Vantage Learning Extends MY Access!™ Writing Program With Alignment of 25 Writing Prompts to Open Court Reading™
Furthering integration of reading and writing for upper elementary students, MY Access! now includes thematic prompts aligned to the Open Court scope and sequence
Newtown, PA, April 11, 2005 - Vantage Learning (www.vantagelearning.com), the world's leading provider of online essay scoring technologies, today announced the alignment of 25 writing prompts as part of the prompt library for its latest version of MY Access!™ online instructional writing program. These prompts are aligned by level and thematic unit, to the scope and sequence of SRA/Open Court Reading™, a highly popular and core reading program widely adopted by school districts for both instructional and intervention reading strategies.MY Access! is a web-based writing environment that rapidly scores essays with accuracy greater than human expert scorers, and provides immediate diagnostic feedback to engage and motivate students to write more and improve their composition skills. This latest enhancement provides further integration of the reading and writing process for both students and teachers. MY Access! is based on Vantage Learning's IntelliMetric® engine, which uses a rich blend of artificial intelligence (AI) and the digitization of human expertise to accurately assess a student's competency of writing. IntelliMetric is widely recognized as the most accurate system for automated essay scoring, and is used in education including college readiness and placement testing, high stakes state tests, and in districts for instructional support.
"Administrators can now select and assign writing prompts that are aligned to Open Court Reading, providing an opportunity for students to further integrate reading and writing, and practice more frequently," commented Harry Barfoot, VP of Sales of Marketing of Vantage Learning. "Teachers can focus on specific strengths and weaknesses, by domain. The highly prescriptive feedback and support used to develop student writing skills are cornerstones in achieving adequate yearly progress (AYP) in writing."
"Vantage Learning continues to listen to educators in order to help them meet the needs of their schools and districts," said Barfoot. "Feedback from educators was that providing specific aligned writing prompts with adopted reading programs will help students integrate reading and writing more effectively. Our goal through this extension is to meet the needs of educators."
Incorporating these new writing prompts extends the value of MY Access!, as well as the adopted reading program. For example, if an upper elementary student is using Open Court Reading, and the focus of the unit is cooperation and competition or perseverance, MY Access! will assign an appropriate writing prompt aligned to this unit. In addition, this provides a chance for students to enhance their vocabulary, spelling, and other skills taught within the program. MY Access! contains rich multi-lingual dictionaries, thesauruses, word banks, spelling and grammar checkers, writing editors, tutoring, and other powerful tools to assist students. Students can write and revise while their interest in the subject is high. Moreover, teachers can select that ELL students receive prescriptive feedback in their native language, as well as tips on how to improve their English writing skills.
With the MY Access! program, students maintain their work in an online portfolio that contains their initial draft, evaluation scores, and subsequent revisions. Similarly, teachers can review any individual student's portfolio, provide comments, and track the overall class portfolio to manage writing instruction.
Vantage Learning continues to accelerate the prompt development process for MY Access! and the alignment process for a number of core reading programs that are widely adopted by school districts. This includes upper elementary, middle, and high school writing prompts.
About Vantage Learning
Vantage Learning (www.vantagelearning.com), an affiliate of Vantage Laboratories and the leading provider of online assessment and automated essay scoring, developed IntelliMetric® to meet the needs of business, education, and government agencies needing a comprehensive Internet-based test authoring, delivery, scoring and reporting platform. IntelliMetric administers and scores responses to open-ended questions over the Internet using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology. An individual can enter a response to a question posed, submit the response, and receive an immediate score with feedback within seconds.
Most recently, Vantage Learning's MY Access! won the 2004 Award of Excellence from Technology and Learning Magazine, and Eduventures selected Vantage Learning as one of the eight most innovative educational technology companies. In addition, MY Access! was included in Technology and Learning Magazine's Top 10 Smart Technologies for Schools in 2002, and is a Codie Awards finalist three years in a row. Vantage Learning provides services in all 50 states including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, Oregon, and Texas and provides services to educational leaders such as The College Board, ACT, Harcourt Assessment, Inc., CTB/McGraw Hill and Thomson Learning, and industry giants such as Microsoft, Apple Computer, AOL, and Sun Microsystems.
Open Court Reading is a registered trademark of SRA, a division of the McGraw-Hill Companies. Use of the Open Court™ logo should not be construed as an endorsement nor is it meant to imply any relationship between Vantage and SRA/MG. Vantage, Vantage MY Access!™, SRA/MG and Open Court™ are not affiliated in any way nor does SRA/MG or Open Court™ in any way sponsor Vantage MY Access!™.