Peer Reviews with Technology

Picture By: Brett Gosselin

Peer reviewing is nothing new. I've been doing it since I was a child and using it with my students since my first year of teaching. However, I get asked a LOT from many teachers, "How do you do it?" I've done it many different ways over the years.

In the past students would have to come into the class with two copies of their paper. I would randomly pass out the papers to the students. If they didn't bring in copies, they didn't get to participate and instead would sit in an "essay writing corner" working on their essay. There would be a worksheet of questions passed out, or maybe the questions were displayed on the overhead. Students, armed with colored pens would then answer the questions as they reviewed the essay. Sometimes this would include specific directions (highlight the thesis, underline the opinion, etc.)

There's nothing wrong with doing it this way (and I could go into more details about it if anyone is interested) but now, like with a lot of things, technology has changed the way I do this.

Before we get into that, let's start at the beginning.

Editing is something that teachers often take for granted. Since we know how to spot mistakes, we assume students can do this as well. After all, if they have learned what we taught them, shouldn't they be able to catch mistakes other students make?

Well, maybe. But for the most part students require some coaching in this matter. Modeling is an easy way to do this, as is having students practice in small groups. Here are some technological tools I use to help my students refine their inner editor (at the end of each suggestion I also give a brief low-tech/no-tech option). I am assuming you are at least vaguely familiar with these sites. If you aren't or are interested on a post on the basics of one of the sites I mention, leave me a comment and I'll put something together for you.

I strongly encourage using "real" examples from students (past or present) as it has really made a difference with my students.
 Kahoot 

Take a screen shot of a sentence (or make a PowerPoint slide and upload it as a graphic) and use it in Kahoot as a picture. Have the question be identifying the error. The answers would be different possibilities. For example, my students are working on thesis statements, so some issues may be: Using personal language, Not being specific Not having an opinion, Not having an explanation.

Alternatively, label different sentences (1,2,3,4) and have students pick the best thesis statement. Be sure to have the, "automatically move through questions" turned OFF. You want to use the time immediately after questions to have students explain why they selected what they did and why.

No Tech? Years and years ago, we did the exact same thing with teachers who would have these paragraphs on overhead projects, now you can make a PowerPoint game, if you are low-tech, or a packet for no-tech.

Socrative
Most teachers I know use Socrative for quizzes or the Space Race. Those are both really awesome tools, but not my favorite part of Socrative is the "Quick Question"

Simply select, "Quick Question" and then "Short Answer." Write an essay prompt in the question blank. I want each student to write only one response and I want their names (so they are held accountable). You can also have them work in small groups and have each group submit one thesis statement. As the results start coming in, you, as the teacher, can monitor and remove any that may seem inappropriate.

Once the time is up (or all students have submitted their attempt) then click "Start Vote" At this point the students will be able to see all of the thesis statements and vote for the ones they like best. Once the vote has closed discuss why the class selected the winner as the winner. Find the one with the least votes, what was wrong with it? This requires very little prep and is anonymous (to the students) so you tend to get authentic responses.

No Tech: Have students write sentences on the board and then discuss them after.

Haiku Discussions

Different options for Haiku discussions

I use Haiku because my school provides it to me, but any discussion board would work find (BlackBoard, etc.) Haiku does offer a free solo teacher plan! You get five classes. More information here

These are great because you have options. You can put students in pre-assigned groups (this can be a great way to differentiate), as a whole class, or individually.


Depending on how you have it set up, you can post a sample paragraph and have students critique it. Then they can take it the next step and re-write it. This is nice because if you are putting them in small groups or as a whole class, the shyer students can "speak up" without actually needing to speak, and the students who don't quite get it can go at their own pace and see what everyone else wrote first (unless of course you want them to take a guess first, in which case click the "Require students to post first" button).

You're also taking it past just identifying issues and seeing if students can actually fix them. Often at this point it is helpful to have a checklist of sorts students can go through to find errors.  This list should probably change depending on what you are focusing on, but I know some teachers who keep the same list throughout (normally elementary when they are focusing on key skills). The list can be mechanics, grammar, or specific to whatever you are teaching. I tend to encourage a mix of question types: Yes/No, Scale, and Open Ended. You'll be surprised at the answers sometimes.

