CRITERION??

[muzikishappiness]

Our teacher is starting us on this online critique program called Criterion...I'm not sure how thats spelled...

Anyways, it's supposed to save time for her because this thing proofreads and critques your work in about 45 seconds, shows you where you made a mistake (but doesnt tell you HOW to correct it, so you learn) spits its version back out to you. (It also deals with "you need a thesis here," and "____ is misspelled," etc. type stuff.)

It also rates your work on a scale of 1-5.

Of course she's going to grade the final project herself, our teacher's not COMPLETELY lazy, haha, but I feel this will speed up our writing process, at least in our school.

I dont know if it can only be used by schools or not. I doubt it, but I'm not sure.

I thought I'd share it with you guys, if any of you are interested in this program.

It costs $7.50 per year.

We havent started it yet, we're starting it in a week or so I believe, so I dont know the exact web address, but I imagine its www.criterion.com or something like that.

Or if your really interested I suppose you could just google it.

Thought I'd share that with you all. I feel this will be a great experience for me, and I hope you guys can share it too!!

[Robin]

I wouldn't pay for something like that when there are hundreds of websites out there that offer the same thing for free. Well, those websites can be slower than this Criterion thing, but they're free, and I'd trust the opinions of a living breathing person rather than a computer any day. Don't get me wrong, computers are awesome, but since when have computers been good at critiquing?

[Ramona]

I dunno, the whole thing sounds kind of iffy to me. I'd rather have a person share their opinions and corrections than trust a computer with it. I mean, there are some things that only a person can offer insight on.

[muzikishappiness]

I do agree with you both somewhat.

Robin, I didnt know that some sites did that for free, I think I'll google it...Thanks!!

Criterion also has on online email "instant messaging" (although its not AIM) system to communicate with your teachers, she showed us how that worked today.

I agree with you both though, an actual person editting the whole thing would probably be better, but I think its great that a computer can help you with spelling and grammar (I'm a horrible speller and I make the ocassional grammatical error from time to time) and tell you if your thesis isnt clear enough or something like that before you hand it in to your teacher.

To me it sounds like a good idea, because our class rarely does peer-edits, and our teacher rarely edits our work before we're supposed to turn it in.

Maybe its just my teacher, but she's really difficult. She takes between 5-15 points off(depends on the amount of points the assignment is worth) per every spelling/grammatical error, plus the normal writing rubric most teachers use (you know, the typical "descriptive adjectives, writing style, etc.

I'm not sure but I'd consider her own of my toughest teachers yet. She hardly ever gives compliments... And I'm sorry, but I must brag. Not that you care, but she gave my friend Tim and I both compliments on our writing style today. :-)

I think the Criterion thing will be good for my class and I really hope it will help me improve my essays. I believe I'm a pretty good creative writer, but with my essays, I pretty much suck, and essays, seeing as I'm going into high school next year, I'll have to do a lot of those pretty soon.

[Robin]

I wasn't referring to websites that generate critique for you, but to sites like this one, or sites like Fictionpress.

[muzikishappiness]

Oh. :-( Well, okay. I didnt understand. Yeah, this site is good, it critiques more of the style then the mechanics though, and thats mainly what Criterion does, and thats mainly the biggest problem I have. Thanks for clearing that up for me though. :-)

[cry,crayola.]

yeah, i do like real live people crit. my work. it gets a better message to me on how minds process my work = better understaning of my talent (or lack of)/how to fix things. computers have no opinions, which kinda sucks if you're trying to get one, eh?