How to configure an assignment for "Evaluation-only" mode

With today's release of "Evaluation-only" mode support, instructors can now evaluate end-of-unit and final essays without providing feedback comments. Here's how to get started.

We're super-excited that we were able to launch our new "Evaluation-only" mode in time for most schools' final exams. Finals are the strongest case for when to use "Evaluation-only" mode; it's too late to provide helpful feedback and the kids won't get much out of it anyway with their minds already on summer.


Enabling "Evaluation-only" mode
Create or edit an assignment as you normally would. You'll notice a new option: "assessment mode":

Click the droplist and select "Evaluation-only" mode:

Latest update: "Evaluation-only" mode - just in time for finals!

EssayTagger is all about helping teachers provide targeted feedback that will promote student growth. But mid-stream fast formative assessments or end-of-unit summative assessments don't always require extensive feedback. Now EssayTagger supports both "Evaluation + Feedback" and "Evaluation-only" assessment modes to support those situations.

First, the lingo
It's taken me a while to wrap my brain around the following two terms, so let's review them just to be sure we're all on the same page:

Formative Assessment is a kind of check in with your students in the middle of a unit to see where they're at, see where they're struggling. The goal is to then use this information to make on-the-fly adjustments to your plans and instruction to help the students reach the goals you've set out for them. Formative assessments should be fast, simple, and low-stakes or zero-stakes (i.e. not for points). And they have to come early enough so that there's still time left to adjust course as needed. If you just want to quickly "take the pulse" of the room, there's no need for extensive feedback comments.

Summative Assessment is the end measurement point. Did they reach the goal? How many of the target skills can they actually demonstrate now that the unit is complete? Because summative assessments come at the end of the learning process, providing feedback or further coaching at this point is somewhat pointless. When students hand in a final essay at the end of the school year are they really going to absorb your extensive comments as they start their summer vacation? Shyeah, right!


EssayTagger's default mode: "Evaluation + Feedback"
Our primary emphasis on feedback comments places us outside of the world of fast formative assessment and summative assessment. In this mode instructors select a feedback comment from the appropriate quality column or add new reusable comments as needed:

Extensive feedback makes sense when a further draft is expected and students have a chance to incorporate or address your comments. Ideally all writing assignments would have a write-review-rewrite cycle built into the schedule.


The new "Evaluation-only" mode
With today's new release, instructors can opt to configure an assignment to focus solely on evaluation.

Drag-and-drop the rubric element like you normally would. In this example, we are dragging the "Thesis" button to identify the essay's thesis:

But now when the "Thesis" evaluation options pop up, we see that there is only a single choice for each quality level:

Adapting traditional rubrics for EssayTagger: Nevada Opinion Writing Rubric (5th grade)

EssayTagger represents an evolution of the concept of a rubric. Here's a specific look at how I adapted an existing rubric to take advantage of the EssayTagger world.

If you're new to the EssayTagger world, here's a primer on how EssayTagger rubrics are different from traditional rubrics.

Tearra Bobula, a teacher at Mark Twain Elementary in Carson City, NV, asked me to adapt the Nevada Opinion Writing rubric. It initially presents a bit of a challenge. It consists of five main sections that each contain a subset of 2-4 additional elements:

(click for larger view)

Let's take a closer look at the first section:

(click for larger view)

Each row of this section pertains to the Statement of Purpose/Focus, but assesses slightly different aspects of that overall area. I would break these four sub-elements down to something like:

• Statement of Opinion
• Focus
• Maintain Purpose/Focus
• Provides Context

So when I adapted this rubric I treated each sub-element as its own rubric element:

Latest Update: Administrator Report emails

A simple new convenience feature driven by teacher feedback from my friends at El Camino Real Charter High School out in sunny southern California.

El Camino is embarking on an ambitious effort to coordinate classroom expectations across all teachers. Such an effort requires a bit of a culture shift--your classroom is no longer an isolated private island--as well as some technology support to ease the logistics of so much collaboration and sharing.

Specifically, they needed to be able to share their graded essays with their administrators and other teachers in the school. The interim solution was to print hard copies (ack, no!!!) or manually copy-and-paste the hyperlink to each student's graded work.

