1. Writing Practice Tool
Description: The primary purpose of this tool is to offer students a more intensive way to exercise their writing skills without increasing teacher burden. Its database is managed via Claude and updated regularly with added sample essays.
The tool does not use LLM models to evaluate essays, instead relying on algorithmic heuristics to measure essay length, lexical and sentence complexity as well as coherence and flow (transition words, complete thoughts/sentences, hedging) and also penalizes redundancy.
It differs from using an AI chatbot for writing, in that it has been designed with specific constructs in mind. Particularly to offer a structured evaluation using the CEFR Framework as guard rails to optimize learning, rather than a free flowing conversation with an LLM using ambiguous parameters. Evaluation is visualized as a matrix rubric which students can immediately comprehend and understand the linguistic areas that they are strongest/weakest in.
2. Audio Recorder for Reading Fluency
Description: A simple audio recorder with a display screen featuring for students to practice speaking and submitting their assignments. Reading material is embedded directly into the .html file and categorized by grade and class.
The entire purpose of this audio recorder is to be facilitate easier integration with Google Classroom. The audio recorder is public facing, web hosted on a personal web host, so it’s not tied to a premium subscription like the audio submission feature on Wayground.com. Students copy the link to the recording and submit the link into Google Classroom which allows for scoring and grading. This is 100% not scaleable as there is no back-end system for teachers other than me to make updates to the reading passages in the .html file.