Digital Promise<\/a>, a nonprofit that supports technology in education.<\/p>\nIn addition to Allentown, the company works with more than 75 districts across the country, serving nearly 60,000 students in places like California, Texas, Florida and New York. The company is currently focused on support reading and writing instruction in language arts courses.<\/p>\n
Student complaints that grammar tips were vague or hard to understand motivated the company to create mini lessons that can be assigned to those who need skills practice, Evans said, adding that many schools lack the time to implement direct grammar instruction.<\/p>\n
Evans worked in K-12 education for 12 years, starting as a middle school language arts teacher and progressing to become a principal and then a principal coach. CourseMojo recruits people who not only have worked in education but have progressed to that mentor level to ensure they have the experience necessary to assist teachers and school leaders, Evans said.<\/p>\n
Evans said she was so skeptical of ed tech during her teaching career that she imagines former colleagues would be surprised to see her working for CourseMojo. However, she feels the company\u2019s level of collaboration with educators breaks the pattern of technology companies dropping new tools into schools and saying \u201cgood luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be listening. You have to be watching,\u201d Evans said. \u201cYou have to be responding to feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company is developing curriculum for seventh and eighth grade. Melissa Smith, executive director of learning and teaching for the Allentown School District, said the district is still working with the school board to determine how it might expand CourseMojo usage.<\/p>\n
CourseMojo lessons use content that comes directly from the district\u2019s chosen curriculum, rather than being a supplementary resource, Smith said, which gives the tool an edge over other digital learning options.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of convenience to it, honestly,\u201d said Trexler language arts teacher Richie Ares. He likes the tool so much he\u2019s been saving CourseMojo lesson plans just in case it ever goes away.<\/p>\n
The version of CourseMojo he\u2019s using now looks completely different than what he started with in September, Ares said.<\/p>\n
The company has been responsive to feedback about particular questions that students find tricky, Ares said, adding that he also appreciates a new function that suggests students who might need a conference with the teacher.<\/p>\n
As Ares used CourseMojo to guide students through a reading comprehension lesson centered on the concept of \u201cbeing a trailblazer,\u201d he would periodically stop the room and talk through common misconceptions the chatbot had identified.<\/p>\n
For example, CourseMojo indicated that many students were confusing \u201cbeing a trailblazer\u201d with \u201cbeing skilled,\u201d so Ares reiterated with students that trailblazing characters are innovators.<\/p>\n
The software allows teachers to pause all students\u2019 screens. They can also track individual responses, with colored dots indicating correct versus partially correct answers.<\/p>\n
Teachers also can view how many times each student attempted a question and see why partially correct answers were flagged.<\/p>\n
In addition to tracking what might be causing students to struggle, Ares said he likes to take a look at answers the software highlights as particularly strong and worth sharing out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s only improved, which is really cool,\u201d Ares said of the CourseMojo interface.<\/p>\n
Bichovsky said she\u2019s always been a \u201chighly interactive\u201d teacher and that she trusts CourseMojo to actively engage the class while she selects students for more in-depth discussions.<\/p>\n
While there is always room for improvement, the chatbot has already come a long way in its usefulness, she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m constantly reminding myself this is year one with this,\u201d Bichovsky said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allentown sixth-graders are experimenting with an artificial-intelligence-powered program that one student called \u201cbasically a teacher online,\u201d and educators…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[119,153,155,154,227,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":["post-137261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allentown","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-education","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}