AI and Education
We know: AI can be intimidating. There's a lot of chatter in education about the impact text generators like ChatGPT are having. The immediate question is: how is Writer's Toolbox AI different to that sort of AI? And the answer is: totally.
To be truly effective in education, AI needs to read a piece of student writing—whatever the subject, age, or ability level of the student, or the style in which they wrote. Then, having read that piece of work, teach the student—individually—how to be a better writer, moving them forward a step at a time in their educational journey. And that’s precisely what we’ve done.
How Can AI Progress My Students?
The AI inside Writer’s Toolbox is designed specifically for the needs of the modern classroom. We don’t produce text or suggest tick-box changes: that approach doesn’t teach anyone anything.
Instead, informed by advances in neuroscience and learning theory, Writer’s Toolbox AI builds a picture of the individual student and their writing abilities. It recognises their strengths; it understands their weaknesses. It plots an optimal development pathway for each student to advance their skills as a writer. Walking the journey with them—responding to how they write and their unique needs in individual pieces of writing. Now, that’s intelligent.
At Its Core
AI is only as good as the training and the input provided by humans. We get that. Which is why highly-trained educators—with decades of teaching experience—are behind Writer’s Toolbox AI. Expertly crafting machine learning models to replicate the educational brain. But there is more to our AI than deep algorithms.
Writer’s Toolbox AI does what nothing else can because it's trained on an extensive longitudinal research project into authentic student writing: tens of millions of sentences, across every year level and text type. Which means Writer’s Toolbox AI perfectly matches the student. We don’t place college-level expectations on an eight-year-old. Whatever shape and size your student writing appears—mind-boggling creativity, messy syntax, run-ons galore, waffle kings—we get your student’s world. And our AI helps to make it better.
How Our AI Supports the Classroom Teacher
For the time-pressed teacher, giving students individual feedback on their written work during class can be time-consuming. Class sizes are increasing; student learning needs are diverse. This is where Writer’s Toolbox AI excels.
Every time a student seeks feedback on their work, our AI responds—right in the teachable moment. Just when they need it, we tell students what they’ve done well. Our AI gives them a clear goal, and teaches them what they need to do to make their writing better—whatever subject or writing genre. From Year 12 biology writing to Year 5 creative writing: we cover it all. For the busy teacher, Writer’s Toolbox is like having another set of hands. It’s individualised learning at scale.
"There’s 20+ students in the classroom and only one of me. So the instantaneous feedback is priceless."
Claire Reynish, Teacher, Somerville House
AI Creates Less Marking; Richer Learning
In some education systems, classroom teachers are spending, on average, 16 hours a week marking student work. That’s too much. Worse, the relentless bog of thoughts poorly delivered is forcing teachers to become sub-editors.
Teachers using Writer’s Toolbox report our AI is halving the time they spend marking each week because it’s guiding their students through the process of crafting thoughts more clearly and strongly. So, by the time student work reaches the teacher, the thoughts—the quality of student answers—are at a whole new level. As a result, classroom interactions and student discussions are pivoting back to where they should be: the richness of ideas.
Lifting Student Agency; Equipping Teachers
With our AI teaching your students more comprehensive writing skills, the agency to learn and improve is placed in the hands of the student. They can seek feedback right at the point they require it and work in an interactive world where advice, guidance, and support is at hand. Writing skills underdeveloped or concepts unfamiliar? Solved at the click of a button.
Plus, teachers have full access to this AI data and the writing skills of their students, offered in easy-to-understand dashboards. Now classroom interventions can be based on what an experienced educator observes—as well as real-time data. Explicit, measurable goals can be set—with complementary learning modules built into Writer’s Toolbox to fill gaps in student writing abilities. That’s empowerment, for both teacher and student.
Writing Strength
Among the many metrics provided by Writer’s Toolbox AI is writing strength indicator. Calibrated between zero and 100, this rapid guide to writing quality creates a motivation engine in the classroom. Every time students seek feedback, they get a percentage score, together with a key strength and area to focus on. As students improve sentences or coherence, and tighten structure or cast their ideas more deeply, our AI gives a new writing strength percentage—and new goals and advice—driving them towards writing mastery.
The outcome—as thousands of teachers are telling us—is more skilled students. Students who can talk deeply about how and why their work has improved. With confidence. And for the teachers: higher quality teaching, seeing better student results, and far less marking. Everyone wins. Now, isn't that what education is all about?
“The students love the feedback to actually improve their writing. Instant feedback assists the teacher with time and assists the students with motivation.”
Anthony Swan, Principal, Eumundi State School
