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Spellcheck has made us ALL horrible spellers. Yes, it corrects our misspellings and helps us look like great spellers on paper, but the reality is, it has made us worse spellers outside of the computer.
Myself included, I rely on spellcheck more than I should. I even have it on my phone! It spellchecks my text messages.. Although it has helped me write papers faster and text with confidence, I am embarrassed when I have to write something handwritten. I find myself stumbling over words I should know how to spell (Is is effect or affect?)
Students are figuring out that they really don't have to know how to spell as long as they have spellcheck. I bet most students don't even know how to use a hardcover dictionary! How sad is that.
A valid argument is that spellcheck will ultimately help students spell correctly because they are seeing their misspellings get corrected. Is this true? I can honestly say that when I use spellcheck I don't really pay attention to the correct spelling because it is getting corrected for me.
Even as I type this the words I type too fast and mess up get underlined in red. Even if I know how to spell it, I still allow spellcheck to do it for me!
Spellcheck is easy and that is why we use it! But how much will us as teachers allow it in the classroom? How much 'difficulty' are we willing to sacrifice in order to produce better spellers?
I enjoyed this talk in our TE class as well. It really got me thinking about spelling the importance of computers and spelling. I actually did a blog about this as well. But I agree, spell check is easy and we do over use. I have the same dilemma as you, do we give up the rich literature of books? I don't think I am reading for that yet!
ReplyDeleteAlison,
ReplyDeleteWow! This is a really great point! I never really thought about spell check being a negative tool, but you're right, we all have become far too dependent on it! I admit that I too rely on spell check to check my papers, e-mails, posts, etc. Just as you mentioned, I rarely look to see what the correction is after spell check has done the work for me...and therefore, you're right, spell check does do us all a disservice. However, it will be hard to not use spell check in the classroom since spell check is an automatic program on computers. I think that students should do writing mainly handwritten and use computers to type only revised work ready for "publishing." This way students can't rely on spell check to revise and edit their work.