Why schools need technology to teach writing: Jeff Scheur at TEDxGunnHighSchool

Summary

The speaker recounts an incident where a student's confidence was almost shattered by poor writing feedback. He highlights the current flawed system of writing education, where students receive minimal and rushed feedback, and suggests technology could revolutionize writing instruction by providing creativity, immediate feedback, and personalized learning. He criticizes standardized tests for their negative impact on writing skills and advocates for a more collaborative and authentic approach to writing assessment.

Takeaways

• 📚 The speaker almost destroyed a student's confidence by not considering the student's perspective on their own work.
• 🔍 The script highlights the issue of students not receiving adequate feedback on their writing due to the high volume of papers teachers have to grade.
• 📉 The speaker points out that writing scores on standardized tests like the SAT and ACT are consistently low, indicating a systemic problem in how students are taught to write.
• 📝 The current process of writing instruction is likened to a conveyor belt, where students are passed from grade to grade without improving their writing skills.
• ⏰ Time is a critical factor; teachers do not have enough time to provide meaningful feedback on student writing due to large class sizes.
• 🤝 The script suggests that technology could revolutionize writing education by providing immediate feedback, adapting to individual needs, and promoting collaboration.
• 💡 The idea of using technology for authentic assessment is proposed, where students can type their own responses and be evaluated based on previous responses.
• 🚫 The speaker criticizes the use of standardized tests for writing, arguing they do not accurately assess a student's writing ability.
• 👥 The script emphasizes the importance of collaboration in the writing process, suggesting that students should be able to evaluate each other's work.
• 📈 The speaker shares his experience of using technology to help students with grammar, showing that it can be an effective tool for personalized learning.
• 🌟 The impact of technology in education is significant, as evidenced by the rapid adoption of the speaker's tool and the millions of questions solved by students.

Q & A

What was the issue with the student's paper that Mr. Sawyer mentioned?

The student's three-page paper was one long sentence with no commas, periods, or capitalized words.

How did the student, Tony, feel about his paper?

Tony felt proud because he had never turned in a paper before.

What is the percentage of students below grade level in writing according to the script?

73 percent of students are below grade level in writing.

Why are writing scores low on standardized tests like the SAT and ACT?

The low scores are due to a lack of effective feedback and practice loops for students to improve their writing.

What is the 'conveyor belt' analogy mentioned in the script referring to?

The 'conveyor belt' refers to the process where students are passed from grade to grade without the resources or time to improve their writing skills.

What is the common piece of feedback students receive on their papers that indicates a deeper issue?

The feedback 'blend your quotes' indicates that students need to learn to integrate evidence into their writing effectively.

Why is the current approach to writing education described as inefficient in the script?

The current approach is inefficient because it involves teachers grading papers with limited time, leading to rushed feedback that students often discard without incorporating into future work.

What is the potential role of technology in revolutionizing writing education according to the script?

Technology could promote creativity, provide immediate feedback, adapt to individual strengths and weaknesses, encourage collaboration, and offer accurate and authentic assessments.

How does the script suggest using technology to improve writing education?

The script suggests using technology to create interactive and personalized learning experiences that provide immediate feedback and adapt to student needs.

What is the issue with standardized tests for writing according to the speaker?

Standardized tests focus on identifying errors rather than finding solutions, which is not conducive to improving writing skills.

How can technology help students with grammar and punctuation as described in the script?

Technology can provide interactive exercises that allow students to practice grammar and punctuation in context, receive immediate feedback, and focus on specific areas where they need improvement.

Outlines

00:00

📚 The Struggle with Writing Education

The speaker recounts an incident where a student named Tony submitted a poorly structured paper, sparking a discussion on the state of writing education. The author points out that many students are below grade level in writing, as evidenced by SAT and ACT scores. The current educational system is criticized for its conveyor belt approach, where students receive minimal feedback on their writing. Teachers are overburdened with grading, leading to rushed feedback. The feedback itself is often unclear, exemplified by the common but vague instruction to 'blend your quotes.' The speaker suggests that technology could revolutionize writing education by providing creativity, clarity, and immediate feedback, adapting to individual strengths and weaknesses, and encouraging collaboration.

05:00

📝 The Flaws of Multiple-Choice Writing Assessments

The speaker argues against the use of multiple-choice questions for assessing writing skills, as they force students to choose between wrong answers rather than finding solutions. The author proposes a more authentic form of assessment where students can type in their own responses and be evaluated against previous answers. The speaker shares an anecdote about a student named Jamal, who was encouraged to find controversy in his writing topic. The author emphasizes the importance of writing being a collaborative process and the need for technology to facilitate peer evaluation and feedback. Activities that help students improve their writing, such as cutting fluff and understanding grammar, are discussed, along with the challenges teachers face in providing individualized feedback.

