Grammerly.

[Brandy]

After watching a commercial about it, it's clear that educators are no longer teaching English, or, they are no longer testing students before letting them pass to the next grade. In the commercial a young woman, college age, has to write a paper. She looks like she is overwhelmed. In comes Grammerly to the rescue. She uses the app to make her paper error free and gets an A+ for her NON EFFORT. Has she learned anything? Nope. Unless you consider learning a new way to cheat. She knows no more than when she started the paper. Great job educators.

 

[vintage chromoly]

Is it really spelled "grammerly", or is it "grammarly"?

 

[FrnkNsteen]

After watching a commercial about it, it's clear that educators are no longer teaching English, or, they are no longer testing students before letting them pass to the next grade. In the commercial a young woman, college age, has to write a paper. She looks like she is overwhelmed. In comes Grammerly to the rescue. She uses the app to make her paper error free and gets an A+ for her NON EFFORT. Has she learned anything? Nope. Unless you consider learning a new way to cheat. She knows no more than when she started the paper. Great job educators.

I couldn't agree more. I work for a large company that has many documentation requirements. You can tell immediately which documents were written by someone who relies on spell-check and other software like that. Grammar correction software has gotten a lot better, but there are still common things that those systems don't catch. In my opinion, we are teaching our students to rely on software too much instead of teaching them good grammar skills.

 

[Bill Monk]

Yep, they can't spell, can't do math, can't balance a checkbook. Pretty sad

 

[Brandy]

when I was a US Army AIT instructor the students would tell me, every cycle, that they were smarter because of the computers. I would promptly cut the power to the classroom and say okay, prove it. Failures every time. Show your work was a swear phrase. They couldn't show their work.

 

[DCCoronet]

I remember how exciting it was to get a set of encyclopedia's and what a time saver it was to not have to go down to the library to gather the resources for writing papers. I don't think many kids in high school now could even tell you what an encyclopedia is. It's amazing to me with four kids in school now how reliant they are on the internet for research... and getting a quick answer to common a sense question.

 

[vintage chromoly]

I wonder if the same kind of conversation was had when the calculator replaced the slide rule?

 

[Brandy]

I wonder if the same kind of conversation was had when the calculator replaced the slide rule?

Or when the papyrus replaced the scribing in clay. Or when the spoken word replaced sign language and grunts. Or when electric lights replaced gas lights. The car replaced horses.

 

[Brandy]

Or when toilet paper replaced your left hand....lol.

 

[vintage chromoly]

Progress.

Nobody can stop it and the previous generation always complains that the next generation is the end of civilization.

Rinse and repeat.

 

[DeltaV]

I wonder if the same kind of conversation was had when the calculator replaced the slide rule?

Yes, and I still have two of them. I have a Chinese abacus too.

 

[Bill Monk]

Progress is a good thing until it replaces reason and will. In a civilization completely dependent on technology, the most dangerous weapon in the world is not a nuclear weapon. All they would have to do is kill the power and the web and we would self destruct.....There is no substitute for a strong drive and the intellect to direct it.

 

[Cncguy1]

I was never very good in English class.

 

[Bladecutter]

And these are the sheep that will be in flying cars.....yeah, easy peasy,,,,NOT

 

[FrnkNsteen]

Progress is a good thing until it replaces reason and will. In a civilization completely dependent on technology, the most dangerous weapon in the world is not a nuclear weapon. All they would have to do is kill the power and the web and we would self destruct.....There is no substitute for a strong drive and the intellect to direct it.

I agree!! The other technological advances people mentioned did not negate the need to be able to figure things out. I remember when I was a kid, we weren't allowed to use calculators for tests. Even in the classes that did allow it, we still had to show our work to show that we understood how to do the calculations. I'm all for the benefits of technology,..... I just think we rely on it too much. I use Minitab statistical software to do my job, but something happens, I still know how to do the manual calculations. A lot of people don't know how.

My brother in law was in the military in communications. After leaving the military and taking a civilian position, there was a time that the computer systems went down and he was able to do his job through manual calculations. His boss questioned how he was able to still do his job with the system down. He explained to them that he simply made the calculations manually. They couldn't understand how he was able to do that. Technology is great until people rely on it in lieu of having the ability to do it themselves. When the technology fails, they are screwed.

 

[Brandy]

I have told my son the same thing repeatedly,: When the power is gone so are the computers and apps and games. What will young people do then? Talk to each other, work, create stuff? Not likely. Talk about a wasted generation or two. At least I taught him to make and start a fire, plant crops, and care for livestock. He might make it....

 

[gkent]

Its hilarious watching Street Outlaws New Orleans ... one of the phrases in one episode was " ... come and draw y'all's spark plugs"

 

[gkent]

But back to he original post, its a company trying to sell an app, not necessarily promoting cheating.

 

[Brandy]

Thanks, I did not say they were promoting cheating. Just said that people are using it to cheat themselves out of an education.

 

[Jcharger]

For some of us (me) the spellcheck and grammar stuff has helped learning the right way, even way after the age when any normal person would have learned. I got tired of seeing all the red and green squiggly lines in my document. Being told in college that I misspelled the same word three different ways and had more than 30 misspellings on my first essay didn't really make a difference for me. I felt bad, but I never noticed the misspellings. Red underlines did it. Strange enough as it may seem. I learned different from others.