• Does every sentence start with a capital letter? (Mechanics)
• Does the first sentence grab your attention? (Essay Format)
• Does the essay make sense to you? Why or Why not? (Opinion)
• What suggestions could you give the writer? (Really Open Ended)

Sidenote: Haiku Discussion boards are also really easy to grade. After the discussion closes I just pull up the list and I can see (by student) who wrote what. Normally I give a flat participation grade (they did it: full points), but I do make sure to skim to point out particularly good comments.

No Tech? You can of course do this in small groups as well without the technology. Pass out copies of the paragraph have them set the tables together and answer a set of questions as a team. Share their answers with the class, and then write a fixed version of the paragraph individually

PeerMark / TurnItIn

Two years ago I posted about free plagiarism checkers. That's how most people know TurnItIn. However, as much as I do use TurnItIn now, I actually LOVE them for their PeerMark grading. Never used it? You should check it out!

This is the "bigger" assignment. The first time we do this I jump in with full essays, though you can always have students start by just reviewing paragraphs or even sentences if you want!

There may be free versions out there (if you know any leave a comment, and I'll add it here), but I've only ever used Peermark.

Students turn in their papers the night before or morning of. You CAN have them turn the papers in the first thing in class, and just select, "randomly assign." Peermark will randomly give your students different essays and you're set. However, I prefer having some time to look over them.

You also have the option of going through and assigning them. For example, I teach many ESL students. In most cases I want students looking at the paper of someone who doesn't speak their language. For example, Spanish speakers to look at Chinese speakers' essays. This helps them because speakers of the language tend to make the same mistakes. Sometimes they even use words that they think are OK, but really don't exist. Just the other day I had a student tell me, "I hope you understand my Chinglish." So when I get to pick the pairs I can make sure the student will get the most help possible.

Depending on the student I may also want them to grade the paper of someone who write really well. This way they get to see a good model, and it tends to be easier for them to mark (less errors). 

I can also exclude papers. For example, in the class I'm teaching right now one of my students has completely copy and pasted his entire essay from the website online. I don't want anyone else to peer review this.

Finally, my FAVORITE part of using PeerMark. When I did these on paper if you didn't come in with your essay, you didn't get points. You also didn't review another student's paper. I LOVE peer reviewing and think it is a GREAT learning experience. With PeerMark I just need to check the box, "Allow students without a paper to review" and I am set! They don't miss out!! Though they don't get the help of having their paper peer edited.

As for grading, you can make this as hands off as you want or fairly specific. I make a list of questions my students go through as they grade. As with the list mentioned in the discussion boards, it changes a bit with each essay. This is shown on the screen as the students mark. In this example to below, the questions are mainly scale based (5 being awesome, 1 being needs a lot of work). Students answer the question and then leave comments on the paper if needed. For example, in this one I asked a question about the "Author Work Tie" and "Does it mention the author, title of the work, type of work, and how it connects to the thesis statement?" This student-editor gave the student-writer a 2/5 and then left a comment about how the summary was too long. She also answered #5 "Overall how good is the introduction" by saying, "the introduction does tells [sic] me what the rest of the essay is going to be about but the Author, work, tie is very confusing"

I love peer editing. I really really do. Students learn to see what they're seeing in other papers on their own. Its really easy for me to say, "okay don't do that, this, or the other thing," but students don't usually learn that way. I can take it up the net step, "Let's all do this together. What did we do wrong?" But when students actually have the question in front of them and then can find the examples on their own it really takes them to the next level on Bloom's Taxonomy.

It makes them think! They also catch a lot of little things that I always find interesting. There is also an option I really like to use which is having students do self reviews. As a teacher, when you create the PeerMark assignment, you can decide how many papers you want a student to peer review (I suggest at least two) and if you want students to complete a self review as well.

If you choose this I strongly encourage you (and students) to do it AFTER they have done the peer reviews. This way they have seen how other students do it and have the chance to reflect on their own work. Basically they can say, "Okay well now that I've seen other peoples essays what do I think about mine?" This is a really awesome opportunity for them to point out anything they might have learned and it's especially interesting to compare it to the results they will get from students.

I try to give students two days to look over the suggestions made by their peers before having them turn in their paper to me. This means that the first time I grade it they've gone over it and two other students have gone over it. Not only does this mean they learned more it also typically means my grading is a little bit easier because some of the bigger mistakes have already been caught.

This post ended up a LOT longer than I anticipated, and I could go on, but I'll stop. If you use peer reviews in your class, share how you do in the comments, and if you have any questions just let me know!

Pizza Project (Paragraph Writing)

I am all about playing with words and enjoying a pun, so when I began my unit on Julius Caesar, I immediately wanted to implement this pizza project using Little Caesar boxes.

