Writing Tools: PaperRater and NoRedInk

Here are two tools you may want to use with your writing students. They've gotten good reviews. I've looked at them a little bit, and they look very promising.

1. PaperRater -- This is a free plagiarism checker. Think of it as a free Turnitin. It provides an originality grade, lists sources that have identical content and gives a list of potentially plagiarized parts. 

PaperRater also provides writing analysis tools that are similar to those available in Turnitin (and maybe a little better). These tools are not available in Schoology. PaperRater also lets students share reports to their teacher with a teacher code. The teacher gets a really nice table of all the students' scores in each category. It also allows students to print a summary which could be uploaded to Schoology, and it does writing analytics and gives students a grade/report. 

Use this link to get the free school premium version: http://f9.PaperRater.com/  Students should use this link too.

Here's a 1.5 minute video of how it works.

2.  NoRedInk -- This is basically a self-paced, differentiated grammar and writing course. You can have students take a diagnostic test to determine their level. Then students work through interactive lessons with immediate feedback. There is even a teacher section where you can track student progress and proficiency. If you sign up for the free teacher version, there is a very good 2 minute overview video to give you a better idea of what this is like.