Are we the only ones wondering how #ISTE19 went by so quickly? What an amazing adventure that was! This was Writable’s first time having a booth, and what a truly wonderful experience it was. This year you were able to learn about Writable from our team in the booth, at sessions, in the literacy playground, and from partners at the HMH booth, the Schoology booth, AND the Google booth! We also hosted our first gathering for Writable users!
Couldn’t make it to the show or curious to catch up on all things Writable? Check out our highlights and takeaways below!
Best of Show Award
As Team Writable was heading to the Philly airport we learned we had been selected as Best of Show at ISTE 2019 by Tech & Learning! We’re so honored to have made this list! You can check out the full list of winners here.
Sessions Galore
This year Dr. Troy Hicks shared Writable at the Literacy Playground, hosted by the ISTE Literacy PLN. Having written 10 books on teaching writing (with more on the way), Troy was able to listen and provide feedback on the specific issues many educators have been having in their classrooms, all while sharing how Writable can help save them time (and sanity). If you missed the Literacy Playground, you can always check out Troy’s podcast: Writing Matters, which is another excellent source of PD!
Dena Glynn and Evan Grant also gave a great session called “Getting Write to It” on how they’ve used Writable to develop student voices through reflection and feedback. And Elizabeth Crooks gave four sessions in the HMH booth on how her district used Writable to increase assessment scores by over 30%! If you’re curious about Elizabeth’s story, you can read more about her Writable successes here.
Writing Matters Mixer
Writable friends old and new gathered with Dr. Troy Hicks and fellow guests from Season 1 of Writing Matters for an evening of great conversations and PD, after which we all headed over the EdTech Karaoke! If you ever get a chance to go to ISTE, make sure to save time to see all the incredible teachers belt out their favorite tunes on the big stage!
Writable Partners
Did you know Writable is a Google for Education Partner, a Schoology Certified Partner, and we’re also partnered with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (you can find Collections, Into Lit, and Into Reading pre-built inside Writable!)?
This year at ISTE you were able to learn how Writable works with your favorite tools and curriculum in each of these companies booths! In the Google booth you could check us out in the newly released Chromebook App Hub, and in the HMH booth Elizabeth Crooks was on hand to share her incredible Writable successes!
What We Learned in the Booth
We made over 700 new friends in our booth this year, showing everyone just how Writable can uniquely work for them, and of course giving out some of our awesome new swag!
We also set out to learn as much as we could from everyone at the show. One of our biggest takeaways came from a question we started asking people: do you have a writing program in place?
Many people weren’t sure what we even meant, but when asked: do you have a reading program in place or are you familiar with the importance of a reading program? Every single person answered yes. And that’s when we heard the stories over and over again of how their students are struggling with writing, that they have been trying to come up with their own “programs” without support or any data on effectiveness, and many simply felt a loss at what to even try next.
Writable scaffolds writing instruction and organizes your school’s writing program, no matter how much or how little support you need.
It helps you differentiate and propel learning using a vast set of growth data. It provides both content, and the ability to customize or create your content (or incorporate the content you already use and love). It works seamlessly with your tools (about 95% of you shared that you are already using Google Classroom/Docs to teach writing) by making them even more effective. And it’s built on the research that shows better feedback drives better revision, which is the key to writing growth, by guiding the feedback and revision process with self-review, anonymous peer review, AI-powered feedback, and many teacher grading options – all with comment stems so no one ever gives ineffective feedback again.
Simply said: it does for writing instruction what so many programs are doing effectively for reading instruction. And at the most affordable price for the features offered.
We also heard over and over again:
“I didn’t even know the technology existed to give this kind of data on student writing”
“This has every single feature you need to teach writing, this is incredible, I had no idea we could even unify and organize our writing program”
“This is so amazing and is exactly what we need – I had no idea a program like this even existed!”
If you’re ready to check out Writable, you can sign up for a free teacher account now. Save time prepping for the fall, and when you do try it with students, we give them two months on us, so you can see their growth data and make sure this program is working for you
New to Writable and curious to learn more? Request a quote or schedule a quick demo.
Already a Writable enthusiast and interested in getting sponsored? We sponsor educators to give sessions or presentations at conferences!
