Thing 11

Web 2.0

Paper Rater

The tool that was experimented with was called "Paper Rater".

It comes to my attention just in time for the serious grading that is coming up for the end of the session.

How to Use

You copy and paste the writing you want checked into their field. You select the grade level and type of writing. It seems to have a writing syllabus that it sends you as well, though I couldn't find the specific requirements that it grades. It is also nice because it searches for plagiarism and asks for a source. So it is very user friendly.

Results

Disappointing in some ways. I was kind of hoping it could just do my job for me, but alas, a computer can't do my job yet. Doesn't really check grammar well.

In other ways, it is pretty good for the casual user. The things that it can do well are the style checker, vocabulary, plagiarism, and word choice. It does a nice break down of words used and how to make it better.

Here is a screen shot. (I asked a student if he would mind and shared the results with him.)

Here is the printable document you can also get with the paper (sweet), so it doesn't need to all be online.

The advice is pretty good for my ESL students. It also gives a pretty low grade, so that should scare them a little bit.  It also gives explicit instructions on how to improve. Good for all levels, though anything below grade eight they don't grade. The limitations need to be explained to students though because the teacher is still better than a robot when editing a paper.

This is definitely a causal check to be done before turning in an assignment, not a grading machine.

Popplet

Popplet is cool. It is a mind map that is really easy to use. You can have multiple people working on it too.  

This is what it looks like.

Here is an assignment that a student made.

Simple and sleek. Lots of mind mapping applications.  It's good for vocabulary or graphic organizers as well. I got so excited about the things you can do with this, it became part of a vocabulary project for them to work on which is featured in my other blog, "An ESL Tech Activity a Week" (extra credit Dr. Wilson?).