To be gobsmacked at this letter from the school?

[sellisx]

My little sister who lives with me, came home yesterday with a note from the school to say, they are now starting to do their homework on emails. So instead of handing in a written homework piece, it'd have to be e-mailed.
That sounds bad enough but then goes on to say that "they should probably use Gmail as it has a spell checker"
:O I just can't fathom this. Surely spell checking isn't cheating?

I have an email account for 9 year old DS, it's on gmail and linked to my normal one.
It means he can send emails to a couple of friends, use it for joining some childrens websites, etc.
There is no way I would let him have one I couldn't monitor.

YABU
This is the 21st century and most written communications are electronic. Seems perfectly reasonable.

Someone at my dc school did some research on using spellcheckers and boys who typed on computers and were allowed to use spellcheckers improved their spelling more than those that hand wrote and had their spelling corrected by teachers

spelling research

Spellcheck, if used be someone who can't spell or doesn't lock, can be recognised because it his the wrong worms.

Tis fine until they have to do exams . . . which are hand-written.

Tis fine until they have to do exams . . . which are hand-written

Yes - the exam boards haven't caught up with the 21st century yet.

Children and adults who physically struggle with handwriting are disadvantaged in exams, Even if they get extra time.

Today's generation are used to typing, cutting and pasting, editing etc. Valuable skills for the real world.

Yet schools insist on handwriting. Cursive at DS's school. Why? It's an archaic skill.

Excuse my ignorance, but do they teach typing in primary schools nowadays?

It seems infinitely sensible for young children to be able to use typing and spell check, which they will use all their working life instead of scrubbing away with pencil and paper. Unless she is like 5. So 8 seems sensible. Of course if families do not have pcs and internet then this is not fair.

Why is using a spell check cheating and using a dictionary not cheating?

I am dyslexic, spelling has always been a major hassle and no amount of drilling and guilt in school changed that. What changed it was using a computer and spell check.

In order to use a dictionary you need to have some idea how to spell a word to start with.

One tip for people who struggle to use a dictionary is to use a thesaurus and find the spellings for words that way.

bruffin can you ask your colleague, who did research on spelling, why they only did the research on boys? I think this would work on all children, certainly on me, I'm female, and my dyslexic dd.

Sorry Italiangreyhound

It was a teacher at dc school who has now left. There is another article on her study in the BPS.

For the people who think this is a great idea, what about children who don't have access to email and the Internet at home?

Dd's school does this too Started when she was 9 for year 5 and 6 only. They all use tablets, bought through the school for less (apple schools program) The school set up the iPads removing apps and adding others, and they have them blocked for certain sites, anyone without uses the school tablets in the day and has to take home a paper copy of homework.
There's a school hub website the teacher has access to the children's work and can email via the hub to give them their spelling words and other work, that is either done online and submitted or other work is done on paper and taken in.
It seems to be working very well.

In the real world, you still need to use a pen and paper. It would make a lot more sense to teach the basics first! It's terribly lazy to rely on spell check and thesaurus. It might be why the results of spelling tests in job interviews are so appalling - and yes, they are taken into account.

I teach year 3 and this term we have set up email accounts for each child, but not using Gmail or any of those systems but through an in house system. Part of the computing curriculum is all about communication and using email so it's expected at this age. I sent a letter explaining it all to the parents, providing g the children's address and password and encouraging their support on the e safety rules we have established.

However, I will not be giving them homework to be sent in by email. But then I don't agree with homework at such a young age anyway.

This is the 21st century and most written communications are electronic. Seems perfectly reasonable.

But the exams are predominantly written, so if a pupil's handwriting and spelling skills are weak, they're going to struggle to get top results.

In a perfect world, yes, more emphasis on technology, but until the exams systems catch up, you have to work with the system rather than against it, which means practising writing skills and not over-relying on computers and tablets and calculators.

And there are still many instances where "old fashioned" skills are needed - things that can't be done on a computer or where a computer isn't available or practical. Lots of things are still written by hand.

What about the students who don't have internet/broadband?
They tried to bring a variation of this in my DD's school but were shot down very quickly, internet/broadband is a luxury not all families can afford.

I have a friend who was doing university exams a couple of weeks ago - apparently they had the option of writing them by hand or typing them.

I think it's a really good idea and there's been a fair amount of research done into the old spelling issue. It's actually quite beneficial, because words which are spelt incorrectly are often underlined, or corrected immediately and the students notice. It essentially models good spelling to students immediately rather than requiring them to wait for teacher feedback. It isn't perfect obviously, and yes, students should also be writing by hand- but I assume they are too!

Computer access? This has been researched too. It is only a very tiny percentage of students who do not now have internet/computer access of some sort- even in very poor areas. I would expect a primary school teacher to know about her whole class before she made this sort of request.

I am a secondary school Head of English. I collect most of my significant pieces of work via email and I've long noticed that students attain a higher standard. The benefits in my fully anecdotal view:

1. If you are worried that something has been copied you can check it immediately by cutting and pasting into google.
2. If the piece is a draft you can very quickly write comment boxes on with the 'add comments' tab. Honestly, I find that students are much more likely to act on these than handwritten comments because they have to actively click on them to remove them from their work in order to resubmit.
3. Students very rarely make any unusual or unique mistakes in their work. When they word process it you can cut and paste the relevant comments really quickly, meaning that for the same amount of time spent marking you can actually give more detailed feedback.

I suspect that the average 8 year old is going to spend much more of their life writing on the computer than they are going to spend writing by hand. I think learning to regularly email now is going to be a better preparation for their life.

(and I'd be surprised if that 8 year old doesn't end up doing her GCSEs on the computer. Anybody go to BETT last week?)

They can't expect the child to have their own email address can they? I'm fairly sure that Gmail wouldn't let me set one up for my 8 year old as you had to be 13 years old to have one of theirs.

I think using a spell checker is cheating too!

My 8 yr old boy struggles with handwriting, and therefore needs to practice it as often as possible. His typing is worse, one fingered, searching for each letter etc., let alone punctuation, capitals etc. It would take him an age to type out spelling sentences (or whatever they want typed). He would choose the shortest sentences possible, otherwise he'd be there all night.

And won't some tablets/devices have predictive text options? So not even having to spell the whole word, just start it off and pick the one you want - hardly best technique for 8yr old to do.

I have a friend who was doing university exams a couple of weeks ago - apparently they had the option of writing them by hand or typing them.

All of ours are typed now (recent thing), except oral ones! Though I'm not in the UK.

My kids do everything for school in google docs. I think predictive text is only on texting type apps. We taught ds to touch type when it become clear that his handwriting was never going to improve enough for his school work. His teachers soon agreed that it was for the best (and he went from Cs to As).

dh found a zombie killing game which used a keyboard with words to type instead of the usual buttons for guns. ds got to know where the letters were much more quickly than I did way back when I learned :)