score: 3, Interesting

The title is a little bit of a stretch; what I mean to say is that most of the people I exchange IMs with are abominable at spelling and worse at grammar. Fortunately for my peace of mind, it doesn't bother me very much as long as I can actually apprehend what they're trying to convey.

People that speak clearly will put punctuation in random places. One of my friends explained to me that he knew punctuation belonged in there, but he didn't know where it went, so he made it up as he went along.

In the end, however, language is a popularity contest, right? The words used the most frequently prosper and surge into the forefront of our vocabularies, and those less often used fade away. Spelling and grammar are also in flux constantly, but at a very slow rate that drops below most peoples' radars.

As time goes on and these electronic tools become more and more common, I would expect to see a levelling occur; Even though I can spell fairly well, I'd advocate phonetic spelling and reduction or elimination of homonyms. Call me a philistine, I don't care...

change for the machines. It's a stoned-the-crows-at-home Schroedinger's world.

--
Thinking outside my Head

Appropriate words for the correct forum. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-06 20:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

I write in a lot of different ways which vary greatly depending on where I am trying to communicate via the keyboard. This is entirely natural, however people seem damned sure to miss the obvious logical connection.

Different forums. Different grammar.

On livejournal my words come out pretty much like they would from my head, random, stream of consciousness with little regard for form. Chatting? Chatting is for filling in on communication with another person when you can't/won't see them in person or talk on the phone. IM doesn't need or require the same level of formality that one puts into papers or correspondence for work.

There's nothing wrong with 'teh k1dz' these days writing garbage in chat or in forums because these are throw away mediums, no different than a phone chat, except they may be saved for others to see.

Re:Appropriate words for the correct forum. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-06 22:29 · Score: 1, Interesting

[AnonCoward] very true.
[AnonCoward] on irc I tend to write without caps or much punctuation, because it's quicker
[AnonCoward] it doesn't really matter on irc though, it's easier to read because the lines are so short,
[AnonCoward] it's more like reading a script than reading paragraphed text

Obviously, when writing in a form where speed isn't important and ease of reading is, you write slower, with more regard for correctness.

I tend to think of forums as a "correct writing" environment, since people don't usually have conversations in real time; on most of the forums I post on, the convention is that it's fine to be a bit sloppier than you would when writing web pages, but clear writing is important since it's all anyone knows about you. It always annoys me when I see either posts which are one big paragraph, or posts which are so badly thought out that I actually have trouble reading them.

I suspect posters whose first language isn't English have a bit of trouble with some forum posts by "teh k1dz". Interestingly, among the people whose nationality I know, the worst English seems to come from some of the British and American posters; the non-native English speakers (mostly German and Dutch, on the forums I use) generally write quite well, although occasionally they phrase something in a way that makes it clear what they mean, but isn't something a native English speaker would say.

Re:Writing better? by CAIMLAS · 2004-02-06 20:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'll agree with you completely. Public schools in general put the lowest priority on grammar; in reality, it's probably one of the most important things you could learn in high school (at least as a scholastic skill that can be quantified).

I attended a private school my sophmore year of HS. That was an incredibly difficult year for me, as the english class was quite intense in teaching the nuances of the english language (at least compared to anything I'd seen prior, or have seen since).

For basic grammar, we used Abekka books. They had the basic "underline this part of speech, circle that" problems, but in addition, there was a huge amount of space dedicated to things such as common mistakes that most people make (your|you're, its|it's, who|whom, nauseated|nauseous, etc. etc. - I've forgotten most of the specifics by now, but I have the feeling I'm still aware of most of them through basic osmosis)).

Additionally, we had latin roots, prefixes and suffixes (probably 20 or so a week combined) as well as 20 or so 3-sylabilic+ words and at least 1 book a week from the library (which didn't have shit rags like Hardy Boys in it). It was quite the course load.

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~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers

Graduation by Grym · 2004-02-06 21:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'll never forget the time when I was standing in line to appear for graduation (2002). All of us in the top ten were talking about our speeches, and I asked one of them (2nd in our class) if I could read her speech. I skimmed through the standard-issue "glad we made it this far"-crap, but when I finished, I realized that she ended the speech with a preposition. I laughed, and mentioned this to her, suggesting a minor change. Her response? She simply shrugged and said she didn't care.

I think this is the true problem with most kids nowadays. They don't care. And why should they? I remember most of my "writing" classes consisted of idiotic writing prompts like:
"If you were a seagull, what would you do?" (actual prompt)
These classes are too much about expressing your inner-seagull that punctuation and grammar are considered secondary at best; page length being the most important factor, of course.

I mean, honestly, the problem isn't that difficult to define. Let's not blame IM for what is fundamentally the fault of our society as a whole. I think, before we point fingers, we all need to step back and ask ourselves, "What is going on here?"

