Hourglasses are deceiving. Turning the glass doesn’t mean we get that time extended. Once it’s poured through the aperture, there is no reclaiming those ‘days of our lives’.
Let’s be honest — the math is daunting. Five minutes of essay commentary time per student translates to between two and three hours per class section. Multiplying by class sections and by the number of writing assignments quickly makes the task insurmountable.
With CheckMark, response time is shaved to a minimum without impacting the content to students. Sure, it doesn’t make sense that you can do the same thing in much less time, but that’s the beauty of this Google Chrome extension. For teachers who provide feedback comments to students in Google Docs, CheckMark is priceless.
Examine the screenshot below. In the highlighted portion, a student has misspelled a word. Once upon a time, I would have to click the + icon to comment, then type my response, then click “comment”. That’s sixteen keystrokes in three locations on the screen…just for one misspelled word. With CheckMark, a double-click to highlight and a tap of the S in the top row of the pop-up keyboard is all I need to do the same exact thing.
This can be something as simple as the words “Check spelling” or as detailed as you want to make it. The pop-up keyboard can be customized for your content-specific needs. For example, in the image above, I have added the third row of keys for correcting MLA formatting, page headers, document headers, extra spacing, double-spacing, and missing titles. Rubric language could also be coded into CheckMark to respond to customary rubric components.
The Google Chrome extension is an amazing time-saver for teachers. All you need to do to get started is go to chrome.google.com and click on the Extensions tab, then type CheckMark in the search box, followed by a quick click on the blue “Add to Chrome” button. It will take a little time to get accustomed to what each of the shortcut keys triggers as a comment, but they are quite logical (S-spelling; RO-run-on sentence). You’re up and running that quickly.
The best part is that you will be providing more substantive feedback to students in a narrative platform than you were offering previously. It’s quick and easy to make those comments and the student writing gets the attention it needs without sapping every available moment of prep time.
Teacher Takeaways
With this efficient time-saving extension, teachers can produce more narrative feedback on student writing and guide more improvements in less than half the time.
EmpowerED 