In order to support their efforts (which are perfectly aligned with my own philosophy of enhancing school-wide collaboration through data unification), we added a simple Administrator Report feature which emails a list of each student's results and provides a link to their graded essay:

Administrator Report email (fake test data for demonstration purposes)

Latest update: Support for iPad Pages documents!

Getting any file off of an iPad and out into the world can be a challenge, but Pages makes life more difficult because it uses a unique document format that is not very compatible with other programs. We've been able to overcome both obstacles. Here's how.

Apple's Pages word processor iPad app does make it easy to create some really nice-looking documents. But my praise for Pages stops there because it's such a pain to deal with Pages documents. What good is a beautiful word processor if you can't do anything with the resulting documents?!

Thanks to our just-released Google apps and Google Drive account integration, we can now get Pages documents off of students' iPads and submit them directly to EssayTagger.


Step-by-step instructions
First you'll need to enable Google integration for your course. Instructions can be found here. Your students will also need Pages (obviously) and the Google Drive app.

The Google Drive app works with Pages to export your document into a Word DOC file and then upload it to your Drive account. This conversion and upload to Drive is the key to this process.

Here's the test essay I'll be working with:

How to enable Google integration in EssayTagger

Student sign-in via Google apps accounts and Google Drive integration were released today as "beta" features that are ready for broader, real-world testing. If you'd like to try it out with your students, follow these simple instructions.

Google integration has passed all of our internal testing, but there's nothing like hordes of actual students to find the flaws or weak points in any new feature.

We'd love your help to test it out. I'd suggest trying it out on a small, mostly inconsequential assignment. Something like a one-paragraph journal entry or a short reflection on the day's reading would be ideal. That way if any students do run into problems signing in or linking their Drive accounts, it's not the end of the world.


Enabling Google integration
Google integration is configured at the course level. Log in to your EssayTagger account and scroll to the bottom of the Instructor Home screen to see your list of courses. Click on the "edit" link next to the desired course.

Latest update: Google apps and Drive integration is here!!

Today's major new release enables student sign-in via Google apps accounts and integration with Google Drive!

Just about every school I talk to has jumped onto the Google apps bandwagon. It's really a no-brainer. It is the best platform on the planet and it's free for schools. Insane.

I'm super-excited to announce that as of today students will be able to sign in to EssayTagger using their Google apps accounts.

Google sign-in simplifies the process for both students and teachers while increasing reliability and security. This is already a huge win, but there's more!

Google account sign-in opens the door to integrating with Google Drive. Now students can link their Drive account and pull their assignments directly out of Drive:

Check out grmr.me and stop endlessly re-teaching grammar!

EssayTagger is all about helping teachers give efficient, targeted feedback to their students. However, the feedback you give and the remediation methods you employ are still all up to you.

So I was thrilled to discover grmr.me via a blog post by Mark Isero.

Grmr.me is a series of well-crafted, targeted lessons by tech-savvy English teacher Kevin Brookhouser that address the most common grammar errors students make--comma splices, pronoun disagreement, there/their/they're, etc.

So rather than re-teaching each of these aggravating grammar issues, just direct students to Kevin's lessons and mini-quizzes. This is essentially a stripped-down version of Khan Academy for grammar remediation.


Using grmr.me
Each lesson has a super-short URL to make it easy to reference when needed.

If there's an issue with, say, passive voice, just write grmr.me/psv in the margin and the student can type that into a browser address bar and immediately watch a remediation lesson on passive voice.

Very cool.

Using EssayTagger to coordinate PLT assessments, pt2

Part 1: PLTs must have common assignments and common assessments
Part 2: How to coordinate PLTs with EssayTagger
Part 3: Analyzing the data reports (coming soon)

In part two we show you a simple way to increase PLT coordination while maintaining each teacher's individual voice and personal flair.

Let's assume you're onboard with the idea that PLTs need to have a few common assignments that have common assessments in order to gauge the PLT's progress and effectiveness (if not, check out part 1).

Now how do we do this? I closed part 1 by sharing how much I hate common assessments because they are never in my voice and seem like an alien or foreign presence in my classroom. Education reformers would be wise to note that jarring students out of the environment they're used to isn't the best way to assess the effectiveness of that environment!

