    
Track Changes
This facility in MS Word allows changes
to be made to a document without destroying the original. You can see an
example
of a student's work corrected using Track Changes. It was put into a table first
so that the right column could be used for further notes.
When you change something, e.g., a word
or phrase in the student’s work, it shows the changes in colour but leaves the
original otherwise intact. This allows the author to compare the changes with
the original. When students get it back, they click with their right mouse
button over something marked and choose either to accept or reject the suggested
changes.
In some versions of Word, corrections will appear in balloons in the right
margin. If there are a lot of changes, this gets messy. You can turn off the
balloons by going to Options in the Tools menu, choose
the Track Changes tab. Change whatever settings there you desire.
To launch this tool in MS Word, go to
the Tools menu and choose Track Changes. Depending on the version of Word, a dialogue box may
appear and/or a new tool bar appears. If the dialogue box appears, make sure all
three check boxes are checked with an x.
Adding Comments
Comments can be added by putting the
cursor at the appropriate point in the text and choosing either Comment or Reference from
the Insert Menu. With a Comment, the teacher can write a note. The student can
then rest the cursor on the Comment icon and see what the teacher wrote in a
so-called mouse over. My preference, however is for Reference,
which appears as a footnote. This is better for printing. And it also allows the
teacher to click the cassette icon and record a comment. Just be aware that spoken
comments take up a lot of memory which might be an issue when returning the work
to students.
Highlighting
You might establish a system in which
you use different colours for spelling, word choice, word order, etc.
Email
In the File menu, there is the option to
Send a document. Different versions of Word work in different ways. In some
versions, choosing this opens the familiar email address and subject bars at the
top of the document itself. You can then enter your student’s email address and send
the annotated document straight back. For your convenience, students should be
asked to put their email address at the top of the document so that you copy
and paste it in. In other versions, your standard email program is opened with the
document as an attachment. The email Subject is the name of the document as
saved.
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