Has anyone heard of this writing program?

[Needleroozer]

It is called My access (http://www.vantagelearning.com/home/products/mahome/), and uses artificial inteligence to grade the student's writing. We are visiting a friend, and she just asked me about it and showed me the website. Anyone know of or used this?
TIA.

[Chris in VA]

Sonlight uses it. That's the extent of my knowledge.
(I know, I'm enormously helpful.)

[Needleroozer]

Sonlight uses it. That's the extent of my knowledge.
(I know, I'm enormously helpful.)

Well, that is a start, and more than we had an hour ago! Thanks!
Anyone else used this?

[jfallon]

I work with MY Access and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

jfallon@vantage.com

[Caia]

I do not have much knowledge about it, but my daughter used it briefly before we decided it didn't fit well with our schooling. Off the top of my head, these are two things that I remember 1)most of the writing prompts were creative writing assignments and 2) "it" did not like the spelling of a lot of the proper nouns my daughter used used in her assignments and therefore she received a lower grade if she did not change them to a name that "it" liked. I do not know if they list sample prompts on their website, but I can try to dig up a couple of the ones she completed if you are interested. HTH

[Needleroozer]

I do not have much knowledge about it, but my daughter used it briefly before we decided it didn't fit well with our schooling. Off the top of my head, these are two things that I remember 1)most of the writing prompts were creative writing assignments and 2) "it" did not like the spelling of a lot of the proper nouns my daughter used used in her assignments and therefore she received a lower grade if she did not change them to a name that "it" liked. I do not know if they list sample prompts on their website, but I can try to dig up a couple of the ones she completed if you are interested. HTH

Yes, I would love to see those! Thanks for responding.

[Needleroozer]

I work with MY Access and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

jfallon@vantage.com

Thanks for responding. Is there a trial period for this? If you pay for the year, but it doesn't work for you, what then?

[Caia]

She used a few of the middle school prompts which I believe are suggested for grades 6-8. They have prompts in different categories including: informative, literary, narrative, persuasive, and possibly one or two more.

The informative prompts that I remember include one about where you would like to live, one about being principal for a week, and one about designing your own dream city. The "where you would like to live" prompt went something like - Do you like city life, fast paced etc., or do you prefer more of a country atmosphere. Please write a multi-paragraph essay explaining which lifestyle you would choose and why. (Please note that these are my words, not the exact words of their writing prompt. I only saved our final copy.)

The informative writing prompts gave you a story or document to read and then write an essay about. I believe there is one about the Bill of Rights where you read each amendment and then write an essay about the rights you enjoy as a person. Another one was about rock climbing where you pretended to be writing an article for the school newspaper on rock climbing.

They had a several literary ones, but the only one I remember is about Lois Lowry's book The Giver. I do not remember what the prompt was about except that it was about what you thought about something that Jonas did.

Narrative prompts included writing multi-paragraph essays on being a bird for a day, a time machine (where would you go and what would you do), and getting home from the middle of nowhere (had something to do with how would you get home etc.)

The persuasive prompts had a lot do to with school situations - like banning books, school rules, pop machines, bullies, etc. I do not think that we ended up doing any of those.

Well, all of that to say, this was probably a year ago that we tried to use this so I do not know how much it has changed between now and then. And I do not know if the home version is different than the school.

Hope that gives you a little bit more information.

[jfallon]

We do have a 30 day guarantee so if you try it and don't like it, you can get a refund.

[jfallon]

Well, all of that to say, this was probably a year ago that we tried to use this so I do not know how much it has changed between now and then. And I do not know if the home version is different than the school.

Hope that gives you a little bit more information.

We have indeed changed it quite a bit. When Sonlight was offering the program, it was really designed for use in large institutions (schools and districts) but they thought it could apply at home as well. Since that time, we have created the Home Edition which is designed specifically for homeschool use by focusing more on the needs of parents rather than those of a large organization.

