The Oregon Department of Education is going to allow test takers to use spell check on state exams. This is a dumb idea.1
I remember when I had to take a big exam after grad school – I handwrote the exam because I didn’t want to be one of those victims of a sudden power outage. There were times when I would have liked to have used a longer more high-falutin’ word, but I am a profoundly terrible speller. If you can’t spell a word, don’t use it. It’s a simple as that. Yes, I suppose your students won’t have to concentrate on spelling so they can theoretically focus on content.
Grr.
- I’m hoping to increase their SEO mojo for the keywords “dumb ideas” [↩]
I had a boss who couldn’t spell – so he started using a spellchecker with hilarious results.
There were so many errors I couldn’t possibly recall them all, but my favorite… to cancel a contract, he wrote “I wish to resend this contract.”
“Computers: helping us make bigger and better mistakes for decades”