More on that marking program idea

[robinturner]

After wading through a lot of Mozilla documentation, it looks like writing an add-on to Mozilla Composer is not the way to go. The code base is a confusing mixture, and it looks like it's going to be rewritten as a standalone application that doesn't rely on XUL. I'll wait and see what they come up with.

What I'm looking into now is the possibility of writing OpenOffice macros to do the same thing. Again, the shortage of good documentation is a limiting factor, but that should change soon, now there is an official OpenOffice scripting project (which I've just joined, albeit in passive mode). It would have the advantage that student work would not need to be converted to HTML (OpenOffice reads Word documents better than anything else I know - sometimes even better than Word can). In addition, it shouldn't be too hard to port the macros to Word, so those poor Word-using people can use them too.

Things I'm thinking of putting in the macros, in addition to the normal colour-coded highlighting for errors:

"Irrelevant!"
"What is your point here?"
"Please learn to use the Simple Present tense."
"You don't need quotation marks in a blockquote."
"Use the spellchecker!"
"PLAGIARISED!!!"

Comments

[arbiteroftruth.livejournal.com]

another suggestion:

[angel-electric.livejournal.com]

hey hey hey

and how about a few sanguine annotations to linger optimistically within this hallowed macros, for those [shimmeringly; tragically] rare students who do have original ideas as well as the heart-stopping capacity to express them beautifully, capably and properly.

like or such as:

· “i’m astounded. you sure this isn’t plagiarized (???)”
· “gorgeously well-put. you’re my TA pick-of-the-week. please apply.”
· “amazing. just amazing.”
etc

disclaimer

01THERE IS SOME IRONY IN MY ENCOURAGING SOMEONE TOWARDS COMPLIMENT AND POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT.
02MY DISREGARD FOR FUNDAMENTAL MLA SPELLING/GRAMMAR/LANGUAGE USE GUIDELINES IS DELIBERATE.
03YOUR OWN LIST DID MAKE ME SMILE.
04WE DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER. APOLOGIES THUS, FOR THIS INTRUSION!

[solri.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do write nice comments like that sometimes, though normally I save the positive stuff for tutorials. I once explained in class that I am two people. There is Robin, the nice guy you see in class, and there is Professor Turner who marks your essays (not that I'm a professor, or even an associate professor, but I fool a lot of people, if the salutations on my incoming emails are anything to go by).

I think the most positive comment I wrote on a student essay was "I don't know much about the subject you're writing about, but this looks publishable."

MY DISREGARD FOR FUNDAMENTAL MLA SPELLING/GRAMMAR/LANGUAGE USE GUIDELINES IS DELIBERATE.

MLA sucks, as does APA. I'm fond of BibTeX plain, myself. Nice, simple, no-nonsense referencing.