Producing uniform PLT assessment data seems incompatible with preserving the unique flair and character of each teacher's classroom.

EssayTagger provides a way around that conundrum.


Shared rubrics
Rubrics are at the heart of how teachers assess written work in EssayTagger. And they are EssayTagger's secret weapon to solving the problem at hand.

Have your PLT agree upon a shared assignment. Let's say all of the Sophomore English teachers will be teaching "The Tempest". We can agree upon a few key goals for our Tempest unit and develop a summative essay assignment for the end of the unit.


Collaborate on the rubric
Now have one teacher log into her EssayTagger account (or jump to our free Common Core Rubric Creation Tool) while the PLT discusses what they'd like to see in the rubric for this shared assignment. Consider the PLT's goals for the unit and begin building the rubric in EssayTagger. Again, we only need one transcriber to create the rubric.

Using EssayTagger to coordinate PLT assessments, pt1

It's becoming more and more important to coordinate curriculum and assessment within PLT teacher teams. In part one we'll briefly discuss PLTs, motivate why coordination is so important, and discuss some of the challenges. Part two will discuss how to use EssayTagger to enhance that PLT coordination without stifling teachers' individual voices and strengths. Part three will look at how the resulting data can help each individual teacher and the PLT as a whole.

Part 1: PLTs must have common assignments and common assessments

Part 2: How to coordinate PLTs with EssayTagger

Part 3: Analyzing the data reports (coming soon)

PLTs are in
Most schools seem to be moving toward the PLT--Professional Learning Team--model where, for example, all of the Sophomore English teachers would meet regularly, plan team goals, share resources and exercises, and hopefully develop a few common assignments and assessments.

However, I've been in schools that still operated with each teacher as his or her own island. In this sort of environment the PLT concept will likely be met with significant resistance. There will always be the I've-been-doing-it-my-way-for-35-years holdouts but even the most progressive-thinking teachers will worry about the constricting nature of making their classes more uniform and perhaps less unique.

On the flip side, I've been in schools that had weak or ineffective PLTs, despite significant administrator emphasis on them. Simply meeting every other week is not enough. We would talk about what each of us were doing, but there'd be no central focus or plan. It has to be more than just check-in-and-share time.

Sadly, teacher prep programs aren't taking a lead on this. I'm disappointed that my M.Ed. program didn't train us to collaborate with our peers. PLTs weren't even mentioned once during my two year program. We're supposed to be the new guard, the fresh blood bringing a modern approach to education. But too many Schools of Education are themselves stuck in old-guard or outdated modes of thinking and practices.

So I feel like I have a pretty strong grasp of many of the challenges and pitfalls when it comes to PLTs. And it's no surprise that transitioning to a team approach can often be a difficult process when a culture of collaboration or direct experience with PLTs is lacking. But as you'll see in part two, there is hope. Incremental change and increased coordination is possible and can be facilitated by some 21st-century technology.


Coordination is king
A PLT has to have a set of common goals for their class sections. If a PLT doesn't have a common vision for student outcomes, you don't really have a PLT; you just have a bunch of individual teachers sitting in the same room. Common goals matter. My Sophomore English students have to be just as prepared to enter their Junior English class as the students from any other Sophomore English section. And the Junior English teachers should have a reliable set of expectations for what they'll get from their incoming juniors each year.

But just setting common goals isn't enough. We need to know if those goals are being met. Did our sophomores really get to where we wanted to get them? And how did my specific crop of sophomores do vis-à-vis the rest of the PLT's students? Did my kids see particular gains or struggles versus their peers? This isn't about outing a bad teacher or competing against my teammates. It's about being able to identify what is and is not working in my class and across all of our classes.

Grading with EssayTagger on your iPad via Photon browser

Today we discovered that the EssayTagger grading app can run on an iPad with a little help! Here are your step-by-step instructions for accessing EssayTagger through the Photon browser.

Install Photon on your iPad
From your iPad, go to the app store and search for "Photon browser". Make sure you select the iPad version and not the cheaper iPhone version. When I installed it today it was a $4.99 purchase.

