Yesterday, a few of the ICT Support Team attended an event hosted by Crick Software. Write online is a word processing tool which has many useful features. For a start it “talks” in British English. The pupils can hear what they have written and also listen to the words in the wordbar before adding them to their text. Write online also has the appearance of a page in Microsoft Word with Clicker 5 feautres included. This offers the pupils familiarity, especially Secondary Pupils who will be used to a “Microsoft Word” environment.
Write Online is aimed at pupils in Primary 6 and 7 and also Years 1-6 in Secondary Schools.
As pupils are writing there is predictive text which has millions of words incorporated. Most of the pupils will have used this feature on their mobile phones, although the quality of the Write Online Predictor is far better than most phones will offer. Teachers can also select a maximum limit for the number of letters in each word. For example, poorer readers can choose from 3 or 4 letter words and more able pupils can select larger words. There are also many wordbars available from the Cricksoft Website that teachers and pupils can use if they are working on a particular topic. The words are topic specific but the teacher can add words or change words to suit the pupils in their class. The wordbars enable the pupils to access an alphabetical list of words relevant to the topic they are working on. And it gets better! Teachers can actually create their own wordbars, using any part of texts. They can copy a piece of text from an internet site and the software will create a Wordbar using the text. I was really impressed with this feature!
Write Online also has the facility to give teachers statistics about their pupils’ writing. The software can detect if passages have been pasted from another source – i.e. in an attempt to spot plagiarism. It also shows spelling errors and shows the corrections and the context. Teachers and pupils can also comment on specific aspects of written work.
Write Online can also be used at home or in school. It can be used even if you are not connected to the internet for a couple of days!
The catalogue price for a primary school first year subscription is £500, droppiing to 50% of first year sub in Year 2+, and £750 for secondary schools. The same 50% discount applies to secondary schools after Year 1. The nominated site administrator would then be able to generate logins to WriteOnline for ALL students, teachers, teaching assistants etc on that specific site.
I felt that the cost of Primary School access was a bit high if only P6 and P7 pupils were using it. Clicker have said that very small primary schools may want to come to them to look at a subscription discount but it would be very much on a case by case basis.
All Clicker Centres have been offered the opportunity to have 10 WriteOnline logins created for demonstration and evaluation purposes. Clicker have sent an official email invitation out to all 300+ centres in the UK.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Carol Henderson // Feb 8, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I am sorry that I missed the opportunity to take part in this event. I would apppreciate some time with one of the Staff Tutors who did attend to have a close look at the software.
2 Neil Andrew // Feb 14, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Thank you for the WriteOnline write-up following our training session last week – much appreciated!
I hope you don’t mind my clarifying two points in your blog:
1. Subscriptions – the catalogue price for a primary school first year subscription is £500, droppiing to 50% of first year sub in Year 2+, for secondary schools the same 50% discount applies after Year 1. The nominated site administrator would then be able to generate logins to WriteOnline for ALL students, teachers, teaching assistants etc on that specific site so the cost per head is extremely low, even in a primary setting. Regarding negotiation on school subscriptions: very small primary schools may want to come to us to look at a subscription discount but this will be very much on a case by case basis.
2. With regard to free licences for WriteOnline, the arrangement is that all of our Clicker Centres have been offered the opportunity to have 10 WriteOnline logins created for demonstration and evaluation purposes. We have sent an official email invitation out this week to all 300+ centres in the UK.
The reception to WriteOnline since launch at BETT just a few weeks ago has been phenomenal – and it was a great pleasure to deliver the workshop up in Scotland last week. Thank you for coming!!