What is the Pizza Project? I've seem them done a few different ways. With my high school students, I use them as a way to practice finding concrete details (or specific examples) from texts.

Essentially, students were each given a Little Caesar's pizza box. I think technically these cost $.45 cents each (plus tax), but if you politely explain that this is for a school project, then you may get your boxes for free.

"Project Pizza," as a call it, is composed of three distinct parts:The Pizza Box, the Pizza Slices and the Pizza Presentation.

The Pizza Box is the part with the simplest directions. Students decorate the pizza box ti reflect the themes and characters they choose to discuss on their pizza slices. 

Since, these boxes are from Little Caesar's and we were reading Julius Caesar, most students chose to keep at least some of the box visible.

Clearly, if your topic was unrelated to the name of your pizza chain you would have them cover all of it, but you can get creative. Pizza Hut could be used for The Painted House, The House on Mango Street. Da' Boys for The Body, or any other book about a group of boys.

The next part is more complicated. The Pizza Slices of course can vary based on your preferences and the level of your students.In this case, Each group received eight slices. They had to create individual slices of pizza. Each slice has a crust (the topic) and toppings (quotes, pictures, and other general facts).

As for topics. I have students choose from themes, characters, motifs, conflicts, the setting, and anything else that interests them. In the case of Julius Caesar this could be anachronisms, fashion, battles mentioned, historical inaccuracies, or anything else in the story that intrigues them.

I don't grade my students on artistic skill, but I do let them know that they will be graded on effort and appearance.

Finally, my students had a Pizza Presentation. For this students chose three of their slices of pizza and shared the information with the rest of the class. The topics were pre-approved to avoid listening to the same concept over and over again.

This acted as a great review and a way for my students to practice presentations.

You can make this more specific by having students replicate paragraphs more closely.

Hopefully you're inspired to have your students make their own pizzas!

If you want to see exactly what I did, I'll be sure to upload some worksheets later, but for now, here's a  Pizza Graphic Organizer: Only $.80

Guest Post: Using Technology to Teach Writing

Guide for Teachers: How to Teach Writing Through Technology?

As a teacher, you can either choose to assign pointless papers to your students or inspire them to think and facilitate their ability to write. The current writing crisis in our schools comes from one main cause: academic writing being taught as a mechanical process of research, writing and editing. If you want to teach your students to start learning through the writing process, then you need to adjust your teaching style to their needs and learning potential.

As part of every student’s life, technology should not be excluded from the teaching process. By forcing your students to research the library and neglect online tools and resources when writing papers, you are making the entire process boring right from the start. Since your students are being engaged by infographics, videos, hyperlinks and images, you should infuse that digital world to bring some fun and more effectiveness into the classroom.

Although technology doesn’t have all answers to the writing crisis, the right tools can still help you inspire your students to write more and write better. These awesome tools will help you start the revolution:

TitanPad

Your students will love collaborating on writing projects through this platform. The features for instant editing and sharing make the process easier than ever, and you can join the process and monitor their progress in real time. There are eight distinctive author colors to choose from, so the input of each student will be clearly recognizable.

NinjaEssays

As a teacher, you can also rely on the assistance of NinjaEssays when you need to create perfect coursework material.Carissa's Note: I would NOT give this site to students as they essentially are given the option to buy essays.

Zoho Docs

This is another online tool you can recommend for collaborative work. It enables the users to perform bulk uploads and save a lot of time on the go. The other features include: secure file sharing, online file storage, presentation, file synchronization, spreadsheet, Word document, task management, and more. 

Google Docs

Even though there are many writing tools and platforms you can start using, sometimes it is better to start from the basics. No, that doesn’t mean Microsoft Word! Google Docs has a simplistic, clean interface that makes the writing process distraction-free. In addition, your students can also use Google Docs to collaborate on a team project in real time. 

Edublogs

Your students love reading blogs about the things that interest them, so why not use that potential to teach them something really useful? Edublogs is a student-friendly blogging platform that can replace the paper newsletter. You can inspire your students to find interesting online material associated to the concepts they learn at class and write weekly blogs. That is the best way to inspire your students to write, but you’ll also find that the best blogs will lead to fantastic discussions. 

Glogster EDU

This is another great platform that enables its users to explore and create educational content online. You can use some great posts from Glogster to show your students that writing can be fun, and then inspire them to create their own blogs. You can also create teams and assign blogging as a team project.

