System alert: Partial system outage - resolved

FINAL UPDATE 5:31pm
The last lingering effects of the Google App Engine server problems seem to have been cleared up and our own testing now shows full functionality restored.

This sort of downtime is frustrating, but it's still only the second Google App Engine outage since we launched EssayTagger 14 months ago. All sites suffer some downtime but we still believe in Google's reliability and ability to react and recover faster and more robustly than we could if we were managing our own server hardware.


UPDATE 1:23pm
Message from Google:
"We are still working to resolve the issue related to Google App Engine serving. At this point error error rates for affected applications should be declining. We will provide another status update by 11:30 AM PST."

EssayTagger is responding again, albeit slowly. Grading app is still severely impacted.


UPDATE 12:07pm
Google App Engine servers continue to see problems and it seems to have spread beyond the backend task queue. They've rescinded their earlier resolution note and are now only saying "We will update this message shortly when the incident has been resolved."

These server issues are now affecting the main EssayTagger site.


UPDATE 10:35am
Message from Google:
"This morning some Google App Engine applications reported elevated error rates and increased latency. This issue should be resolved as of 8:10 AM US/Pacific time. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."

There still seems to be some intermittent slowdowns for backend processes (uploading an essay, marking an essay as graded). Though Google says the issue is resolved, I still recommend caution.


ORIGINAL POST 1/15 10:28am
At approximately 9am CST Google's App Engine servers suffered a problem with their "task queue" service which EssayTagger uses for behind-the-scenes processing. The majority of the site has not been affected.

Specific interruptions occurred on the student upload page which relies on the task queue to process incoming essay files. The other major impact was that the grading app was unable to process essays when they were marked as graded. Normal grading activity (evaluating rubric elements, adding comments, etc) should not have been affected.

The task queue service is currently intermittent. Take care if using the grading app and keep an eye on the "synced" or "syncing..." message at the top right. If it remains on "syncing..." for more than a few seconds, pause before doing any more work. Your work is only guaranteed to be saved when you see the "synced" message.

Updates will be posted as new information arises.

Latest Update: Error marking!

Thanks to input from our users we now support a dedicated feature for marking spelling, grammar, or other errors. But this new feature is more than just a red underline. Read on to learn more!

EssayTagger is built to help teachers evaluate student work within the structure of a custom rubric and provide excellent, specific feedback to students. But instructors made it clear to us that we needed direct support to be able to mark errors--the dreaded red pen markups on a paper. It makes sense; marking a grammar error is different from evaluating a weak thesis.


Error Mark overview
The new feature makes it easy to mark problematic passages as having an error. Marked passages will have a red underline. You can enter an optional comment about the error. When a student receives her graded work, she'll see the red underlines sprinkled throughout her essay.

But here's the coolest part: all of the marked passages will be collected into a list at the end to make it easy for the student to do a follow-up correction exercise.

And just to be clear: These are errors that you determine. The grading app does not do any auto-evaluation whatsoever. EssayTagger is always driven by your brain, your expertise. We do not believe in auto-grading software!!


Let's see an example!
Error marking piggy backs on our existing "free comment" system to make it super quick and easy to mark an error.

Just select the problematic text:

And when you release the mouse button the new Mark Error/Free Comment popup box will appear:

Just click "mark as error" and the text will be underlined in red. That's it!

The student will now see this error mark in the final graded output. Here's what the student sees:

You can also enter an optional comment about the error. Comments appear in the list of marked passages at the end of the graded essay, prefaced with your initials:

Notice that the whole sentence is presented so that the underlined portion appears within its full sentence context.

Pretty damn cool, right?!

A word of advice

In most cases I recommend not entering a comment about the error. Instead hold the student responsible for reviewing her errors and thinking through them herself to figure out and learn from her own mistakes. She can seek out help if she needs it, but we shouldn't take on the responsibility of making corrections for the students when it really doesn't do them any good.

