WriteToLearn 3.0 Launches With Expanded Essay Feedback,
Industry-Standard Teacher Tools
Online Tool for Building Writing and Reading Comprehension Skills
Now Evaluates Six Traits of Writing
BOULDER, Colo. - April 24, 2007
- Pearson Knowledge Technologies (PKT) today launched
WriteToLearn™ 3.0, the newest update of its innovative Web-based
learning tool for developing writing and reading comprehension skills.
Offering both summary and essay writing activities, WriteToLearn now
provides students with expanded feedback on their essays and gives
teachers a tool for targeting their students with ability-appropriate
reading passages.
With WriteToLearn, students practice essay writing and summarization
skills, and their efforts are measured by the state-of-the-art Knowledge
Analysis Technologies™ (KAT) engine, which automatically evaluates
the meaning of text by examining whole passages. The KAT engine is a
unique automated assessment technology that evaluates the meaning of
text, not just grammatical correctness or spelling.
WriteToLearn 3.0 now gives student writing a score for each of six
traits of writing: ideas, organization, conventions, sentence fluency,
word choice and voice. WriteToLearn 3.0 also offers students expanded
feedback on how to improve their essays and their scores on each of the
traits.
The more than 100 reading passages available for summarizing in
WriteToLearn 3.0 now have Lexile® measures. As the most widely
adopted reading measure, The Lexile Framework for Reading measures
both reader ability and text difficulty on the same scale.
"Teachers tell us that students find WriteToLearn an engaging and
motivational environment for practicing and refining their reading and
summarizing skills. Students love the visual appeal and the immediate
feedback and come to class excited about completing the
activities," said Lynn Streeter, president, Pearson Knowledge
Technologies. "Now with the enhancements in WriteToLearn 3.0, we
are taking our premier tool for developing writing and reading
comprehension skills to the next level by providing even deeper
evaluation of essay writing as well as access to the industry-standard
Lexile measures for matching students with text."
One example of an educational program that is using WriteToLearn to
improve student reading and writing abilities is East Palo Alto Tennis
and Tutoring (EPATT), a unique, nonprofit afterschool program at
Stanford University, East Palo Alto, Calif. Many of the students are
learning English as a second language and, as a result, are struggling
writers. EPATT academic director Kesha Weekes said WriteToLearn is
helping to change that.
"These kids want to write now, and that is amazing," said
Weekes, who first introduced WriteToLearn to EPATT's middle school
students. After seeing its success, she quickly ordered more
subscriptions for the fourth through six graders. In fact, Weekes said
students are forgoing playing educational games on the program's
laptops to work on their WriteToLearn summary and essay writing
assignments.
"They just love WriteToLearn," said Weekes. "They're
kids, and they don't want to do anything that's not fun, and it's
fun."
WriteToLearn is available from Pearson Assessments, Pearson Digital
Learning, Pearson Prentice Hall and Apple (as part of the Apple
Digital Learning Series for middle and high school language arts).
More information about WriteToLearn is available at
www.WriteToLearn.net.
About Pearson Knowledge Technologies
Pearson Knowledge Technologies is the developer of products and services
based on a unique automated text analysis technology that evaluates the
meaning of whole passages. The company's Knowledge Analysis Technologies
(KAT) engine immediately measures writing and content in a way that
simulates a skilled human grader and encourages better subject
knowledge. Pearson Knowledge Technologies' writing and reading skills
products, such as WriteToLearn, Intelligent Essay Assessor and Summary
Street, use the KAT engine to help improve writing, reading and
comprehension skills as well as build content knowledge for education
and other markets. For more information, visit www.PearsonKT.com.
Pearson Knowledge Technologies is a
business of Pearson Education, the
world's largest integrated education company, which in turn is part of
Pearson (NYSE: PSO), the international media company. Pearson's other
primary operations include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin
Group.
For more information, press only:
Lisa Wolfe, L. Wolfe Communications, 773-325-9935, lwolfe@lwolfe.com
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