MS Paint cant save image components as layers or vectors its for making flat static images only. It doesnt smooth lines or guess at your best intentions. It does what you tell it and nothing more, faithfully representing the herky jerky motion of drawing freehand with a computer mouse. Its from a time before touch, a time before trackpads. As more sophisticated options appeared, Paints janky aesthetic became a conscious choice. Paint became the metonym for that aesthetic, even if an image was actually created in another app. TV Tropes lists major limitations that came to define a certain look the wobbly freehand lines, awkward color handling, and inappropriate export settings that give Paint its distinctive look. In 2. 01. 4, Gawkers Sam Biddle noted Paints influence on conspiracy theory images, calling the form Chart Brut. In amateur detectives attempts at identifying the Boston Marathon bombers, the simplicity and jaggedness of Paint evokes the crazy wall aesthetic of red string and scribbled notes, apparently without irony. The same year, internet historian Patrick Davison explored Paints influence on the last decade of meme culture, particularly Rage Comics. The outsider art aesthetic feels appropriate to the relatable everyday content, and makes the art form unthreatening. Of course, Paint offered a few features to smooth things out, like the circle and line tools and the fill tool, all used in the stoner comics of the early 1. Crucially, those circles still had jagged curves. The bright colors of stoner comics are flat, as MS Paint didnt support gradients without an elaborate hack. Contrast those pixellated lines with the slick, stylish face from this art tutorial This slickness is built into Paints successor, Paint 3. D. From the moment you start sketching, Paint 3. D smooths out your art. It also supports automatic selection tools and content aware fill to rival Photoshops. By automatically improving art, Paint 3. D hides the process behind the image. Paints sloppiness is probably why rage comics got so popular. Looking at a rage comic, you can tell exactly how it was drawn, and how you might draw one yourself. By delivering exactly what the artist draws, MS Paint forms an image that the viewer can mentally reverse engineer and imitate. Unless you go absolutely nuts with it. Reddit user Toweringhorizon painstakingly assembled the drawing To a Little Radio using MS Paint tools like the oil brush, stretching the medium while maintaining a pixelated look. Its one of the top submissions to MS Paint subreddit, a beautiful collaborative art gallery. Scrolling through this art feels like flipping through the sketchbook of the most artistic kid in high school. Theres an accepted roughness, a desired minimalism. For example, the exquisite raindrops in the work above are reflected in a flat, featureless tabletop. Like a transistor radio, Paint might be showing its age, but this tenacious little gadget should not be underestimated. To a Little Radio doesnt even come close to testing Paints limits. As we say goodbye to the app that shaped an era, let us watch this bizarrely soundtracked time lapse of drawing Santa Claus in MS Paint on Windows 7 over the course of 5. We can only believe this is real because faking it would be even harder. Summary Graders typically work in private with no opportunity to ask even the simplest questions about a students submitted work. Interactive Grading is a technique that requires the student to participate in the grading of their work. The aim of this post is to share my experiences with interactive grading, with some tips for others who want to try it. I start with an overview and then provide three detailed examples, with suggestions for the conduct of the session. Let me stress one point care must be exercised to keep the student comfortable and engaged, and not let the session degenerate into another lecture. In terms of results, most students told me that interactive grading was a good use of their time and that it helped them improve their performance. Several asked me to add more of it to my courses. A few viewed at as more indoctrination. In terms of impact on student grades, they showed marginal improvement. Interactive grading is not a new idea. I think most instructors have done this for some students at some times. Certainly, I have. So when professor Keith Gallagher described it to me as an important part of his teaching, I didnt initially understand its significance. I decided to try it myself after several of Keiths students talked favorably about their classes with him. It wasnt until I tried it that I realized what I had been missing. That start came 1. Since then, Ive used interactive grading in the online professional development BBST classes, hybrid online face to face university software testing classes, and a face to face university software metrics course. Ive used it for exams, essays, and assignments take home complex tasks. Overall, its been a positive change. These notes describe my personal experiences and reflections as an instructor. I emphasize this by writing in the very obvious first person. Your experiences might be different. What is Interactive GradingWhen I teach, I assign tasks and students submit their work to me for grading. Usually I review student work in private and give them feedback after I have completed my review. When I do interactive grading. I meet with the student before I review the work. I read the work for the first time while I meet with the student. I ask the student questions, often open ended