AOL Essay Grading Software
I’ve been intrigued by the idea of essay-grading software such as Criterion by ETS. The software gives provides students with writing prompts, and then scores their papers against stored anchor papers. Feedback is immediate, rather than waiting days (or weeks) for the teacher to score. It’s not meant as a replacement for teacher feedback, but as a supplement. If a teacher can only give deep, meaningful feedback to one writing assignment per week, that can be supplemented with a system such as Criterion, which can handle assignments as fast as students can produce them.
Interestingly enough, America Online has gotten into the act with a product for home use called AOL Writing Wizard. It appears to be not only have the scoring mechanism such as Criterion has, but also has built-in tools for students to outline their work or create simple pre-writing webs.
You’re hard-pressed to find out that info on the promotional site I linked above, however. I tried to watch the demo that you access through the link above, but the various spots in the website that say “click here to see the demo” open up a screen to subscribe to AOL instead. I tried to set up the thirty-day free trial, but it’s one of those things where you have to give your credit card number, and if you don’t cancel in the first 30 days, they automatically start charging you. More disturbing is that nowhere in the sign-up process do they tell you how much that monthly cost will be.
I finally saw the little demo video after I cancelled the registration process for the free trial. It appeared on the second “Are you sure you really want to cancel?” screen. I also found more information at AOL’s Premium Services Page. The demo link still didn’t work, but at least I can tell you it costs $4.95 per month.
So, the product looks promising, but man, somebody really needs to work on their web pages.