Webinar Recap: Using Ed-Tech to Strengthen a School’s Writing Program

Southwest Elementary is looking for a way to use computers to improve its writing program. Students have begun writing more this year because of the new Common Core Standards.

Students need help with their typing, organizing, and editing skills.

The school is using a handbook of best practices developed in-house by school district personnel.

Currently, the school is not using any ed-tech resources to supplement their writing curriculum.

Teachers are willing to take the time to check on each student’s work, but they’d like a tool to make it easy to do so.

Administrators want its resource room to use a program to support students who need an extra boost.

Recommendations:

• We looked primarily at Starter Paragraph Punch and Open Punch. Several aspects of the programs impressed webinar participants.
• They felt it provided good guided practice through the writing process.
• Educators appreciated that Open Punch allows them to assign their own topics.
• Participants liked that they could track individual student work at different stages of development. The ability to easily view multiple students’ work was also perceived as beneficial.
• They liked that it each paragraph would take at least two weeks, and that students would receive a lot of practice typing.
• The convenience of having all work stored online also appealed to teachers.

Learn More:

• Click here to learn more about Open Punch, including pricing, implementation ideas, and a free, no-login, demo.

Additional Screenshots:

The Writing Notepad shows the initial sentences the student wrote using the list of brainstorming ideas.

The Paragraph Notepad shows paragraph development after the student is prompted to add connecting words and a concluding sentence. Students are given many opportunities to review and revise their work.

Teachers can easily navigate the class online portfolio to view each student’s work.

All student work is saved in the online portfolio. Teachers can view a table listing student’s published work and work in progress for each program.