An App to Improve Writing Skills by Israeli Start-Up

Oct. 29, 2012 - PRLog -- The importance of knowing how to write well is now a hot issue among US educators and policy makers after the writing revolution in New Dorp High School (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/), which transformed a failing school to an academic success just by teaching students how to write. Schools in the US and around the world are now encouraged to find new ways to improve their students’ writing skills.

Skills and Knowledge (http://www.skills-and-knowledge.com/) (S&K), a start-up company from Tel-Aviv and the developer of sCoolWork (http://www.scoolwork.com/), may have a “cool” tool for students who wish to write better, and get better grades, after issuing a major, feature-rich update for its Pre-Release version. With the introduction of essay templates, sCoolWork now guides users through the preparation process of several major types of essays (and more to come in the Release version). Complete with automated MLA/ APA/ Chicago support, in-place resource searching, auto-generation of bibliography and more goodies – the company is another step closer to its website promise: "A+ work in half the time".

“There is an understanding among educators that there’s a strong link between a student’s ability to write well to his or her academic achievement”, says Shachar Tal, S&K Co-Founder and VP Marketing, “so sCoolWork’s benefit is in two aspects: first, the student improves her grade on that specific essay she had done with sCoolWork, while saving time, but in addition she learn how to write better with the app, and this affects her entire academic achievement, now and in the future.”

But would teachers agree to an app which seemingly shortcuts the students’ way to a better grade?

After a round of debates with Education’s finest - teachers, media persons, educators and opinion leaders, the answer is “Yes”. sCoolWork was chosen as a project that “Will Change The Classroom (http://www.fractuslearning.com/2012/08/01/indiegogo-campa...)” by Fractus Learning’s Kirsten Winkler; Jeffrey Bradbury from TeacherCast.com mentioned that he wished he had had sCoolWork when he was a kid (http://podcast.teachercast.net/app-spotlight-scoolwork/), while the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared it “highly innovative (http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/InnovativeIsrael/Improving-grad...)”.

This, in addition to the positive feedback S&K received while sponsoring the #140edu (http://140edu.com/) event headed by Jeff Pulver and Chris Lehmann last August.

“The numbers are astounding”, says Alex Dayan, sCoolWork Founder and CEO, “according to the last Nation’s Report Card, only 1% of all US 12th-graders are able to write a sophisticated, well-organized essay. Now they have a simple tool to improve their skills in sCoolWork. Teachers also understand that and are very interested in how we can help.”

sCoolWork is now offered free as a pre-release. The official sCoolWork release will cost around $40-$80 per year, which is “less than the price of 1 session of private tutoring, but with a much stronger benefit. Students, educators and parents should all at least take a peek at sCoolWork and I believe they would be pleasantly surprised”, says Tal.