I'd much rather have students submit corrections to earn back some mechanics points rather than having me write endless "subject-verb agreement" or "you're/your" comments that the students won't even read.

Think of it as a chance to put those Active Learning vs Passive Learning PD workshops to use!


Available now!
As with all EssayTagger feature updates, this is available now to all EssayTagger users. Every time we upgrade the site, all users benefit!



Additional features coming soon
We will update the data reporting screens to include data about how many errors were marked in each essay along with aggregate data (e.g. average number of errors marked on the assignment) and individual vs aggregate performance outlier analysis (i.e. does a student have statistically significantly more errors than his peers?).

Ug, how can we solve anything if we confuse correlation with causation?

The headline reads: "School Absences Translate to Lower Test Scores, Study Says".

If you ain't in school, ya ain't gonna learn. That's obvious. But this article from Sarah D. Sparks implies causation--that missing school causes the lower test scores. Sparks argues that "The analysis contributes to mounting evidence that absenteeism puts students at greater risk of poor academic achievement and eventually dropping out of high school."

If it's true that absenteeism is a causal factor, the solution is very simple: make sure those kids get to school every day. So let's push for more government grant money to hire a whole army of truancy officers!

However, let's remember:

Any teacher will tell you that missing school is bad, but what really matters is why those kids are missing school. Correlations can be interesting but identifying causation is how you solve problems.

New Feature Proposal: Grammar marks

Teachers have requested that EssayTagger add support for marking grammar errors. Here's how I'm thinking of doing it.

Update 1/7/13:
The Error Mark feature has been built and is now released! Read about it here!


Teachers would like a streamlined way to note missing commas, spelling errors, and a wide array of other grammar errors. Most of us envision this as an "SP" icon for spelling, perhaps a "~" for a split infinitive, and so on.

Sounds easy, but...
There are a couple of challenges with this. First, there doesn't seem to be a standardized set of symbols or abbreviations for each possible error. Teachers tend to develop their own system and give students a decoder key at the beginning of the semester. It's not really practical for us to support any arbitrary collection of teacher-generated symbols. The flip side isn't any better; I don't want to create my own set of symbols and force all EssayTagger users to adopt them.

The other problem is that the list of possible errors is really long. It would be very difficult to organize and present all those symbols in a user-friendly manner. It wouldn't save you any time if you had to sift through a confusing list of 40+ symbols. Maybe we could help you pare down the list to just the errors that you care about most, but there are still complexities and tradeoffs.

Is it worth it?
But my biggest misgiving is that I question how valuable it is in the first place. How much are we really helping our students when we mark up and correct every grammar error on their papers? Do the students really look at those edits? Do they internalize them or learn from them in any way? Do we hold them accountable to learning from them?

Latest Update: More screen space for the grading app!

I do just about everything for EssayTagger on my MacBook Air. The default screen resolution of 1440x900 makes the grading app look great. There's plenty of space for everything.

But one of the more pressing items on my to-do list was to address the needs of users with more cramped screens. I set my MacBook's resolution down to 1024x768 and figured out how to make the grading app fit a bit more comfortably in that constrained space.

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!

Pricing changes for 2013

With EssayTagger's growth and evolution it's time to revise our marketing emphasis and pricing model.

Reaching maturity
EssayTagger launched at the 2011 NCTE conference in Chicago as a bare-bones site that was built primarily around our innovative grading app. In the early days we were in "Open Beta" and all accounts were completely free. We then shifted to early adopter discounted pricing while continuing to expand our feature set at a nonstop pace. And because we are a cloud-based service every single feature upgrade we make is instantly available to all users (think how Google Drive constantly evolves vs installed software like Microsoft Word that forces you to buy upgrades).

The site is now a full end-to-end solution from configuring a Common Core-aligned rubric all the way to statistical analysis of your grading results and student-by-student Common Core-aligned progression tracking.

Instructors from nearly 1,000 different schools across 60 countries have graded thousands of essays in EssayTagger.