Improve your teaching methods with the help of technology!

Educational technology offers endless benefits for both teachers and students. It’s no secret that today’s schooling system is burdening students with more writing assignments than they can handle. The only way to help them approach academic writing with enthusiasm is to start relying on technology and infuse some elements of fun and effective collaboration throughout the process.

  

Robert Morris is an English teacher from New York. Find him on Google+.

                  

The importance of research in writing

When studying research in essay writing, a lot of time is spent on how to paraphrase, summarize, quote, and cite. These are all essential skills, but pretty useless if not accompanied by proper research.

Laugh all you want, but the truth is many of our students tend to take everything they find on the Internet as a "fact," even though on some level they know better.

Here's one of my favorite examples to use in class. There is a quote going around the Internet that Stephen King said, "Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend." Now, it is true that Stephen King is not a fan of Twilight; however, he never said this quote. This is not what the Internet would let you believe though! Check out some of these graphics circulating the Internet:

Some of the graphics seen giving King credit for the quote.

At the end of a class where we are talking about different ways of integrating quotations I like to bring up this quote in class. We talk about whether or not it is a good quote and if they would use it. Then I show my students a quick google of the quote:

The first 3 responses suggest that this isn't his quote!

What's the lesson? The Internet is a chaotic, chaotic place. Roger Ebert once said, "Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."

I'd say that this is pretty accurate. The Internet is a fantastic tool and one which can give you and your students  a seemingly endless supply of information, but they need to put the effort into making sure that it is reliable information. We have to make sure that they are aware of this as well.

Well...what does make a good source?

Seriously, ask your students what do they think makes a good source.

I often get incorrect answers such as: It has a lot of quotes. or It is long.

So, what do you do you think makes a source great? I suggest you come up with a list as a class that makes sense for your level. For my class we usually come up with a list of:

• The information is verifiable
• They refer to their own sources
• There is an author / company putting its reputation behind what is said.
• The author / company is known for good information and not a satire or rumor based publication.
• Normally no blogs (exceptions for official blogs or blogs which show their sources: e.g. The White House Blog)
• No Wikipedia. Now, they will argue on this one. It is true that Wikipedia is becoming better every year, but even Wikipedia states it should not be used as a credible source. You can teach them to use Wikipedia as a jumping point for finding sources.

What search engines to use? There are many for specific subjects (e.g. JSTOR) but some charge. For freebies that cover most topics try:

1. SweetSearch - This search engine does NOT check all of the Internet. It only checks the about 35,000 sites that have been evaluated and approved by research experts, librarians and teachers. 
2. Google News- Most students know about Google, but they don't check the news which gives them blogs, fan pages etc.

Do you have a different reliable search engine or a method for reinforcing how important research is? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Cheating in your class (PLAGIARISM CHECKERS)

Clearly plagiarized brochure

Facebook Status

My high school students do this great  TBL project involving tourism. The assignment varies each year, but in short students are assigned a place (city, country, planet) and they have to sell the rest of the class on going there. In lieu of an essay, they create a brochure.

Above, you can see one of the brochures. On March 6th 2012, I posted to my personal Facebook, "OK, I know everyone has probably plagiarized at least once in their life...but could my students at least do it well??? 'Apart from a feast of dreamy, palm fringed snow white beaches,' is not your own words."

Less than an hour later a friend commented with, "Was it just those words, or was the whole text about Fiji?"

Now, I never stated the text was about Fiji. My friend did what I had done and Googled the line to discover the website my students copied. (The website they used http://www.holidaypackages.com.au/fiji/ is no longer a valid site). Three of the paragraphs on this site were copy and pasted directly onto their brochure. All of the yellow highlighting in the brochure above is word for word the same (feel free to click on the picture to see it bigger).

This plagiarism was pretty easy to spot. I knew these students well enough to know that they wouldn't use the phrase, "feast of dreamy, palm fringed," so I popped it into Google and got a direct hit.

Another way that teachers prevent cheating is by using a service such as TurnItIn. If your school pays for this then I'd suggest you give it a shot (it can't hurt!), but if you are looking for some more affordable alternatives here are 10 free sites, and 2 kinda free sites that check for plagiarism.

Mostly Free

These offer most of their services for free although some offer premium paid accounts with more bells and whistles.

