Swiping Write
Giving Writing Software a Second Chance
Ten years ago, technology in schools was still a growing trend. My school was nowhere near close to being a one-to-one school. Chromebooks had not even been invented yet. Students still had to save their work often or risk a circuit overloading in the computer lab causing them to lose an entire class period of work. You get the idea.
This was also a time when the primary reason the teachers in my department wanted a program like Turnitin to “catch” students plagiarising — especially on their summer assignment. However, a colleague and I were asked to demonstrate to other teachers in surrounding districts just how much more this tool had to offer.
I remember the feature I was most excited about as a teacher was the introduction of a feedback tool that could supposedly eliminate my need to carry 120 or so essays home every other week because I would instead be able to grade papers from my school or home computer. Ultimately, I found myself laboring through the program even when it constantly froze and seemed to be focused on what my students were doing wrong. They weren’t learning from the digital feedback, and I wasn’t grading any faster electronically. Soon our school was on a tight budget, the license was no longer a priority, and I couldn’t think of a reason to fight for making it work anymore.
Since then, I’ve been hesitant and skeptical when it comes to programs or websites that claim to be built for educators and students. I’m tired of being let down every time or wishing they could just tweak a few things to be the “perfect” match! I’m open to trying something out, but I have learned to go in with low expectations. Even our textbook company has fallen short on this mark — who on earth decided to create an “eNotebook” where the teacher end provides no sorting feature?!
A second chance
One of my current colleagues used NoRedInk for most of her medical leave last year, and she highly recommended it to us. After feeling burned, I’ve never been interested enough to ask her what she loves about it or for what purpose she uses it. Another colleague tried and said that she felt the work was too difficult and ended up frustrating her students. Again, I just shrugged my shoulders because I never intended to use it myself. I was done with dating digital platforms for writing. I would happily stay an old maid with my college ruled notebooks!
As part of the National Writing Project Ahead of the Code project, though, I was presented with the challenge of running my own piece of writing through one or more of the current software programs for writing, and obviously, I knew which two I wanted to try first — Turnitin and NoRedInk. I wanted to begin by seeing how much growth and progress Turnitin might have made, and I was curious how I would feel about NoRedInk compared to my colleagues — at the very least, I would be able to add something to the conversation.
My return to Turnitin ended quickly. My main reason for taking another look was to see what I could find out about any growth or additions to the software, but it’s still very heavily focused on detecting possible plagiarism. While I think teaching students to avoid plagiarism is still very important, I quickly remembered why I wasn’t sad about the breakup with Turnitin.
I continued on to NoRedInk, where I used the self-review feature using a piece I wrote for a class last summer. The free version of NoRedInk only allowed me to select Argument writing for an assignment (from my teacher-self to my student-self), but since analysis is a type of argument, I figured it would be fine for a trial run. I recorded my immediate reactions in real time as I went through the self-revision process step-by-step.
My NoRedInk Revision Process
Step 1:
It prompted me to locate and highlight my thesis statement in blue, followed by my topic sentences in pink.
Reaction:
Through my “student lens,” I appreciated that it provides examples, questions, and reminders of what a thesis statement or topic sentence should do, plus it includes a link to get more information if I’m still unsure. This part reminded “adult me” of how tax preparation software will do the same. One thing I didn’t like was that when I started to highlight a sentence, I could not un-highlight it. It seemed like a basic feature to have, and although you can’t undo highlighting on paper, shouldn’t that be an advantage to using technology?
Step 2:
The second part of the process had me answer whether each topic sentence supported my thesis.
Reaction:
I liked that because I feel that’s an area where my students struggle in fully grasping the function their topic sentences should have. Although it was bright and easy to find, I would prefer not having to scroll to find it. In my opinion, it would be more user-friendly if it could keep the thesis statement locked in view on the left side with the guiding questions while the right side scrolled.
Step 3:
I was then prompted to make changes to my draft.
Reaction:
I wasn’t ready to do that yet, and when it asked why, I was able to select an “I want to revise later” option, and move on. I love this because although some of my students will want to and be able to make changes right then and there, I’m not always that type of writer myself. I love that they have the freedom to move forward with all of the reviewing process before beginning any revisions.
Step 4:
The next step was to identify evidence and highlight that in teal. Note — It mentions that an essay should have 2–4 pieces of evidence for each topic sentence.