-Grym

Re:Graduation by clarinetforhire · 2004-02-06 21:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

Wow, I had actually forgotten how stupid highschool english classes were until I read that! Most of mine were better than "If you were a seagull, what would you do?" (actual prompt), but that is exactly what all the standardized tests looked like.
My guess is somebody decided that creativity is much more important than the knowing what the phrase "past participle" means. Parents don't want their children to be the next $40,000/year editor at Harper Collins, they want their kid to be the next J.K. Rowling.

I don't think creativity can be taught, and the school's attempts at teaching creativity are worthless. English class basically consisted of being told "write a ten page story." So I'd write a story, then get it handed back to me with a few spelling errors circled, but those were words I knew how to spell and just happened to miss for some reason. So in the end I had learned nothing. Then we'd do it again.

--

The definition of a liberal: I may disagree with what you have to say, but I'll fight for your right to say it

Worked for me by ReyTFox · 2004-02-06 22:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

I've probably written pages and pages of stuff since I was 8(18 now), when we first got an Internet connection. At first, it was embarrassing(at least to today's me) posts to Usenet. Then forums...and irc but that's never really changed how I write so much, other than the (temporary) discarding of a few rules and some capitalization to improve the flow, and little habits I picked up like: /me sighs and has to come up with an example.

This fomula is very convenient cause it lets you express emotion in the first part and then immediately act on it in the second part. Typical in person, harder to convey in standard writing.

Another benefit of writing is that when I write about subjects I'm interested in, I tend to learn about them by going through the writing process, and I get to do research from Google(and nowadays Wikipedia) every so often. It's all very good practice.

Re:elitist ignorance by forevermore · 2004-02-06 22:10 · Score: 5, Interesting

english is a hack, of many different languages and dialects, warped and twisted generation after generation

Show me a language, other than a manmade one like Sanskrit (yes, it was codified, organized and "fixed in stone" about 2000-2400 years ago), that isn't. All languages evolve, that's what makes them "living" languages (as opposed to so-called "dead" ones like latin, ancient greek or classical arabic). You described a pidgin, which English definitely isn't. English has been evolving and in use as its own language for over 1500 years.

If we only had one language (like your example of Esperanto), it, too would begin to evolve as new technologies, etc. came into being. Esperanto lost popularity because it was too simple of a language -- it didn't contain enough complexity to convey the meanings necessary to carry on an intellectual conversation.

Languages, dialects and words evolve because of communication needs. Imagine if I said something like "this is wonderfully spicy food." English uses the word "spicy" for (at least) two different meanings: "flavorful from having a number of spices added", and "hot, as in chili peppers." A language like Spanish has evolved its own word (picante) for the latter meaning, and thus if I were to say "esta comida es deliciosamente picante," you'd know immediately that I love hot-spicy food.

It's not elitist to ask that people learn and use good grammar or spelling. Grammar is what gives sentences meaning. You can completely change the meaning of a sentence by misplacing a comma (I know, I spent an hour defending one sentence in my philosophy thesis because of an ambiguous comma) or other punctuation mark, just as you can make a sentence very difficult to read by using "it's" (it is) instead of "its" (belongs to "it").

Granted, English is a horribly over-complex language that has adopted words and phrases from a variety of other (often non-related) languages, you said it yourself - it's extremely difficult to find a replacement for it. I'm not about to say that everyone should learn English and nothing else -- far from it, I speak/understand 3 languages (only one of them very well, anymore) and find it attrocious that Americans can barely speak their own language, let alone at least one more -- but, it has become the dominant language of information, and like it or not, especially because so many people speak it, it's very important to follow the rules (and the exceptions) in order to be understood.

Just for an experiment, if you want to see how much more effort it is to have something that's just "understandable," go read some Middle English like Chaucer, where words were spelled phonetically instead of according to specified rules (and the spellings change between instances of the words). You practically have to read it aloud if you want to understand it easily. There's a reason why grammar and spelling standards evolved within languages.

--
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers

Writing improves itself by Cappy+Red · 2004-02-06 22:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

The best way to improve one's writing is to write more. The rise of fan-fiction has just provided an attractive outlet to those who wouldn't otherwise be writing.

I have always liked to read, but my lower education English classes did a fair job of beating a love of writing out of me. It wasn't until I accidently stumbled into and started writing fan-fiction online that I learned to enjoy it.

Peer review helps, but the amount that it helps depends on the peer group. Books on writing can be good sources of ideas, but they can't improve your writing for you. If you want to write better, you have to write. Given time, you can't help but improve.

*honk*

--
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things

Re:Writing better? by jesser · 2004-02-06 23:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

That's my point, sort of. The parent to my post seemed to be agreeing with many usage commentators (but disagreeing with most Americans) that "naseous" is supposed to mean "nauseating" rather than "nauseated".

--
The shareholder is always right.

Re:Writing better? by BuilderBob · 2004-02-07 00:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

There is a simple enough reason for this.

