Online Homework- Sarah & Amy

Online Homework is something that nearly every college student has used at some point in time.  Using Online homework has several benefits, mainly convenience for professors with large classes and the way it keeps students accountable for their work.  However, some negative aspects include the increased amount of cheating and the tendency to learn trends rather than concepts when referring to problems.  Additionally, we discussed a few other ways to reenforce what is learned in the classroom like the Exeter method of teaching and contextual retrieval cues.

Lernstift Digital Pen

The Lernstift Digital Pen is a writing tool that offers the unique capabilities to sense when the writer makes a spelling, grammatical, or penmanship mistake dependent upon the mode that the pen is set to. In orthography mode, the pen senses what is being written- either on paper or in air- and vibrates once to denote spelling mistakes and twice to denote grammatical errors. In calligraphy mode, the pen vibrates when a letter is not formed properly. A future feature planned to be included in the pen is pressure plates within the grip. These pressure plates would sense whether or not the pen was being held in the correct way. The pen has two release dates set, one in mid-2013 and another in early-2014. The project is currently being funding by the public in order to launch production. It is estimated that the pen could cost anywhere from 50 to 80 euros which is approximately $65-$105.