Launch Photon

Photon is a web browser and really isn't all that different from any other web browser. There is one big special function you'll need to know about to enable Flash support, but Photon already does a good job of explaining it. You'll see.

Go to EssayTagger.com and either launch the interactive demo from the "try the demo" tab or log in to your account and click "start grading" to launch the grading app for one of your assignments.

When the grading app window opens you'll see a Flash error message instead of the grading app. But Photon explains what to do:

Once you click the lightning bolt icon at the top right, the grading app will be able to load:

Yay! The grading app is running on the iPad!

Adjust Photon settings

Now click the gear icon at the top right to enter the settings options. Change the following two settings:

Bandwidth: 6 - to maximize responsiveness and text quality. Photon runs the grading app remotely on its own server and streams it to your iPad. That's how they're able to support Flash on the iPad--because it's actually running Flash somewhere else! If the bandwidth setting is too low, the essay text will look chunky due to the transmission compression.

Mode: Web - I found this produced the best looking text and further minimized compression chunkiness.

That's all we need to do here. Photon will remember these settings so you won't have to worry about these again.


Using the grading app
A couple tips to make your life easier. Photon's default interactive mode is not a great match for the grading app's drag-and-drop interface. Once the grading app loads, switch to the "grab" mode at the top right:

With this mode enabled, dragging and dropping works extremely well. You can also easily select text passages to mark for errors or enter a free comment.

I would also take advantage of the grading app's built in font size adjuster buttons on the left. Increasing the essay font size will make it easier to read and easier to select text. Here's a set of before and after screenshots:

Use a bluetooth keyboard
The iPad on-screen keyboard does not work well when using the grading app in Photon. It often ends up covering up the text box so you can't see what you're typing:

Add a new comment...

D'oh! Covered up the text box!

My bluetooth keyboard worked just fine. The only slight oddity was that I had to press the keyboard button at the top right of Photon to get it to start receiving my typing.

Other minor tips

Horizontal alignment: The grading app makes the best use of space if you launch it while the iPad is oriented horizontally.

Essay scrolling: Scrolling through an essay is a little difficult because the vertical scrollbar in the grading app is so narrow. It will click-and-drag just fine but you'll have to be a bit precise to "grab" it.

It might be easier to just tap the gray area above or below the scroll bar to move the essay.


Quick tips: It's also a little hard to access the "Quick tips" rollout help topics at the top of the grading app. Switch to the mouse pointer icon mode to make it easy to "hover" over the Quick tips help items:

That's it for now! Go grade and feel all super-high tech!

Yes!! EssayTagger on your iPad!

EssayTagger's patent pending interactive grading app is built in Flash and works great in any web browser. However, Steve Jobs decided years ago that Apple would not to support Flash on iOS devices (iPad, iPhone). I've experimented with a special version of our grading app that can work as an installed iPad app, but it's a long way from being ready to put in the iTunes app store. I figured iPad support would just have to wait.

But then Alaina Langdahl of Parkrose High School in Portland, OR suggested we take a look at a few iPad web browser apps that serve as an alternative browser to the built-in Safari browser and, most importantly, they support Flash!

I'm ecstatic to announce that the Photon browser does a surprisingly good job of bringing the EssayTagger grading app to life on an iPad!

Holy awesomeness!!!

Drag-and-drop interactive grading on a tablet! This is exactly how I imagined using EssayTagger when I first started this company!

All grading app features are fully supported when used through the Photon browser. There are some important settings that will vastly improve the experience. I'll update this post soon with step-by-step instructions.


The downside
Photon browser is a $4.99 app purchase. I know, that stinks.

We have no relationship with Photon and will be evaluating other Flash-enabled iPad browsers. Hopefully a free option will emerge that offers support for all of the features required to run the grading app. Ideally Apple would finally come around and support Flash, but that's not very likely (in fact, even Android is moving away from Flash with its latest Android Jelly Bean 4.2 OS).

Until we identify a viable free solution, it'll be up to you to decide if grading on your iPad is worth $4.99.


Updates:
- Step-by-step instructions for using EssayTagger with the Photon browser are now posted!

