Re: [school-discuss] English teacher apps

[robin <robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR>]

robin wrote:
> robin wrote:
>
> > Dennis Daniels wrote:
> >
> > >  > Quite possibly. There are many things that teachers still do 
> > > better than
> > >  > computers. A computer might be a good replacement for a bad 
> > > teacher, but
> > >  > it is rarely even close to a good one.
> > >
> > > Yes, I agree, however, but the good teachers can be made great by 
> > > applying the tools that help the teachers better analyze an entire 
> > > group's needs. I'm looking for apps that help remove the drudgery of 
> > > pointing out that ending a sentence with a preposition is bad form, 
> > > that one must start a sentence with a capital letter and if you make 
> > > a spelling mistake it is the student's responsibility to correct it.
> > >
> > > I was driving home this evening and could think of scripts, off the 
> > > top of my head, that would make all English teacher's lives much more 
> > > productive...
> > >
> > > *histogram of all words a student uses diffed against the Academic 
> > > Word List
>
> Well, no histograms as yet, but ten cups of coffee later, I've come up 
> with a web-based application that will check a file against the AWL. 
> It's rather slow (too many loops and big arrays!) and I'm not sure how 
> reliable it is, but the results I've had so far seem to make sense. 
> Here's what it made of some files I fed it ...
More coffee and a few glasses of raki later, it now has, if not actual 
histograms, a graphical representation of the results. Woo, I'm feeling 
pleased with myself today!

Robin

--
"I'm very into Britney Spears' early work, before she sold out, so 
mostly her, um, finger painting and macaroni art."
Dawn - BtVS

Robin Turner
IDMYO
Bilkent Universitesi
Ankara 06533
Turkey

www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin