Granting better writing skills

GLENDALE ? A dozen teachers at Rosemont Middle School have been using a $410,000 grant to help students learn to improve their writing with the use of technology. On Wednesday, parents for the first time had a chance to check out how during an open house.

Students use laptop computers to write assigned essays then submit them to their personal accounts on the www.gomyaccess.com website. A Rosemont teacher, with help from a computerized grading rubric on the website, evaluate the work. The site also stores the work so students and teachers can measure improvement.

"The advantage is the opportunity to see what they need to improve on and then do it right away," said Rosemont English teacher Andrea Duran who coordinates the grant program for her campus. "I can also read what they write and send them my comments."

Rosemont, Toll and Wilson middle schools all received two-year Enhancing Education Through Technology grants from the state Department of Education for the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years, Duran said. School officials purchased 152 state-of-the-art laptop computers for students and teachers, carts to store and move them on, wireless ink-jet printers, wireless network routers, flash storage drives for teachers, access to www.gomyaccess.com and the Internet.

School officials also bought 210 digital keyboards with self-contained memory that students can check out and take home to practice typing.

Teachers use the technology about once a month during class, Duran said.

Some of the money was also used for teacher training, and because the laptops are portable and wireless, students can use them in their regular classrooms instead of going to a central computer room.

"It helps me out a lot because it tells me what I need to fix," said Katherine Biglarian, a 13-year-old eighth-grader.

"That helps me write better because I know what to change."

The site uses a six-point rubric to judge the technical aspects of an essay based on things like grammar and spelling, Duran said.

But the teachers at Rosemont take it a step further, inserting their comments on the content and artistic values of an essay.

"A lot of us feel uncomfortable letting a computer judge our students' work," Duran said.

"English teachers aren't ready to release that control."

Instead they use the computer grading as a guide that gives students immediate direction and more opportunities to improve on the same work, she said.