One Student's Opinion of Digital Responding by Barbara Burns A year ago, when Dr. Brent e-mailed me back my first paper, I was a bit confused by his grading method. For each error in one of my sentences, the word "Comment" appeared in the margin in red but nothing more. I understood the concept.  However, not being the most computer-savvy girl, it took me a good while to figure out how to retrieve the comment.

I finally figured out that if I clicked on the word "Comment," a bubble popped up with a remark like "passive voice" or "comma error" inside. One would think that this discovery would be simple enough to make, but the bubble appeared off my screen, and I did not initially think to scroll over and look for it. Then, when I finally found the bubble, the print was too small for me to read, and it did not occur to me to zoom in on it. 
 
My frustration--aimed more at myself than the computer or the program--left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I just accepted the grades I was given on the first few of my papers without attempting to read the comments. Thankfully, the grade was typed in red in plain sight on the bottom of the document. I eventually got used to the program and grudgingly admitted that it was clever if for no other reason than to save the paper and ink required for printing a hard copy of an essay.
 
After I finished the Arthurian Legends course that I was taking, however, I forgot all about Dr. Brent's grading system until I found myself in Linguistics, the dreaded grammar course. Dr. Brent required us to practice grading papers from his freshman composition class. We were to look specifically for grammatical errors, but he advised us to add positive comments as well. I was amazed to find that his grading system was simply a feature of Word: I had expected to learn some fancy new program, but it was a part of a program with which I had long been acquainted! Adding the little red comments that had tormented me so was as easy as highlighting the error and clicking "Insert" and "Comment."
 
Now that I understand the program--both how to use it and how to read its results--and know how simple it is, I appreciate its cleverness for more than just the ink and paper saved. As a future English teacher, I can see many benefits of such a grading system:
 
* The papers would be on my computer, so I would not chance losing any of them. 
* I would not have to try to fit comments in my large handwriting into small spaces.
* I could e-mail my students their grades as soon as I was done grading their papers. 
* I would not have to cart the stacks of papers to and from my classroom and try to remember to hand them back.

While there is no guarantee that I will end up at a technologically advanced school, I will certainly consider using Dr. Brent's program if I do. However, I recommend to teachers using this system to take a bit of class time to familiarize their students with the program.
 
"I recommend to teachers using this system to take a bit of class time to familiarize their students with the program."­­Barbara Burns
 
Editor's Note:  At Bell Street Middle School in Clinton, English teacher Annabel Wayne currently uses the Word Comment feature with her English Language Arts classes in order to have students comment on each other's papers.