Once upon a time - The writing journey of 2016 - 2020

Once upon a time....

Once upon a time, and I’m going back as far as 2016 (so bear with me), students were given an essay prompt to answer as best they could. Cloud based Google Docs, One Note and O365 features, combined with Google search, opened an online blank space in which to research and write. In 2016 students would still ask their teachers for help but that was hard when the school was shut. Instant feedback was what students needed and wanted to help guide their writing. Alas, what was once a piece of blank piece of paper was now a blank screen.

Research, authoring, writing, rewriting and frustration comprised the student experience as they authored electronically, often late at night and the night before work was due. Delaying writing was a common practice, “anything but write essays” students would say. At least all of the new platforms had spelling and grammar checking. Even though Google, Microsoft and Grammarly all offered different advice, it was better than the alternative. A source of angst for every student was how they could deliver good grammar and spelling and still get a bad grade.

All the students in the land had the same problem. They did their best, they handed work in, often electronically. Corrections and comments came back weeks after their efforts had been exhausted. Everyone felt like they had been marked harshly. It was a difficult time. The new electro-pen and paper had not met the ‘better writing’ promise, just made it more...modern. Students began to think they were just bad at writing.

Meanwhile teachers worked more hours of overtime than ever before. Technology and the concept of electronic text did not really speed things up or improve writing. There was still the process of grading, checking and correcting errors even though grammar and spelling had improved with technology. The amount of time teachers invested in grading and reviewing each essay became highly correlative to the total time students spent writing. One teacher summed it up saying that waiting for work to be handed in was like waiting for a tsunami to hit. Students said the tsunami started when they were given the work.

Even back in those times, students wanted more of what they do now; faster and more extensive feedback on how to improve. Teachers were flat out dealing with huge grading workloads and lesson planning. Teachers were always hoping students would take more ownership in their own work. Further aggravated by the climatic-esk cycle of ‘create then grade’ , teachers were spending way too much time in overtime. This climate had persisted for years. Shares in the BIC pen company were at an all time high! Every year teachers worked longer hours as student written literacy skills declined (as measured by a national test called NAPLAN). Politicians and parents got upset every year and everyone resolved to quickly fix the problem with writing. Promises were made quickly and yet everyone knew writing could not be fixed quickly.

Research suggests that 20-40% of current teacher hours are spent on activities that could be automated using existing technology. That translates into approximately 13 hours per week that teacher could redirect toward activities that lead to higher student outcomes and higher teacher satisfaction. [McKinsey & Company - How Artificial Intelligence will impact K-12 Teachers]

Moving the clock forward into the more modern times of late 2019 and into the new decade of 2020, Literatu has delivered Scribo 2.0. Scribo is completely focused on the recurring challenges of writing skill development across K-12 and Tertiary studies whilst tackling the seemingly impossible task of reducing teacher workloads, head on. That's a powerful new decade resolution right there. To make this happen, Scribo forges new LIVE connections between teachers and students.

The Scribo 2.0 platform is powered by AI. Yes indeed, data drives the creation of personalised feedback and writing analysis. However the misunderstood ‘A’ (for Artificial) in the acronym gets many people on edge whereas most people long for more ‘I’ for intelligence. There is no doubt that technology makes many things we do easier. Assistive Intelligence (AI) in education is technology that makes things possible. Scribo employs Artificial Intelligence to deliver Assistive support.

Every day, most of us explore how technology can do something more sometimes even unknowingly. Very few people actually use or know all of the features of an iPhone yet are quite happy to let the features they know, help them daily as they find time to explore more apps and options. It took my 80 year old mother seconds to learn how to send a text and now pictures accompany every moment on Facebook and Instagram. The metaphor of smartphones should be continuous with AI and technology in education. Most teachers have smartphones so the concept of ‘what’s possible’ is not foreign. Scribo AI also opens possibilities across many fronts. The speed at which these possibilities are adopted depends on the implementation of features that actually help teachers in their context. We all must remember that a critical 21st century skill is technology literacy.

Scribo 2.0 implements and connects students using AI, helping them to write better, as they write. Simultaneously Scribo gives teachers the time to be the specialist coaches and mentors of the new decade with more time for personalised teaching. Scribo helps make this happen by doing the heavy lifting of text analysis for teachers. Research suggests that rather than replacing teachers, emerging technologies will help them do their job more efficiently.

Importantly Scribo 2.0 does more than simply correcting mistakes in writing. ‘Correction’ is such a 2019 word. Scribo connects students and teachers with a single purpose of continuous feedback and improvement. Where are student writing issues right now? How can we better guide students now? and where will targeted teaching help build sustainable writing skills growth? Grades become secondary, improvement in writing skills becomes the driving possibility, Scribo 2.0 facilitates this connection. Moving the narrative towards growing writing skills through stronger teaching and learning connections is the conversation many teachers want to be part of.

Growth is the storyline of a progressive conversation about improving student writing skills. We use four words to describe the possibility - Connect with LIVE writing.

LIVE connections between students and teachers open up a whole new learning space for writing improvement. No more lonely writing time for students, no more weekends of grading and marking for teachers. Writing and feedback are supported in a LIVE connection.

If we don’t better connect teachers and students to grow writing skills across twelve years of teaching and learning, the climate of writing improvement will be slow to change.

As we all well know in 2020 and beyond, climate change threatens the future of the world in so many ways. Welcome to Scribo 2.0. At Literatu , we are doing our bit for a changing environment.