This might be the best one yet

My students have an online workbook to contend with. In a perfect world I would still prefer the old hand-written animal, but in fact with our time constraints for covering 5 chapters in 40 class days, not to mention everyone having multiple sections to teach, it's much easier and more user friendly and more efficient on both sides of the gradebook than the old methods. As with pretty much everything it doesn't matter how it really is, the students choose to whine about it most of the time just for the sake of whining. Once in a while tho they write with valid questions and give me plenty of time before whatever deadline they're pushing so that I can write back and help. Often of course whatever is going wrong in a certain activity is too vast to be treated in an email and I suggest they come to office hours. Even more often they don't write until about 11:45 pm of a day where 7 activities are due at midnight, so they're pretty much SOL. This episode began with much more hope than that...

Kendra writes me last night at 9:10pm.

Madame S,
I am having a problem with 3-22. I am wrting [sic] the answer just like the model, but it keeps saying I am getting it wrong. Could you look at it for me?
Merci.

I happened to be at my computer so got her message immediately. I happened, moreover, to have a free minute right then to go look at the activity in question and wrote her back at 9:17pm.

Salut Kendra,
They want you to use the exact wording they've used for the subject cue, so it would be for example: "Marc et Aurélie" instead of "ils" for #1, and so forth. Your clue to this is pretty subtle: the model shows them using "Isabelle" and not allowing for any substitute ("elle" would not be accepted). Good rule of thumb with the online workbook is wherever applicable, keep the exact same formatting as the model and the cues.
hth!
Mme S

For the record, it's chapter 3 so they should all know how anal the online workbook can be and I've told them roughly 10 million times that the first thing to check is always that formatting is exactly like the model in the exercise, but whatever.

Anyway, having answered I was pretty happy that she would still have plenty of time to make the appropriate changes, etc., and I was having a little wow-technology-really-can-be-our-pedagogical-friend moment...

This afternoon I have a return email from Kendra:

Mme S,
I did not expect you to email me back. So I didn't check my email until now and now the deadline is over. So can I still get credit for it if I correct it now?
Kendra

Oh so because you're a Big Fat Pessimist I'm supposed to give you an extra chance? And by the way, this student is one of my top emailers of wacky little issues and not only have I never not written her back, I have never done so anything but promptly! So add Backwards-Uncompliment-Doler-Outer to Big Fat Pessimist while we're at it. I hope your mind in reading this blogpost is even a fraction as boggled as mine at the audacity of this person. I mean, seriously, what the hell did she write for in the first place then?

hi Kendra,
Sorry, no - since my answer was in time to help I call that a good faith effort to remedy the situation for you. As you said, the deadline is now past. As per the syllabus, try to look at the activities earlier so there's plenty of time for email questions to travel back and forth and/or for an office visit before the deadline. Also next time remember to check back; you never know when someone might actually answer your email.
Salut,
Mme S.

Ahhhhh, I love the smell of self-satisfaction in the afternoon....