Tech-Augmented Reading & Writing
The EdTech revolution continues to bring us a myriad of new apps and programs aimed at one facet of our classroom experience or another, and while many of these tools have great value, taken as a whole, the entire industry is often guilty of something akin to bikeshedding. It’s great to have apps that make our grading easier, our students’ presentations prettier, or our classrooms more manageable, but if technology is truly to be transformative, it needs to target the heart of learning and significantly improve our students’ abilities to master new content, not just neaten up the periphery of their schooling experience. So without further preamble, here are some tools that get at the real meat and potatoes of learning — readin’ and writin’. (Sorry ‘rithmatic, I’ve got you next time.)
Rewordify
Rewordify allows teachers and students to quickly and easily simplify complex text. The software identifies difficult words or phrasing and offers an immediate translation. This information can be displayed in-line right along with the original text, or set to display upon hovering over the highlighted text, or in a 2-column fashion. Users can copy and paste any text into Rewordify, in addition there is also a huge selection of classic literature and public documents readily available on the site. Display mode, highlighting mode and difficulty levels can all be adjusted per individual account. Teachers can also customize and assign texts and vocabulary lists. This tool has really great potential as a means of differentiating for ESL students and any students reading below grade level. Even if you don’t want to use the site itself as a place for students to read content, you can still send any text through the process to then save and print or post elsewhere.
LitPick
LitPick is all about fostering the love of reading and writing through giving students high-interest texts for free and encouraging their comprehension and writing skills through authentic feedback. The LitPick website allows students (geared toward grades 4–12) the opportunity to read and review new young adult or “tween” literature for free! Students may sign up for individual accounts and simply start selecting books to read and review. Once submitted, student reviews are in turn reviewed by LitPick’s staff, who offer revision advice prior to the review being published on the site. (That’s right, real humans give students feedback for you…for free!)
Students can also be registered by a “group sponsor” such as a teacher, librarian or club leader, which allows their reading and writing to be managed via the educators’ management portal, but I’d caution against too rigid a hand here. The power in this tool is student choice and voice, so preserve that as much as possible no matter how you choose to utilize the platform. There’s an educator’s guide available here, as well as a downloadable poster for promotion of purely independent student use here.
Hemmingway App
The Hemmingway App attempts to do for writing style what spelling and grammar checks have done for writing mechanics for years. Users can write directly in the site or copy and paste prewritten text, and the app will highlight what it considers areas of concern based on a color-coded format — yellow and red for needlessly complicated sentences, green for misuse of passive voice, blue for adverb misuse, and purple for general wordiness. The app, like the man, values brevity and simplicity; it drives writers toward clearer more concise language. As such, it can be an especially powerful tool for technical writers (i.e. students writing lab reports) or those who tend to use 100 words where 10 would suffice (I don’t know anybody like that…).
A word of caution — like many artificial grading programs, the Hemmingway app tends to overlook the beauty and necessity of some longer more complex constructions, so it’s best used in the classroom as an option for students — a way to get them to begin thinking about why they’ve made some of the choices they have in their writing and if a suggested alternative would be better or not. By no means should students be tasked with something like, “Copy your essay into Hemmingway and fix what it tells you to.” Such an approach would be entirely nonconstructive and not even necessarily result in an improved product.
Science Articles for Kids
Science Articles for Kids, as the name suggests, is dedicated to rewriting science journal articles on a variety of different levels to make them more manageable for kids of all ages. You’re probably already familiar with some similar leveled-reading sites available out there, such NewsELA or Achieve3000, but the beauty of this site is that it is 100% free and it focuses solely on high-quality, current and reliable science content, which is not always so easy to find. Each article comes with a “video hook” that connects to its content as well as an accompanying quiz. Users can download the original journal from which the kid-friendly version was created as well, which allows for instant verification of its content.
*Shout out to LHS teacher Stef Graban for the great find!
My Case Maker
My Case Maker sets up inquiry-based learning tasks built around Library of Congress primary source documents. As such, it’s probably best suited for middle and high school students. There are 20 prefab lessons, or you can create your own. Each lesson is centered around a big question such as, “Was it difficult for immigrants to become US citizens in the early 20th century?” Students are cast in the role of “detective” as they gather evidence from the primary sources contained in the task to “make a case” on the topic. There’s a nice guided tour to get you started, the prefab units are excellent and customization is easy.
Each primary source document comes with “How You Should Think About This Source” questions to help students sort out pertinent information. Answering these questions is essentially how students begin to “make their case.” Students gather information through taking notes, and cropping photos and videos to show the most pertinent pieces. Once they’re done, their work is automatically compiled into an online presentation that can be shared with the teacher or whole class. All-in-all, this tool is an excellent way to incorporate primary source documents because it grounds students in a perspective through which they examine the artifacts and allows them to quickly and easily organize their thoughts. Even if you’re not a social studies teacher, you could still use this site to build in and present your own content in an inquiry-based fashion!
A Bit on eBooks
There are a LOT of different app options out there for free ebooks, from the Epic! app (available in self-service), to Mybooks, to Open eBooks to regular old iBooks, and many, many more stand-alone titles. The problem is, not all ebooks are created equal, so be judicious in your selection, especially with younger readers.
Some ebooks offer very little in the way of improvement beyond what a paper copy can give students. Some offer highlighting, bookmarking and annotating features that allow for better efficiency at times, while others offer the sorts of bells and whistles that actually distract from reading rather than promoting more engagement. If you want to get into the weeds of the research, have at it here. Otherwise, I’ll try to simplify things for you. eBooks can have interactions that either distract from the text, enhance it or extend beyond it. Too much of the first (Think sound effects not associated with specific vocabulary or manipulatable objects that basically just allow a kid to rearrange the picture to their liking.) and you’ve just invested a good amount of time and maybe even some money in a resource that is actually hindering your students’ reading growth. However, a good dose of of the second and third types of interactions (Think sound effects that do help with vocabulary, or manipulatable images that show the growth of a character described in the text.) and your ebook is now potentially improving students’ reading comprehension beyond what a paper copy could achieve.
That’s all I’ve got for today, folks. If you have any questions or need support, shoot me a line!
