I think it's great to post papers online.  When Paul Grobstein visited our class last week, he talked about how "chatter" is what gets things going.  If you submit a paper just to your professor, there's no room for chatter between anyone but you and the professor, and that probably isn't a good thing.  You need more ideas.  Posting a paper online grants access to anyone who cares to read what you've written, and that may be a bigger audience than you think.  Personally, I like people reading my writing and giving me criticism on it, so why not open that up for more?

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.

     Today's class started out relatively normally--students pulled their desks into the usual, haphazard semi-circle, Anne set up her laptop and the familiar task of "coursekeeping" began.  The class discussed the experience of putting their papers online (for many it was the first time doing so) and talked about technical difficulties to do with formatting, inserting pictures, etc.  Anne commented on how the class discussion online, as well as the papers' role in it, is better than "slipping a paper under a door," and how "we're shaking up this backroom activity known as peer review."  Aseidman dropped her role as a "scribe" due to one too many students signing up for the job, and Tim

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