What does the [xfs] annotation mean? I like seeing how other people write. :)
Edit: Nevermind. I see they're the references at the bottom! Why xfs and xtc?
The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
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Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#12An incredible website. Finally I have found the motivation I need to write my IB Extended Essay (days before it is due). How do you get the play back link though?
For now they just hacked together something custom for me. However, Etherpad saves every keystroke, so once they enable this for everyone, you'll be able to replay stuff you wrote with it.
Incredible. I was talking about my teacher about how a transition away from paper to tech is great and all but we have lost the sense of keeping drafts. Drafts have a very high value. I don't know how you are connected with the folks @ Etherpad but if there is anyway I can help, let me know.
Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#13Would be interesting to see the same for code, with a high-level AST representation, and with different coders shown in different colors.
Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#14I've been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. "Startups in 13 Sentences" was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I'm going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in…
> think of the implications of this alone There are already non-webapp mouselog/keylog and replay applications. And besides, think of the implications of letting students be on the internet while they are writing essays.
It's different when it's built into a generic, web-based editor. Imagine the difference between
a) telling students to install a keylogger, write an essay with it turned on, then submit the essay plus the logs, and then the teacher figuring out how to replay the logs, versus
b) telling students to write their essay at etherpad.com, they submit the url, teacher clicks on "replay."
As for the matter of students being online, that's going to have to get solved anyway, because all the apps are moving online.
Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#15This is so hot. I'm really blown away.
It's also really interesting to watch a good writer go about editing. This is certainly a way to teach writing, besides the obvious method of practice.
Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#16What does the [xfs] annotation mean? I like seeing how other people write. :) Edit: Nevermind. I see they're the references at the bottom! Why xfs and xtc?
I try to use strings of chars that don't naturally occur in English so I can find them by searching.
Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#17I've been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. "Startups in 13 Sentences" was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I'm going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in…
> think of the implications of this alone There are already non-webapp mouselog/keylog and replay applications. And besides, think of the implications of letting students be on the internet while they are writing essays.
Teaching people to ignore the awesome parts of the internet is a fine skill to teach. It might be more valuable than the class you're writing for.
Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#18This is interesting to watch. I notice you type something, you delete it, and then type something different quite a bit. When you write on paper, how do you deal with this constant deletion?
Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
> think of the implications of this alone There are already non-webapp mouselog/keylog and replay applications. And besides, think of the implications of letting students be on the internet while they are writing essays.
Can you provide links to some of these? I'd prefer a non-webapp version, since I have an intermittent internet connection.
/usr/bin/script
script -t 2> script.demo.time script.demo
xemacs -nw
# M-x tetris
# ; play tetris now
# C-x C-c ; exit emacs
exit
# watch tetris being played:
scriptreplay script.demo.time script.demo
Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
#20This is so hot. I'm really blown away. It's also really interesting to watch a good writer go about editing. This is certainly a way to teach writing, besides the obvious method of practice.
Maybe, but only if you had a larger sample than one person. You'll find that there are at least several common ways to write - most quite unlike each other. That would probably be the biggest lesson.. that there is little you can learn from watching this process except "just do it your way".
I found it quite surprising to watch. I thought it was a genetic algorithm writing an article somehow at first with all the constant deleting and rewriting.
Once I realized what was really going on I was struck by what an odd writing style it was (to my experience). I'm firmly in the "get it all out then come back and tighten it up" clan. There are, I suspect, at least several groups though.. I'm intrigued what they all are (perhaps the "just write and don't ever edit" group, the "refine as you go" group, the "headings then fill the gaps" group...)