Reaction:
At first, I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked this suggestion, but. It was a good feeling of pressure. Had this been a more traditional essay I would have had that much evidence! What frustrated me was that the thesis statement and topic sentence highlights from before disappear by this step. I feel like they need to stay, but to play devil’s advocate, maybe students would start selecting anything not already highlighted by process of elimination.
Step 5:
I had to determine whether the evidence supported my topic sentences. Note — the pink highlighting was back.
Reaction:
To counter my previous “dislike,” now that I could see the topic sentences I had previously selected, I saw that the first time through I didn’t notice that a new paragraph under the same section heading also had a new topic sentence. Therefore, while my evidence didn’t fit the first topic sentence, it did fit the second. By removing the pink highlighting for step 4, I was able to look at the piece in a new way. I also noticed that some of my evidence didn’t technically support a topic sentence because in some cases my headings acted as topic sentences. I tried to look at this as one of my students might — if I had not considered highlighting my headings as topic sentences, would they? At first I was frustrated by this, but then I realized I was more frustrated with myself than with NoRedInk for helping me reveal this to myself.
Step 6:
Then it came time to identify unnecessary words.
Reaction:
This is a step I know I need with everything I write — even text messages! if I were having students use this, I would use the option to save and return to this step at another time with fresh eyes. I feel like it takes practice, and it’s important to use both peer feedback as well as learning how to do this for oneself. I also feel that by this point my students would be checking out (because I know I was). I think reading through one’s own paper so many times in a row in one sitting causes a person to go on autopilot and miss things that could/should be corrected.
Step 7:
Finally, there is a grammar check portion consisting of check boxes next to the standard list of items we would want students to have done, such as checking for punctuation, usage, sentence structure and completion, etc.
Reaction:
After how interactive the rest of the process had been, I reached this point and sunk in my chair: “They are literally JUST checkmarks.”
For students who will be more thorough or have a better grasp on their grammar, this might be sufficient, but when thinking of my College Prep (CP) English students — and even most of my Advanced Placement students, for that matter — they have a hard time confidently identifying some of the mechanical, grammatical, and usage errors in their own work. Again, using the “save and return later” feature would be beneficial here, but even better would be having cues for each item. All of them in one paper would be very in-depth, and for some assignments that’s necessary. However, if I had the ability as a teacher to choose some as check marks because they should just “know” by now, while others are more assisted, that would be extremely helpful in allowing students to review the grammar lessons we had recently covered so that I could assess their ability to authentically apply that particular knowledge and skill set.
Would I Go on a Second Date?
I’m still interested. I’d like to get to know NoRedInk a little better while seeing what else is out there before committing though.
First, I realized that I would definitely section the steps into different lessons and stretch the process out over a few days. I was thankful it has a “save & exit” feature to allow for this.
Although I can’t investigate the peer-review side by myself, I would be interested in trying it out with another member of my inquiry group. This is especially intriguing considering the possibility of needing to do more virtual peer review this year with Covid-19 forcing us to keep interactions virtual and at a safe distance while still allowing for meaningful feedback to take place, especially for those who need the scaffolding in place to guide them through that process.
For the purposes of revision, I am still hesitant to say that I’m sold. It’s better than instructing my students using Google Docs, and if the software exists to guide them through a process that we can do over multiple lessons, while providing examples when they need a better understanding, there are very few reasons not to use it. I do appreciate that the focus aligns well with my teaching philosophy of training my students to develop their metacognitive skills. Most of the tensions I encountered were about myself and my own writing. NoRedInk mostly facilitated that process, so the student is still doing the critical thinking and revising.
I did feel that for the editing portion, I now want to investigate something like Grammarly to see what the hype is all about there. Now that I’ve seen a glimpse, I also want to learn more about the lessons on grammar, usage, and mechanics within NoRedInk.
While it would be nice for everything to take place in the same platform, ultimately I still want my students to have a space for that practice. If you know most middle or high school students, you know they’ll check all the boxes in the last step without giving their paper another glance because they either are not confident or they don’t feel like checking for themselves. Currently, it does not seem to have the flexibility to meet students where they are, so I will need to be intentional about creating that experience for them, even within NoRedInk.
Clearly, I’m ready to get back into trying out different software again if I’m already selecting my next project, so this experience has given me enough hope to commit to a second date with NoRedInk while also keeping my options open to other programs.