10:01

💡 Leveraging Technology for Writing Improvement

The speaker discusses how technology can be used to improve writing education by creating interactive and personalized learning experiences. The author shares their experience of creating an educational tool that adapts to students' interests and provides immediate feedback on grammar and punctuation. The tool allows students to make revisions and receive hints, with the system generating new questions to help them practice until they master a concept. The speaker highlights the importance of educators' involvement in creating educational technology and shares the rapid growth of their tool's user base. The potential impact of such technology on education outcomes is emphasized, with the speaker expressing optimism about the role of technology in enhancing writing skills.

Keywords

💡Confidence

Confidence refers to a person's belief in their own abilities. In the video, the teacher's initial interaction with Tony, who submitted a poorly structured paper, threatened to undermine Tony's confidence. The teacher's approach to feedback is crucial as it can either build or destroy a student's self-assurance, especially in academic settings.

💡Writing

Writing is the process of inscribing characters or symbols on a surface to convey information, thoughts, or feelings. The video emphasizes the importance of writing as a skill that is often neglected in education despite the fact that a significant percentage of students perform below grade level in this area.

💡Feedback

Feedback is the response or information received after an action is performed. In the context of the video, feedback is a critical component of the writing process that students often do not receive in a timely or effective manner, which hinders their ability to improve.

💡Grade Level

Grade level refers to the stage of education that students are expected to be at based on their age. The video points out that 73% of students are below grade level in writing, indicating a systemic issue with how writing is taught and assessed in schools.

💡SAT and ACT

SAT and ACT are standardized tests used for college admissions in the United States. The video uses these tests to highlight that the lowest scores are often in the writing section, suggesting a broader problem with writing education.

💡Conveyor Belt

The term 'conveyor belt' is used metaphorically in the video to describe the educational system where students are passed from grade to grade without necessarily acquiring the necessary skills, particularly in writing.

💡Technology

Technology, as discussed in the video, has the potential to revolutionize writing education by providing immediate feedback, personalized learning experiences, and the ability to practice writing in engaging ways.

💡Collaboration

Collaboration is the process of working together to achieve a common goal. The video suggests that technology can facilitate collaboration in writing by allowing students to evaluate and provide feedback on each other's work, enhancing the learning process.

💡Standardized Tests

Standardized tests are assessments that are administered and scored in a consistent manner. The video criticizes the reliance on these tests for evaluating writing, arguing that they do not accurately measure a student's writing ability and can be detrimental to learning.

💡Authentic Assessment

Authentic assessment is a method of evaluating students' abilities in a way that reflects real-world tasks. The video advocates for authentic assessment in writing, where students are given the opportunity to write and revise in a more natural and meaningful context.

💡Grammar

Grammar is the set of rules that govern the structure of a language. The video discusses the challenges teachers face in teaching grammar and how technology can be used to provide students with personalized practice and feedback to correct misconceptions.

💡Data-Driven

Data-driven refers to the process of making decisions based on data analysis. In the video, the speaker discusses how data can be used to inform teaching practices and provide students with targeted feedback on their writing skills.

Highlights

A student's confidence was almost destroyed due to a lack of proper writing skills.

The student had never turned in a paper before, indicating a potential systemic issue in education.

73% of students are below grade level in writing, as per SAT and ACT scores.

The current writing education system is likened to a conveyor belt, lacking resources for improvement.

The lack of time and feedback in the writing process is a significant issue.

Common writing feedback like 'blend your quotes' is often too vague for students to improve.

Literacy technology is underfunded compared to other educational areas.

Proposed technology-based curriculum would promote creativity, clarity, and collaboration in writing.

Standardized tests may be hindering effective writing education.

Technology could provide immediate feedback and unlimited practice for writing improvement.

The importance of authentic assessment in writing education.

Writing should be a collaborative process where students evaluate each other's work.

Original, controversial ideas make for compelling writing assignments.

Technology can help students understand grammar through interactive activities.

An 80-page manual was created to help students with grammar misconceptions.

Technology can provide personalized grammar practice and feedback.

Data can be used to show students and teachers areas needing improvement in writing.

The technology has been rapidly adopted, with over 40 million questions solved by students.

Educators and teachers must play a key role in creating effective educational technology.

