Additional Writing Tools (Jun. 30th)

In today's class, Mr.Paterson introduced a few additional writing tools due to the request in students' blogs. I was very impressed and amazed by the few he had shown us last class, but it was great learning about even more tools. Although some features were the same as other websites, now we have a larger variety to choose from and really decide on which tool we want to use in certain circumstances. Not only was I astonished by the additional writing tools, but it was also really interesting that the comments and requests students write in their blog are actually applied and taught in class. I think these students may have not been able to ask for additional tools in class, on the spot, and were only able to write down their requests in their blogs after reflecting on what they had learned that day. Being given the time to really think about what happened in class and write down the questions we had, and then the teacher answering the questions in the following class is a really constructive way of communication and shows how effective the blogs are. I personally enjoy writing blogs especially when I recall that the teacher is going to read this and what I write may affect what he teaches us in class.

After being introduced to additional writing tools, I became really curious about the technological systems behind all these websites. From time to time Grammarly points out and tries to change a perfectly correct sentence. However, this has only happened once or two times over the course of three years of constantly using Grammarly. Today, we were introduced to a newly upgraded website, Paperrater and it had so many functions that I was flabbergasted by. My friend and I were talking about how can a computer recognize all these mistakes. I was especially mind blown by the feature of testing if there is any plagiarism or if any of the sentences are cliche. These were the few moments I had in class when I really how alarmingly quickly technology really is developing. It is almost frightening how people can program a website to do all of these things.