Computers As Writing Instructors by Greg Miller: a Review

Writing-instruction software is designed to analyze the text of an essay and either give it a simple grade or feedback as to what could be improved. Some find it indispensable for improving the skills of beginning writers while others are skeptical as to its efficacy. The primary benefit seems to be the speed with which results can be returned. When students are able to get feedback within seconds and try again right away, it can drastically improve their skills.

There are three major commercial providers of writing-instruction software: Vantage Learning, Educational Testing Service (the producers of the GRE exam), and Pearson Education who charges $30 per student per year. My first impulse is to grate against a commercial service making a profit on teaching children to write. However, I have often paid far more than $30 for a book that taught me almost nothing about a subject. So, if more students are learning to write and gaining the confidence in their ability to learn that comes from that, then I say $30 is well worth it. Although I did find it disheartening to learn that my chances of getting into graduate school may be affected by a computer program.

One factor that limits the usefulness of these programs is that they need to be trained on about 100 human-graded essays before they can be used. This means that these programs could not be used for the unique, context-specific types of essays that most teachers assign for classes. However, those essays are usually used to asses a student's knowledge of the material taught in the classroom, not teach them to write. If the student has learned to write better by practicing using standardized essays and computerized feedback, then they will be more confident and able to focus on the question at hand rather than being hampered by inadequate writing ability.

Some naysayers complain that the software can't measure certain things such as accuracy or clever writing. However, I believe that it is at least a start. No one is recommending that humans be taken completely out of the picture. But the software can be used to quickly and easily bring students up by several levels where the teacher can then take over and start working on the finer points.

I do have one real concern that wasn't addressed in the article: Have the commercial providers patented all of the technology to such a point that it would be impossible for an open-source project to be able to do something similar. This is important because, even though I think $30 is a fair price to pay to learn how to write, it is still a bit too expensive for most of the people in the world. While the commercial programs may have certain special features that many would be willing to pay for, it would be nice if the rest of the world could still have access to the basic algorithms. This would keep the other six billion people in the world from falling even further behind.

Greg Miller. “Computers As Writing Instructors.” Science 2 Jan 2009: 59-60.

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This post is Copyright © 2009 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.

Isaac Asimov predicts DEMML (sort of)

In 1988 Bill Moyers did an interview with Isaac Asimov about his (then) recently released book, As Far as the Eye Can See. In this interview, Asimov predicted that we would all eventually be able to have computers in our homes that could connect us to vast libraries of information. The interview is up on YouTube in three parts which I have embedded here. I have also included a few notes that took while watching the videos:

Part 1:

• 4:17 - Moyers asks, "Do you think we can educate ourselves on […]anything that strikes our fancy?"
• 6:50 - Learning more makes us more comfortable in the universe.
• 8:42 - We can have a revolution in learning.
• 9:30 - If we educate children from the start into appreciating their own creativity, then we can all be creative.

Part 2:

• 0:00 - Access to computer based education and information, and the ability to learn at one's own pace will make it so that people will enjoy learning. At school, the one-size-fits all approach makes learning not enjoyable.
• 1:10 - Computers don't dehumanize learning. They do the opposite by creating a one-to-one relationship between information source and information consumer.

Part 3:

• This section primarily speaks to the importance of emphasizing science and rational thought over mysticism.

Additional Thoughts:

I think it is important to note how much emphasis Asimov places on individualized learning rather than a one-size-fits-all model. He points out the problems we have in the classroom with trying to educate a room full of students, assuming that they all learn the same. While Asimov did predict the vast amount of knowledge that would be available on the Internet, he did not predict that it would also be a disadvantage. He assumed that the information would be organized like a "library," never imagining that we would be in such a rush to pile content into as many web sites as possible that we would forget to stop and organize it as it went in. This is one of the primary goals of DEMML™. While I have no plans to organize the entire internet, I do plan to organize all of the information that people will need to educate themselves about the world around them. I believe that DEMML™ will finally realize Asimov's dream.

P.S. The entire interview is also available on the PBS web site here.

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This post is Copyright © 2009 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.

Playpower.org team is making educational games available for $12 computers.

There is a group of people from several different universities who have started an organization called Playpower.org to create free educational games that will run on a type of computer that is already being manufactured and sold in India for only $12. The computer is based on the same chip that used to be in the old Apple II computers but is all contained within just the keyboard. It plugs into an existing TV just like a video game. Wired Magazine has an article about it here.

I truly believe this is the kind of "educational technology" that is really going to change the world. It is a simple idea, it is incredibly cheap, the learning can take place at home, and it can be done any time of the day.

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This post is Copyright © 2009 by Grant Sheridan Robertson.