posting online

I definitely prefer posting essays online to handing them in to only the professor for a number of reasons.  For one, in most classes, I've never been able to see what my classmates are writing - unless the purpose was to "peer edit," which, in my opinion, just turns into students trying to find flaws with papers just so they'll look like they did their homework.  There is more room for finding grammatical errors to look like a know-it-all than there is to discuss new ideas.  That sounds really bitter, but I swear I don't mean it like that.  I don't hate peer review because someone was mean to me about grammar.  I just find it boring to find and discuss the grammatical errors of any paper.  Reading other papers and simply commenting on the ideas they discuss is way more productive.

Also, I personally didn't feel constrained to a boring five-paragraph style with a thesis sentence and the thesis sentences of each paragraph outlined in the opening paragraph...only to go through the trouble of writing a closing paragraph without repeating myself too much.  Maybe I should have written in this format, but I didn't, and I noticed I wasn't the only one who wrote in a less formulaic style.  Like I said, maybe there's something wrong with not writing in the proper style, but I like reading papers that "flow" and discuss a topic and make you think instead of just proving a thesis the writer may not even believe.  Most traditional essays are boring to me.

So, I may just have a short attention spans, but pictures, links, and clearer formatting in general are awesome, in my opinion.