questions that help me understand what the student was trying to say or achieve. Students often demonstrate that they understood the material better than their submitted work suggests. If they misunderstood part of the task, we can get to the bottom of the misunderstanding and they can try to demonstrate, during this meeting, their ability to do the task that was actually assigned. I often coach the student, offering suggestions to improve the students strategy or demonstrating how to do parts of the task. I typically show the student a grading rubric early in the meeting and assign the grade at the end of the meeting. When I explicitly build interactive grading into my class It becomes part of the normal process, rather than an exception for a student who needs special attention. This changes the nature and tone of the discussions. Every student knows well in advance what work will be interactively graded and that every students work will be handled the same way. This changes how they prepare for the meetings and how they interpret the meetings. I can plan later parts of the course around the fact that the students have already had this experience. This changes my course design. Costs and Benefits of Interactive Grading. Here is a summary of my conclusions. Ill support this summary later in this report, with more detailed descriptions of what we did and what happened. Costs. Interactive grading feels like it takes more time It takes time to prepare a grading structure that the students can understand and therefore that I can use effectively when we have the meetingScheduling can take a lot of time. The meetings sometimes run long. It feels as though it takes longer to have the meeting than it would take to grade the work normally. Courtyard Houses A Housing Typology Pdf. When Ive checked my grading times for exams and assignments that I do in the traditional way, I think I actually spend the same amount of time or more. I also do the same level of preparation. Note I do a lot of pre grading preparation. The contrast might be greater for a less formal grader. As far as I can tell, the actual difference for me is not time, it is that interactive grading meetings are more stressful for me than grading in a quiet, comfortable home office. That makes it feel longer. Benefits for the Students. During interactive grading, I can ask questions like,What were you thinking What do you think this word in the question means If I gave you a different explanation of what this word means, how would that affect your answer to the questionGive me an example of what you are describing Can you give me a real life example of what you are describing For example, suppose we were working with Open. Office. How would this come up in that project Can you explain this with a diagramShow me on my whiteboard. How would you answer this if I changed the questions wording this way How would someone actually do that Why would anyone want to do that task that way Isnt there a simpler way to do the same thing I will raise the grade for a student who does a good job with these questions. I might say to the student,If I was only grading the written answer, you would get a D. But with your explanation, I am giving you a B. We need to talk about how you can present what you know better, so that you can get a B again on the next exam, when I grade your written answers without an interactive supplement. If a student performs poorly on an exam or an assignment, or an essay, the problem might be weak competence or weak performance. A student who doesnt know the material has no competence. A student who knows the material but gives a poor answer on an exam despite that is showing poor performance. For example, you wont get a good answer from a knowledgeable student who writes poorly or in a disorganized way or who misunderstands the question. These focusing questions give the student who knows the material a chance to give a much better explanation or a much better defense of their answer. Lets consider competence problems. Students might lack the knowledge or the skills they are supposed to be learning for several reasons Some students simply dont take the time or make the effort to do good work. Interactive grading probably wont do much for them, beyond helping some of them understand the standards better. Some students memorize words that they dont really understand. The interactive grading discussion helps some of them understand a bit better the differences between memorized words and understanding something well enough to explain it in their own words and to explain how to do it or use it or why its important. It gives them a path to a different type of answer when they ask themselves while studying, Do I know this well enoughSome students lack basic student skills how to study, how to look things up online, how to use the library, etc. I can demonstrate these activities during the discussion, having the student do them with me. Students dont become experts overnight with these, but as Ill discuss below, I think this sometimes leads to noticeable improvements. Some of the tasks that I assign to students can be done in a professional way. I choose tasks that I can demonstrate at a professional level of skill. In the give and take of interactive grading, I can say, Let me show you how a professional would do that. There is a risk of hijacking the discussion, turning it into yet another lecture. But judiciously used, this is a very personalized type of coaching of complex skills. Now consider performance problems.