English is taught (at least in English speaking countries) as a language for everyday use. In England I guess it would be something like Estuary English. It's a language where words are slurred together (in a general sense, I'm not implying the English are drunk all the time :), 'slow' letter-groups are lost (what==w'ot, what's up==wass'up, hmm...). What is really being said is obtained mostly from the context and slang is used often.

Foreign languages, in your case, German (I'm assuming here that your first language is English) ,are taught using sentence construction, proper tense usage and correct verb gender. You're taught how to write the sentence before you learn the nouns which are being used.

The only way to correct this (IMHO) would be to have two English subjects, the first is "English as an everyday language"(EEL), the second "English as a foreign language"(EFL). In the EFL class you would English grammer as any non-english speaker would, tense, irregular verbs, pronoun order. The EEL class would be essays, imagination, poetry, discussion, etc.

I doubt it will happen any time soon, nobody wants 3 different English classes (+literature..).

There are also changes that have happened to the English language which didn't happen to the other European languages (German, French, Welsh..). Some of the grammatical constructions are dropped or optional. German has die/der/das/dem, French has le/la/les/l'... to mean 'the'. In English you can often drop the 'the' (e.g. the man's hat='the hat of the man' in [German,French,Welsh,Spanish]). Silly things like not beginning a sentence with 'And' or 'But' and split infinitives also add to the confusion.

Regarding the writing online improving children's English (I just reread the story title, my brain said "the kids have improved, now they are writing online", instead of "...because they are writing"). I think it has something to do with the ability to change sentences as you change your thoughts, on paper you have to form the sentence first, on a computer you can type what you think of first (which is what you see in IRC/IM chat). If you then want to change the structure, you don't have to throw away the entire page. This paragraph has been changed at least 4 times.

BB

Re:elitist ignorance by monkeyfinger · 2004-02-07 00:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

Just for an experiment, if you want to see how much more effort it is to have something that's just "understandable," go read some Middle English like Chaucer, where words were spelled phonetically instead of according to specified rules

I'd reccomend reading Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. It's about scottish drug addicts and the entire book is written in phonetic scottish. It's weird at first, but it really works. It's also an amazing book.

Re:Writing better? by canajin56 · 2004-02-07 06:11 · Score: 2, Interesting

Hehe, sounds about as competent as my grade 7 science teacher. First, he taught us that women have more ribs than men. I tried to correct him but he asked to talk to me after class...where he explained that he knows that, but he can't teach that or the religious parents will get mad.

Next, he taught us that babies' skulls have a gap in them so that their brain can grow. I said "But it fuses within a few months. Yet an adult's head is quite a bit larger than an infants. Obviously, your skull can grow even if it is fused solid." He wouldn't listen.

Oh, I also got in trouble when I left a floppy in one of the computers, and they found a GAME on it. They were like "We are really choked. You know the policy on games in school" and I said "Read the credits, you'll see that I wrote the game myself. You can also read the source code. I've been teaching myself programming, since all we do in computer class is Mavis Beacon and Logo Writer."

Teachers teaching faulty information, that's the one thing I can't stand. Fine, the point of elementry school isn't to teach important facts, but to teach how to learn. (Or so they tell me), but teaching stuff that is just plain wrong?

Oh, and on the note of the "psychic messages", our Chem 12 teacher accused two students of cheating on a test because one was a C student, but she got a 45/50, which was the same mark as the A student sitting across from her. But the thing is, while they each got 5 questions wrong, they only had one wrong answer in common. My friend, the A student, said "Well if having the same mark 'proves' we cheated, why don't we have the same questions wrong?" "That doesn't matter to me. 90% isn't exactly a typical mark for Lisa" "So she is being punished for studying?" "No, studying can't make you THAT much better. You must have been cheating"

--
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI

In resonse to your sig by lowtekneq · 2004-02-07 11:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

Homer and Krusty look like clones because MG wanted to make a satirical point. Bart has no respect for his father but worships this TV clown. Eventually they did change them a little, but the original idea stuck...

--
Carpe meam simiam!

Re:Oh please... by DPMeg · 2004-02-07 12:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

Daniel - I think you've completely missed the point of what Henry Jenkins was talking about. My name is Heather Lawver, I'm the person the article was named for and I run the Daily Prophet - the Harry Potter fan fiction forum Mr. Jenkins was referring to. Obviously you haven't checked out any of the sites Mr. Jenkins referenced because, if you had, you would realized I'm not running anything remotely like a message board of IMing forum. Instead, Mr. Jenkins was referring to *supervised* educational publishing forums, where children are actually guided and mentored by trained individuals. And yes, I do believe that the likes of L33T speak and the lack of punctuation so commonly seen in IMing are deplorable. But in my own experience, a child only needs to publish one story with horrible punctuation and spelling, then receive constructive negative feedback, and suddenly they realize how ridiculous they're being. It can sometimes serve as a catalyst for their education. Regardless of that issue, I believe you've missed the point. Mr. Jenkins' article wasn't about unsupervised message boards, he was talking about actual educational forums and online tools. Please don't so vehemently dismiss something without first exploring the subject of the article.

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