[AngieW in Texas]

I used it when SL first offered it. There weren't many writing prompts available at that point. I know that a lot has been added since then.

When I was using it, there was so little available that it wasn't worth it. It may be worthwhile now, but we've moved on.

[jfallon]

The Home Edition now has 90 Prompts as well as the ability to add your own prompts so you can add writing instruction and development into the content areas.

We created the Home Edition as we realized the version SL was offering was not meeting homeschooling needs since it was not really designed for home use. We received a lot of feedback from SL users that helped us change the way students interact with the program (most notably by adding courses and exercises as an instructional component) and to add features and functionality more relevant to a parent rather than a school adminitrator.

Also, we’ve started sending monthly newsletters to offer strategies for parents to teach writing and to keep students motivated, and launched a community with resources for parents to use in their teaching and a discussion board for exchanging ideas with other users.

[Needleroozer]

I work with MY Access and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

jfallon@vantage.com

I did think of another question.

One of the reasons my son is struggling with writing is my lack of confidence and ability as a writing teacher. His writing teacher recently gave me a helpful rubric and detailed writing assessment/correction sheet that is helping both my son and I, but I still feel I need instruction as well.

If I use this program to correct my child's writing, and it is grading the work, does it support me in learning how to become a better writing teacher, and if so, how?

Thanks for taking the time to participate in this thread.

[jfallon]

I'm glad I can help, and you are not alone. A lack of confidence in how to teach writing is one of the most common concerns we hear from parents. We do have a number of resources to help you as the teacher by giving you ideas and strategies you can use right away. Within the program, we have links to documents and resources we’ve pulled together to get you started. Additionally, the revision plans that are presented to the students upon scoring are pretty detailed so both you and your child understand what is need to improve and how to go about doing it.

Also, as I mentioned in my previous post:

...we’ve started sending monthly newsletters to offer strategies for parents to teach writing and to keep students motivated, and launched a community with resources for parents to use in their teaching and a discussion board for exchanging ideas with other users.
The newsletter and community are both designed for parents rather than students as we recognize that not all parents are “trained to teach writing”.

To give you a sense of the kind of information we are sharing, you can view our most recent newsletters here:

January: http://www.myaccesshome.com/mahome/pages/2008_01_1_mahome.release.html (http://www.myaccesshome.com/mahome/pages/2008_01_1_mahome.release.html)

February: http://www.myaccesshome.com/mahome/pages/2008_02_1_mahome.release.html (http://www.myaccesshome.com/mahome/pages/2008_02_1_mahome.release.html)

As our community grows (it's still fairly new), we'll keep adding tips for you to use in our teaching efforts. With both, we try to respond to some of the most common questions we get from parents.

I hope this helps.

[Needleroozer]

I'm glad I can help, and you are not alone. A lack of confidence in how to teach writing is one of the most common concerns we hear from parents. We do have a number of resources to help you as the teacher by giving you ideas and strategies you can use right away. Within the program, we have links to documents and resources we’ve pulled together to get you started. Additionally, the revision plans that are presented to the students upon scoring are pretty detailed so both you and your child understand what is need to improve and how to go about doing it.

Also, as I mentioned in my previous post:


The newsletter and community are both designed for parents rather than students as we recognize that not all parents are “trained to teach writing”.

To give you a sense of the kind of information we are sharing, you can view our most recent newsletters here:

January: http://www.myaccesshome.com/mahome/pages/2008_01_1_mahome.release.html (http://www.myaccesshome.com/mahome/pages/2008_01_1_mahome.release.html)

February: http://www.myaccesshome.com/mahome/pages/2008_02_1_mahome.release.html (http://www.myaccesshome.com/mahome/pages/2008_02_1_mahome.release.html)

As our community grows (it's still fairly new), we'll keep adding tips for you to use in our teaching efforts. With both, we try to respond to some of the most common questions we get from parents.

I hope this helps.


Thank you very much for this extra information! I appreciate you taking the time to respond again.