Utah Expands Online Writing Program
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Utah districts are expanding their use of MY Access!, an online writing program from Vantage Learning. According to Vantage, more than 400,000 essays were submitted to MY Access! by Utah students within one school year.
MY Access! uses Web-based forms that allow students to input assignments. It then checks those assignments against various writing characteristics and scores students on their writing proficiency, style, mechanics, and other factors. It also supports multilingual students and ELL students and is able to deliver feedback and tutoring in multiple languages.
Vantage said that now 24 districts in Utah will be using the online system with a total of 70,000 licenses for students.
"We started an initiative to heavily implement MY Access! over the last three years in our junior high schools, and after just one school year, the results were eye-opening," said Kate Ross, instructional coach for language arts teachers in Alpine School District, in a statement released this week. "After we saw how effective MY Access! was in improving writing skills, district leaders began to lobby the state to underwrite more licenses, so we could bring this wonderful technology to as many students as possible. And working with the folks at Vantage Learning to customize MY Access! demonstrates their commitment to helping our students reach their full potential."
As part of the expanded deployment, Vantage said it's now working with Utah districts to customize the program for their specific curricular requirements, such as career and technical education.
Further information about the deployments in Utah can be found here.
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About the author:David Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's online education technology publications, including THE Journal and Campus Technology. He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com.
Proposals for articles and tips for news stories, as well as questions and comments about this publication, should be submitted to David Nagel, executive editor, at dnagel@1105media.com.