Transcripts

my second year teaching I almost

destroyed a kid's confidence

it was the third week of school and

three page paper that he turned in was

one long sentence no commas no periods

no words capitalized and I tried to

think of how to start my conversation

with him and I asked Tony when you turn

this in how did you feel about it and he

said well mr. Sawyer I guess I felt kind

of proud and I said tell me more and he

said well I I never turned a paper in

before and if an 11th grader can slip

through the cracks because our

classrooms are that crowded then clearly

we're not doing enough 73 thank you 73

percent of our students are below grade

level in writing and for the last eight

years on the SAT and the AC T the lowest

scores are not in math they're not in

reading they're on the writing section

so let's analyze how we got here like

why do we have this problem in the first

place this is how students learn to

write most kids work on their papers

independently then they turn them in to

a teacher who grades them in a dark room

probably around 3:00 in the morning then

that happens then students get the

papers back they feel guilty for a few

minutes they look at the red marks and

then they usually throw the papers out

or they lose them and then before

they've even gotten the paper back

they're asked to write another one and

they have to continue through this loop

without actually being able to

incorporate feedback into future drafts

also somewhere in the building is an

administrator who's worried about the

fact that test scores aren't improving

and another way that we could

conceptualize this is a conveyor belt

where students are passed from grade to

grade and never actually have the

resources or the time to improve time is

really the operative word if you think

about the fact that most high school

teachers have a hundred and seventy

students in their classes if every

teacher spent 15 minutes just 15 minutes

grading each paper

that would be 42 hours of grading after

school every time they gave an

assignment so that means that students

aren't getting a lot of feedback and

then the feedback that you are getting

is going to be kind of rushed and a

really good example of that is this very

common piece of feedback that students

get on their papers blend your quotes

and all that means is that students need

to learn to integrate evidence so that

their paragraphs work well with the

quotes that they're using but there's a

lot to know in order to get this right

in order to blend ones quotes you need

to know how to cite the specific time

when the quote occurs who the speaker is

who the listener is you have to be able

to trim down the quote necessarily you

have to be able to cite it correctly

you also have to be able to make sure

that you can modify the quote for

clarity and then of course you have to

know the punctuation that goes before

the quote and after the quote and you

have to have enough context clues to

explain to people why the quote is

necessary then you have to elaborate on

the quote afterwards and you have to

analyze why your quote helps explain the

point of your paragraph to begin with

it's a lot to know and that's all you

see so in math tens of millions of

dollars have been spent building

technology products to help with

education outcomes but there's very

little happening and literacy right now

and almost nothing happening in writing

so let's think for a second about if

technology could revolutionize the way

that we learned to write what would such

a curriculum look like well first of all

it would promote creativity because the

reason we write is that we want to share

ideas it would help us break down

difficult concepts and it would give us

unlimited practice and immediate

feedback so that we could get better

quickly then it would be able to adapt

to our strengths and weaknesses and it

would also encourage us to collaborate

with others and make sure that when we

finally got an assessment of our writing

that it was accurate and it was

authentic so instead this is what we

have 1.7 billion dollars every year are

spent on standardized tests on scantrons

and this is really bad for how we learn

to write and here's a specific example

when you look at a multiple-choice

question the goal is for you to identify

the error

more than it is for you to find the

solution and this specific question the

word there may be the problem but it's

really an agreement issue between the

word each which is singular and there

which is plural so if you were actually

asked to fix the problem you would end

up making a lot of edits to the sentence

that had nothing to do with what the

error was another example something that

multiple choice kind of forces you to do

is choose between not wrong answers and

definitely wrong answers so in this case

we have a long passage underlined and

what you're supposed to do is compare

all these possibilities and try to find

the answer that's least wrong it's a

very anxiety-producing experience but

given the way that Google search works

given the way that we're able to use

data now to power the engines that make

the internet work why can't we just give

a student a text box and let him type in

his own response and then use previous

responses to evaluate whether that makes

sense or not then we could actually get

rid of all this distracting non answer

stuff and we could have a much more

authentic assessment so to borrow a line

from John update the way that any

activity becomes creative is when the

doer cares about doing it right or doing

it better and writing really should be a

collaborative process right and the

reason the reason that we write is to

share ideas and so it only makes sense

that students would be able to evaluate

each other's work many years ago a

student Jamal was going to write a paper

about how Romeo and Juliet died at the

end of the play and I asked him well if

you're going to write that have you

found anyone who disagrees that that

actually happened because if everyone

agrees why write the paper and so he

went around and he surveyed every

student in the class and he came back to

me and he said well here's what I found

out everybody agreed that they died

except for Elizabeth

I asked why what happened to her well I

I don't think she read the play

so instead for his paper idea the

question was well why did they die right

and what I advised them to do is

actually think specifically about how

much blame each character had for the

deaths of Romeo and Juliet can you

divide up this exact amount of guilt and

then once you've made such a pie chart

of guilt go around again and survey

people and find out where they

specifically disagree with you that's a

paper idea because its original it's

controversial and it's something that

you understand and if you think about

good writing there's lots of reasons

that we should be leveraging the people