- Alaina is reporting that she's having success with the free Puffin iPad browser. My testing with Puffin was less successful but I'll take a closer look at it as soon as I can.

Using EssayTagger for fast formative assessment, pt2

In part two we explore a method for fast, effective formative assessment by leveraging EssayTagger's strengths and incredible built-in data reporting.

Part one: Primer on formative assessment

Part two: Fast, effective formative assessment with EssayTagger

"If students receive feedback often and regularly, it enables better monitoring and self‐regulation of progress by students."

- Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick

At face value EssayTagger's core function--grading essays more efficiently--seems more well-suited to end-of-unit essay evaluation (summative assessments). But as you'll see we can easily leverage EssayTagger's strengths to hit all three formative assessment keys discussed in part one: speed, detailed diagnostics, and quality feedback.


Basic approach
Develop open-ended, journal-style written response questions aligned with unit goals and then evaluate students' work in EssayTagger, focusing on short, targeted feedback. Then review the evaluation results data to refine class-wide instruction and target individual reinforcement or remediation. Ideally you would repeat 2-3 times throughout the unit before the end-of-unit summative assessment.

A concrete example: The Tempest, Sophomore English

When studying Shakespeare with sophomores we need to work on the mechanical skill of processing the complex text and would like to see the students develop an engagement with the text at an emotional, human level. A final summative assessment might come in the form of an essay prompt like, "Do Prospero's ends justify his means?"which would require a detailed understanding of the text and characters along with an expectation of referencing appropriate textual evidence.

Using EssayTagger for fast formative assessment, pt1

In part one we'll quickly review what formative assessment is and some of its key characteristics. Then we'll learn how to use EssayTagger for fast, effective formative assessment.

"The giving of marks and the grading function are overemphasized, while the giving of useful advice and the learning function are underemphasized."  

- Black, Paul, and Wiliam

Buzzword primer
I often get lost in the absurd world of edu-speak lingo. So before we even start, let's define our two key terms:

Formative assessment is an approach where the teacher "build[s] in many opportunities to assess how students are learning and then use[s] this information to make beneficial changes in instruction" (Boston). Formative assessments happen during a unit, within the flow of instruction. It's about quickly diagnosing problems and adjusting what you're doing tomorrow to produce better results before the unit ends.

Summative assessment "generally takes place after a period of instruction and requires making a judgment about the learning that has occurred (e.g., by grading or scoring a test or paper)" (Boston). You could also call this "Final assessment"--it's looking to measure the end result of instruction.

The two can be boiled down to: "where are we struggling?" (formative assessment) vs. "how did we do?" (summative assessment). Or, if you prefer a more colorful analogy: "what's the patient's temperature" vs "how many patients survived?"


Formative Assessment Key #1: Speed
If your goal is to modify instruction tomorrow, clearly your formative assessments need to be fast. It would be absurd for a nurse to take a patient's temperature and then have to wait a week for the results.

Formative Assessment Key #2: Detailed diagnostics
One of the key principles behind formative assessment is that it "provides information to teachers that can be used to help shape teaching" (Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick). In this sense they are diagnostic, identifying the areas where students are struggling. The more detail it can provide--exactly who is struggling in which areas--the better, but this generally slams up against the need for speed. It's very difficult to do quick formative assessments that are highly detailed and still allow the teacher to have a life.

Formative Assessment Key #3: Quality feedback
While the first two keys were teacher-centric, this one is student-centric. Part of what powers formative assessment's effectiveness is the targeted feedback provided to each individual student. It's not enough to merely see where course corrections are needed; each student must be explicitly steered in that direction.

How to get your administrators excited about EssayTagger

You (hopefully) want EssayTagger at your school. And we would both rather see schools and districts pay for the licenses.

To that end, we've developed a new slideshow presentation aimed specifically at administrators. It gives a quick overview of how EssayTagger works and then dives deep into what administrators care about most: data and Common Core!

View the slideshow

Share the slideshow with your administrator and encourage them to send any questions my way (all of my contact info is provided at the end of the presentation).

We see a trifecta of benefits for teachers, administrators, and -- of course -- students. If we can get administrators excited and onboard, we can all be happy campers!