Monday, June 12, 2006

Electronic Editing

I said I wanted to post about what other bloggers are writing about. I said I'd do it once a week. I also vowed three months ago to give up soda--no such luck!
Over at Random Thoughts, Nancy writes, about electronic editing, "I think teachers need to give serious thought to who their students are. It is the teachers who are hung up on hard copies, not the students. We have to give up trying to teach the students we were and, instead, teach the students we have."

My brother is working on an article and e-mailed me a copy to edit. As an English teacher, I was tempted to print it out and start marking it up. I love my number two pencils, finely sharpened, lined up next to one another; I love the smell of the freshly trimmed wood and graphite as it presses against the white paper; I...sorry, got a little carried away.
Anyway, I realized that I would not be able to quickly share my editing with him unless I scanned the article or sent it through the U.S. Postal Service. I decided to give editing electronically a try. I figured out how to strike-through and comment. Though I consider myself part of the technological generation (graduated from high school in 1995), I don't consider myself all that proficient with technology (as demonstrated by my five failed attempts to render a DVD of the Staff vs. Senior basketball game).
I do think that electronic editing, though time consuming this first time, has merit. The only downfall is that, for this house poor teacher, I can't take the computer to Starbucks. Seriously, is there any better way to grade papers than with a freshly espressed Grande-two pump-extra hot-non fat- no whip White Chocolate Mocha (yes, I do live in the Seattle area; and yes, I've become snooty!)?
Now, if I could only figure out how to do that strike-through thing like The Ed Wonk--so proficient at it.

3 Comments:

At 8:48 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Next year the two eldest (twins) will be at UW and I have been thinking along the same lines.
How to electronically edit. Occasionally they still give me papers to work on.

Bog Jr. says
greater than s
less than
word
greater than
forward slash
s
less than

This blog won't accept our attempt at a strike thru.
We're going to try it on the bog blog.

 
At 1:02 PM , Blogger HappyChyck said...

I hope I can become more adept at electronic editing. It seems like it should be faster doing it all without paper, but for now it's faster for me to just do it with a pen--especially if the writing is typed.

But then there was that time when I couldn't compose at a computer and hand-wrote everything first. Thank goodness overcame that!

But then there's that other thing...I think too much computer time is wearing out my wrists and eyes. Oh how I hate to admit that. It's probably age related.

 
At 4:21 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

The strikethrough thing EdWonk does is pretty easy HTML. Just put an "s" in between carats and a "/s" in between carats at the end of whatever you want to strikethrough. I can't do a sample here, because your comments won't accept the tag. Just do this, be delete the spaces between the characters:

< s >some text< /s >

 

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