Tarp suggested that he pilot the use of this program in grading and reading essays for his Comp classes (in AIM) next year. He compared the concept to having hired "readers," a service that Tam apparently paid for until this year but that I had never heard of.
IF this technology is reliable and truly able to mimic human thought in certain areas, it still seems problematic to me. Not only do I agree with Aaron that this seems like something out of any classic science fiction dystopia, but I think that, especially in the context of eduction, it would almost definitely lead to a disconnect between student and teacher, and it would have the potential to stunt growth. If we are evaluated by programs that we designed, how can we possibly improve, innovate, employ creative or "out of the box" ideas or strategies?

The New York Times published this quiz on their website in the days after the new pope's appointment. What do you think about using quizzes as a way to get students more interested in reading news?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/18/world/pope-quotes.html

I agree with Jasmine; it seems like there is a larger problem here, which is the entire high school academics culture and the heavy value that we place on grades. That might be a good editorial to accompany an issue with this feature.

I thought that the inclusion of some of the multimedia components in this article took away from the overall credibility of the story, because it was such an obvious attempt to gain more views by sensationalizing a serious issue. I didn't think that the audio of the 911 call should be included, not because I was particularly offended or alarmed by it but because it seemed to me to accomplish nothing in terms of furthering the actual story, instead turning the whole thing into an action movie and not a piece of journalism. If the author and publisher's goal was to get people who would not read a plain print story to read this, they may have accomplished that, but I think using the sensitive multimedia like the 911 call in this particular case was a bit of a cop-out.