Leveraging their laptop power, the Hacienda La Puente School District in California plans to spend nearly half a million dollars for an online writing tool that gives instant feedback to students preparing for state standards tests.

The program, My Access, allows students to submit parts of an essay or the whole thing on the Internet. The essays are then scored on a four-point or six-point rubric, which includes spelling, punctuation, language use and organization. With a one-to-one laptop program in place already and plans to extend the laptop program to earlier grades, the district is expanding use of the software to more than 13, 500 students in grades five through 12.

"We were limited before because some teachers had to wait for a laptop cart or take the class to the computer lab," explains Shannon Ladwig, an English and social-science teacher at Cedar Lane Middle School. She finds the tutoring aspect of the software most appealing.

According to the local newspaper, “Officials also attributed higher scores from several middle schools - some posting an increase of nearly 50 percent - on the writing portion of the 2007 California Standards Test to the program.”

Source : San Gabriel Valley Tribune.