I have 8 0 World Literature students. If I assign a 3-page essay, how much time should I spend reading and marking and scoring each essay? 10 minutes each (on average, plus typical paper-shuffling or computer startup time) totals 6 hours. My instructional time with those same students (again, given typical attendance administrative settling down time; and including occasional summative assessments) is 3.5 hours per week. In my conversations with several different principals on this topic, all have cannily refused to even mention an expected number. When I am scoring an essay, one of the big psychological hurdles is getting past any misspellings or minor grammar errors. My reader-brain finds it hard to avoid marking those errors, or to avoid reducing some related score because of those errors. A computer can catch many of those minor spelling, punctuation, word-choice, usage errors (note: the computer does not corr...
Thoughts on education, technology, and culture, during an international career.