“You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.” ― Jodi Picoult

Providing students with effective and engaging feedback is critical in helping students improve their writing. Studies have shown that 'feedback is more strongly and consistently related to achievement than any other teaching behavior....Feedback can improve a student's confidence, self-awareness and enthusiasm for learning'. ¹

Often, the difficulty is providing this feedback in a timely manner.  Giving effective feedback can be an incredibly time consuming task for the writing instructor.

Enter - CheckMark Extension by EdTechTeam

This extension may quickly become the writing teacher's best friend.  It allows teachers to quickly provide feedback in Google Docs using the most common editing marks such as "Check Spelling", "Details Needed", "Evidence Needed", "Capitalization" etc. 

Simply highlight a word or sentence and the following template appears on the page.

Each key represents an editing comment that can be seen when hovering. When clicked, it will automatically generate the associated comment and track the number of occurrences for that type of comment.

Watch the tutorial video below to learn more and see it in action.
Get the extension here. 

1. Bellon, J.J., Bellon, E.C. & Blank, M.A. (1991) Teaching from a Research Knowledge Base: a Development and Renewal Process. Facsimile edition. Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA. 

Voice Typing in Google Docs

With this free, accurate, and easy to use tool, teachers can facilitate composition from all types of students who may have had a barrier previously. Some uses might be for students learning English to practice, students with learning disabilities or other writing difficulties, or students composing digitally without needing to first struggle with typing or finding letters.

Other uses might be for interviews or transcription assignments. This feature also supports several accents of French, German, and Spanish, so a Foreign Language department might have a use for this as well.

The current voice typing function in google docs has been around for a couple years and remains a powerful tool for educators and learners. While touch typing remains a necessary skill, teachers will still recognize the scenarios when this voice-to-text accommodation is most educationally useful. Many others have reviewed the function before today and they highlight the reasons educators might select this tool.

Voice typing is already included in Google Docs functionality, so every student already has access to this with no need to download or login to a new app. Google continues to add recognized languages. This also means that the functionality remains free to use. One frequent complaint of voice to text features is that they are inaccurate. Ask Siri a few questions to see where those complaints come from. Google’s voice typing, as Matthew Hughes at Make Use Of shared, is far more accurate than many of the current phone apps and includes support for accents.

Below is an easy to follow set of How To directions and a How To Video. Try out this function with your class, or let us know how you’ve already used this in your classroom.
How To Directions from Make Use Of - Scroll down to the “Getting Started” sectionVideo How To from You Tube

Why:

Easy, accurate, removes barriers to access, free and already installed.
Much has been written.http://www.alicekeeler.com/2017/10/16/3-google-docs-tools/http://www.alicekeeler.com/2015/09/03/voice-typing-comes-to-google-docs/http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2015/09/have-you-tried-voice-typing-in-google.html#.WgCwvVxKvUIhttp://www.makeuseof.com/tag/voice-typing-new-best-feature-google-docs/
Help page:https://support.google.com/docs/answer/4492226?hl=enVideo review:https://youtu.be/ELXuz94tzsI
Still being updated and added to:https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/14/googles-voice-typing-tech-adds-support-for-30-more-languages-reaching-further-into-africa-india/