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Cloud Writer

This is a guest blog by Peter Smith who is keen to promote the Schoolshape Cloud Writer app. It looks useful to me and may appeal to some language teachers, particularly those who like to make use of digital technology..

"This is a new writing activity to improve accuracy through inductive learning: In this post, I suggest an app which give your students a helping hand by writing their answers online at https://schoolshape.com/write

The new GCSEs feature both translation and composition. These can both be one step too far for students. Teachers can find themselves overwhelmed by written work littered with disastrous errors requiring correction. There is also the question of motivation. Even the most gifted of teachers can fail to infuse enthusiasm for translation and composition exercises. 

Cloud Writer helps students improve their writing accuracy via a hint system, guiding them towards the correct answer. Grammar corrections and annotations help the student with a combination of multilingual grammar software and teacher/mentor/penfriend input. A running total of percentage accuracy is displayed, and on iPads, Android tablets and Smartphones, the most common foreign accents are available directly from the screen keyboard. This encourages students to write more and improve their accuracy, thus increasing their percentage accuracy over time. 

Students can thus do regular writing on their devices, improve accuracy through inductive learning, and collaborate securely with native speakers. Further details available at https://www.schoolshape.com/cloudwriter"

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