We can’t believe it’s almost 2018! This year has seen us go through a lot of changes; the app had a redesign and many new features that teachers requested were added. We know a lot of you were equally busy this year, so here’s our year in review.
What we built:
- Preview as Student
- Expanded/improved teacher dashboard
- Export to Google Docs
- Connect to ‘My Notes’ in Google Drive
- Over 100 new assignment templates that support workshop, 6 Traits, & other popular writing routines
- Assignment and rubric editing
- Rubric Builder in Google Sheets
- Phased Writing assignments
- Exam prompts & rubrics
- ‘Revision check’ revision modeling views
- Quick Grade tools
- Share an Assignment
- And much more!
What we did:
- Completed our pilot period, resulting in learning from thousands of students in hundreds of schools using Writable
- Featured in sessions at the NWP Annual meeting, ISTE, NCTE, and TIES
- Worked with our academic advisor, Dr. Troy Hicks, to publish “Achieving Writing Proficiency”, a paper highlighting the research-backed methods that help foster writing growth and proficiency in students. (Download it here or read the summary in EdSurge)
- Did a webinar for NE ISTE (view it here)
- Grew our team to include talented curriculum, sales, and marketing folks
What we’ve learned:
We want to take this time to thank all of our teachers and schools for all of the valuable feedback we’ve gotten this year! We’ve learned a lot more about how students write and how teachers approach writing in the classroom, including:
- Students enjoy peer reviewing when it’s anonymous, and they’re motivated (no surprise) to write and revise for an authentic audience.
- Teachers need the writing process to support their writing instruction. That sounds easy and straightforward, but writing instruction can be nuanced, with each school and teacher adapting assignments and feedback to students’ needs.
- Teachers also want to save time and appreciate tools that fit into their prep, instruction, and feedback. They love saving time on grading too, even if they don’t always like admitting it!
Most of all, we’ve learned that we have a great community of educators who really care about their students’ voices – and how those voices help them develop more purposeful, successful writing.
We look forward to meeting more educators in the new year, getting more feedback, and making Writable even better. Stay tuned for our January updates in just a few days, including Google Classroom integration, peer review modeling, and more!
Best Wishes for 2018,
Team Writable