1. Viper is nice because it also uploads students essays. This means in addition to online texts you are searching real student submitted essays. If you plan to use it as a teacher, be sure to get permission from your students to upload their essays (or arrange for them to do it themselves)! If you do not have their permission you may be breaching their privacy and opening yourself up to legal problems. You need to have Windows and download the program so it isn't as convenient as some other web based programs. Nonetheless, this is a great option for teachers (and students). Their website is available in Chinese, French, Spanish and Hindi, though the English version of the site has more options.
2. Plagtracker  says that you can check documents up to 5,000 words via copy and paste for free (premium accounts can upload a document and have no word limits), but, when I ran my first sample essay through, it only checked the first 892 words. The first essay you check you can see the results within a few minutes. After that if you submit a text, it goes in a queue. They ask for your e-mail and e-mail you when your report is ready (they estimate about 20 minutes). Two hours later I still had no reply, but by the next day I did get one. You can only check one document at a time without a premium account, so it would take a while if you wanted to check every essay your students submitted. However, if you normally only check one or two essays, then this wouldn't be too inconvenient. If you don't like waiting, you can pay their fees ($14.99/ month). It is designed to work with English, French, Spanish, German, Romanian and Italian. Since this doesn't use the essay later you don't need your students permission to submit it. As of June 2015, if you like them on Facebook they give you 20% off!
3. Small SEO tools This free tool was designed to help bloggers with their SEO score, but it can easily be used by teachers as well. Just input the text and see how much comes up as unique. The great thing is it will link to the site it found the information so you can see the original text. This is just copy and paste, no file upload option. The site is in English though since it mainly works off of search engines it will probably work well with any language.
4. Duplichecker is a free program with a maximum of 1,500 words per search. You can upload a document or copy and paste. You can run up to three free searches a day, or register (for free) and search as much as you like. Very easy to use.
5. SeeSources is now under the domain of plagscan. You can upload or copy and paste up to 1,000 words. I like this one because it runs two searches. First it finds sources that could have been used, and then looks at the way it was written to see if it matches anything.
6. Plagiarism Detect  admits to being a site which is not as great as it used to be, but for now it is pretty good to find if text was used from a website (but not pdfs or ebooks). You can copy and paste, or upload a document. Copying and pasting has a maximum of 1,000 words and uploading is a maximum of 300kB.
7. Dustball lets you copy and paste as many searches as you want. You can also upload a document, but then you need to pay a fee of $8/ month.  
8. Plagiarismsoftware runs your sentences through search engines sentence by sentence. Useful if you don't want to manually copy and paste a student's paper sentence by sentence, but not much better than just doing a web search on your own. You can also upload a document but only .txt files. There doesn't seem to be a file size issue, but it is a bit cumbersome to sort through larger texts.
   
9. Plagiarismchecker is essentially a site which sends your information to other search engines and then takes you to them. You can search up to 32 words via google or 50 words via yahoo. Good for teachers who aren't that tech savvy and don't want to go straight to a search engine
10. Plagiarisma is a free via copy and paste or you can upload the document to the site directly. I tried to run a search of 198 words and the site kept timing out, so I can't really comment on how effective it is. Perhaps you'll have better luck? 

 Not so free

These sites offer some services for free, but predominately are used with the paid options.

1. Grammarly is getting listed first because it checks grammar too (hence the name). They have a preview you can run if you like (which is great for just the occasional check). As a student this is great because it not only finds texts you forgot to paraphrase / quote, it suggests how you could properly cite it! You can get a 7 day free trial or just sign up for a plan (between $12-$24/ month for an individual account less if you team up with some other teachers and buy it together)
2. Plagium offers five free quick searches a day in English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, or Spanish. If you create a free account, you can run a few free deep searches with the 8,000 credits they give you. 60,000 units is $1.00 and estimated to be valid for about 10 searches. This is not my favorite site, but it is fine for a fast check if you do less than 5 a day. It lets you copy and paste text or upload a file.

Before you start let me give you a few tips.

1. Let your students know that you use a program, but DO NOT tell them which program you use.

2. Use a few and find your favorite. Plagiarism Checker.net gives reviews of different programs so you can look up their opinion as well.

3. Don't let the machine take away your common sense. For example one of the essays contained, "What else does the reader need to know" and that phrase popped up as plagiarism.  In that case it is probably just a popular phrase and not something copy and pasted.  

There are other ways to deter plagiarism but using these is a great start.

Do you use the Internet to check for plagiarism? Has it gone well for you? What's your favorite site? I'd love to know more about your reactions!