in the classrooms to help us first of

all good writing is clear and that just

means that your peers can understand it

second of all it's credible which means

your peers believe you after they read

it and it just has to be interesting

which means that they get all the way

through or at least halfway so teachers

are very good at giving interesting

prompts that get students excited about

describing things in a vivid way but

what's very overwhelming for the teacher

and much harder to do once a student

crafts a response is to parse it out to

look at specific parts of the paper that

are effective and not effective before a

grade but with technology we can all

simply allow students to vote

imagine plus wanting specific parts of a

paper that are good and also being able

to bring out for a student this

particular parts of a paper that aren't

effective an activity I used to do with

my students to help them cut fluff was

to paste wordy phrases all around the

classroom and students would go around

in groups with markers and they would

eliminate as many words as they could

and the students who had eliminated the

most words would get the most points and

so that was a pretty good activity

except the problem was that I didn't

know who in the group actually

understood how to cut fluff and who

didn't who was just trailing along so

when Google Forms came out I posted this

online and I told students well each of

you is actually going to cut this each

quote down and I want you to do the best

you can and then we'll look at the data

and we'll see the variety of responses

that we get and what an activity like

this reveals if we just look at one

sentence the duty of a clerk is to check

and record incoming mail is that people

come up with some really interesting

responses that you wouldn't anticipate

so a bunch of people wrote a clerk

checks and records incoming mail others

clerk's check all mail and record it

a clerk checks and records the mail and

then clerks check and record mail lots

of ways of saying the same thing but the

point is that there are many right

answers right there's not one right

answer and a whole bunch of wrong

answers that's just not how writing

works and so that's not the way that we

should be trained so where I probably

had the biggest problem without

technology was how to help students with

grammar in fact I was so concerned about

it that I documented every single

misconception that students had on their

papers and I would give them numbers and

letters and then I put together an 80

page manual that they could refer to

after they graded after they looked at

what I wrote so thank you

but here's the thing that's not enough

as it turns out so 8.1 can refer to a

comma splice and 13.4 C can refer to

well you had a quote and you had

something before it but there was no

colon in the middle and even after that

students could have the opportunity to

go back and make specific revisions to

everything I pointed out but when you

think about the math if there's a

hundred and seventy students and

everyone does fifty revisions to his

paper that's eighty five hundred

Corrections that I'm looking at in a

dark room at 3:00 in the morning and

that made me sad and so I tried to

create activities to make this possible

I actually laminated a bunch of phrases

and parts of speech and I had students

kind of make turn the classroom into a

shrine of grammar and language except

that once I spent a thousand dollars of

the school's laminating budget I

realized that I probably couldn't

sustain this activity for very long

technology at scale can be a lot cheaper

so I hired an engineer to help me build

something that could actually take

students interests their favorite

celebrities the personal interests their

friends and to generate questions that

were about them so a Justin Bieber fan

would see Justin Beiber hollered my name

running toward me with the with the

oversized stuffed animal that he just

won and students can drag and

punctuation as you see they can click to

capitalize or uncapitalized they can

throw out what they don't need this is

an authentic assessment of what students

know and what they don't because they

have freedom and then let's say a

student makes a mistake in the sentence

about Barack Obama doing a handstand

maybe the student chooses to capitalize

handstand it's an interesting choice

rather than just marking him wrong we

can actually focus on the specific

problem that he has and then if he still

gets it wrong we can show him a hint and

if he gets it wrong again that we can

actually show him his specific mistake

give him a model of how to build the

sentence and then generate another

question with a different example but

the same programmatic substructure so

that he can practice it until he gets it

right this is what we need technology to

do and we can apply the same concept

helping kids with hyphens helping people

tell the difference between who's and

who's can even use it to help people

understand when to capitalize the word

aunt when it's a common noun and when

it's a proper noun and as students are

doing all this we can be crunching the

data giving students summaries of how

they're doing and then showing them

color coded heat maps to let them know

where they need more practice so in this

case conjunctive adverbs is where I made

a mistake and I need to do more work on

that particular topic now that would be

good in and of itself but teachers can

actually see how everyone in the class

is doing simultaneously and quickly use

that to inform instructional practice so

I can see in my class a lot of blue for

general contractions can't isn't

shouldn't but all that red over there

that's plural nouns

that's the sanchezes keep beating me in

Scrabble and the Joneses haven't given

to me my tape measure back and once we

know the specific problem the specific

area I can drill down further and look

at how many attempts it's taking each

student to answer questions correctly

and to achieve mastery and I can even

draw that and look at their specific

responses so what kind of impact can a

technology product have well my eighth

year I spent a few months building this

and then I shared it with 50 teachers at

a local event and 4 weeks later I logged

on and there were 1,500 people using it

in 9 weeks there were 15,000 I know

it's been 20 months since that that mark

and now students have solved over 40

million questions

so here's the thing I believe the

technology can play a very powerful role

in improving education outcomes and

specifically improving writing but it's

imperative that educators and teachers

play a fundamental role in creating the

products that we need because while

everybody talks about how it's important

to improve education there is nobody

who's more invested in what goes in your

papers than the people writing on and

the people who have to grade them thank

you

you