• Bring an umbrella
• Work with the hotel to build a bigger wi-fi infrastructure
• Extend unopposed exhibit hall time so that more time can be spent exploring without missing sessions

• 21st Century Learning—we must move our system, our educators and our students to compete in this new global society
• Universal Design for Learning—strategies for adopting the proactive approach that builds diversification in at the beginning rather than as an afterthought
• New Literacies—the skills students must have in order to be successful in the digital age
• Differentiated Instruction—how we can adapt curriculum and teaching strategies that are not UDL, and make them appropriate for all learners
• NIMAS (National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard)—how this federal standard can positively impact students who are learning disabled
• RtI (Response to Intervention)—strategies and initiatives to support this proactive approach to intervention from the whole-class setting through one-on-one remediation

1. Are you successfully integrating technology to enhance literacy instruction and student outcomes?
2. Are you skilled at teaching and helping others apply new knowledge?
3. Can you design a presentation that includes multiple learning approaches?

by Daniel Ward, of Language Magazine

Writing is the neglected partner of reading in the battle against illiteracy. It is reading levels that receive the media attention and reading programs that receive funding, yet writing, which is just as necessary a skill, is all too often ignored. The National Commission on Writing has warned that writing is "The Neglected R" and cites the latest NAEP scores as proof. "The quality of writing must be improved if students are to succeed in college and in life," the Commission's report concludes. Of course, more reading usually leads to better writing skills. However, composition requires its own skill set and, more than anything else, lots and lots of practice.

It is generally accepted that children need to complete three writing assignments per week in grades 3-12 to develop into proficient writers, which creates an enormous volume of work for any teacher, let alone teachers with numerous English language learners, so any help is welcome.

With this in mind, it is hardly surprising that educational software suppliers have been developing automated essay evaluation programs, but you may not have expected that educators themselves would develop a program that is achieving remarkable results. The RxNet Writer was the brainchild of Professor Steven Donahue, Language Magazine’s features editor and an ESL expert at Miami Dade College in Florida, who then joined forces with educators in California to develop the program to match California standards.

Years of hard work seem to be paying off because several school districts in California are now using the program. Pomona Unified School District pioneered the system. PUSD is an urban school district just east of Los Angeles serving over 34,000 students in Kindergarten through grade twelve. Over seventy-six percent of District students are eligible to receive free or reduced price meals and more than 70 percent speak a language other than English at home. As well as during standard semesters, PUSD uses the system during its summer clinic to achieve some dramatic results – one third grade student managed to increase his score of 1.0 (Below Basic) to 4.0 (Advanced) in only two days.

RxNet Writer is a web-based diagnostic, skill building, and instructional writing tool aligned with California’s Grade Level English Language Arts Writing standards and scoring rubrics. It is powered by a proprietary grammar engine known as The California Electronic Writer that processes over a million points of data in seconds to emulate the process carried out by expert human scorers at all levels from kindergarten through to college. The engine is customizable and may be tuned to apply any level of academic rigor desired.

The RxNet Writer enables teachers to spend more of their time teaching, instead of plowing through reams of writing. Teachers can add their feedback to the automated responses and effectively pinpoint problem areas, which can then be remedied. In these times of over burdened teachers, the RxNet Writer could prove to be not only an invaluable tool in solving the writing crisis, but a virtual teaching assistant.

For further information, contact dan@languagemagazine.com

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