Enter CheckMark
One of my favorite things to do at an EdTechTeam Summit is listening to teachers. I’ve found that the more I listen the more I hear about certain pain points teachers encounter in the classroom. Several months ago, a teacher mentioned having difficulties creating an efficient workflow to provide students feedback on their writing in Google Docs. This teacher uses Google Classroom heavily and provides students writing prompts by way of Classroom’s ability to send students their own copy of a doc.
The trouble came in when she needed to help her students through the process by providing rich feedback. She spent hours highlighting text, clicking the comment button, and entering feedback. She sheepishly told me she had reverted to having students print and turn in their work because marking with a red pen was simply way more efficient. I appreciated her honesty and at the same time, knew there had to be a better way.
Enter CheckMark.
CheckMark by EdTechTeam is a brand new Chrome extension designed to give teachers the ability to provide students feedback quickly and easily. When a teacher highlights text in Google Docs, an overlay pops up with quick shortcuts to frequently-added comments such as “Spelling” or “Check Punctuation”, or “Evidence needed”. CheckMark has both comments related to grammar as well as concepts, citations, and more.
Find out more (and install!) CheckMark at http://www.checkmarkclass.com
CheckMark is one of several new extensions that are on tap, so keep your eyes on this blog and on my Twitter account (@crafty184). Do you have the next idea for an extension we should build? Reach out and let me know, and maybe your idea will be our next one.
Dr. Christopher Craft is an award-winning educator and speaker based in South Carolina and the Executive Director of Innovation for EdTechTeam. As a classroom teacher, he has been recognized both locally and nationally for innovative teaching with technology. Most recently he won the Belk Service Learning Challenge Grand Prize for his work with 3D-printed prosthetics for children. Dr. Craft was also asked to visit the White House and meet with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Dr. Jill Biden for a dialogue on the current state and future of education. He was named to the National School Board Association’s “20 to Watch” and one of the prestigious “20 under 40” in South Carolina. He has a B.A. in Spanish, a M.Ed in Educational Technology, and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Research from the University of South Carolina, and is Nationally Board Certified. Chris is a Google Certified Innovator, a Google in Education Trainer, and was recently accepted to be an Apple Distinguished Educator. Find out more about Dr. Craft at www.christophercraft.com or follow him on Twitter @crafty184.
For more relevant tools and extensions, you should check out my new book, The Top 50 Chrome Extensions for the Classroom, now available on Amazon!
Angela White
October 25, 2017 @ 3:23 am
Just added CheckMark which will be very useful. What would be great is for teachers to have the ability to add own customised comments relating to the type, style or context of writing.
Chris Craft
November 16, 2017 @ 9:51 am
Hi Angela! I can’t confirm or deny this, but there may or may not be something pretty amazing coming out in the new year. Stay tuned! 🙂
Elizabeth Rapp
October 25, 2017 @ 11:32 am
CHIRS!!!! YES!
I swear you have described a conversation I with an EdTech person (possibly you) had at the Homer Glen, IL summit a couple of years ago. THANK YOU. I will use this new extention CheckMark with gratitude!
This seems great; can’t wait to try it out!
Yelena Janumyan
October 27, 2017 @ 9:01 am
Hi Chris, thank you so much for this time saving tool. Is it possible to add my own comments to the comment bank?
Chris Craft
November 16, 2017 @ 9:51 am
Hi Yelena,
Stay tuned, because there may or may not be something you’ll like coming out in the new year. 🙂
Molly Wetmore
November 6, 2017 @ 6:09 am
I upload my docs from google classroom with doctopus so that I can easily flow through my students’ documents and attach the Goobric on top. I love the idea of this document, but it appears to not work if I’m using Doctopus. Help!
I’m really excited to try this!
Chris Craft
November 16, 2017 @ 9:52 am
Hi Molly.
Unfortunately CheckMark doesn’t work with Goobric. It has to do with the way Goobric displays Google Docs that is incompatible with CheckMark. 🙁
Tammy Reynolds
May 17, 2018 @ 11:46 am
Any idea why CheckMark displays the keyboard and a comment box; but the comment box remains blank when I editing my student’s google slides?
Chris Craft
May 18, 2018 @ 8:34 am
Hi Tammy,
Can you see if toggling off Docs screen reader support (command option Z on Mac) helps?
Chris
Amy Nichols
May 31, 2018 @ 5:00 pm
I cannot get it to toggle off of slides either. Makes me want to delete a supper handy tool.
Chris Craft
June 12, 2018 @ 6:02 am
Hi Amy,
I am sending you an email right now, let’s see if we can figure this out.
Thanks,
Chris
Tristan Kemp
June 12, 2018 @ 1:48 am
Hi,
I am having a similar issue, the comments don’t appear when using slides. Works great in Docs though. I tried toggling screen reader support on and off but it made no difference.
Thanks
Tristan
Chris Craft
June 12, 2018 @ 6:02 am
Hi Tristan,
I’ll email you and see if we can figure out why that’s happening.
Thanks,
Chris
Trish Brajkovich
July 13, 2018 @ 3:37 pm
I’m a New Zealand teacher who has been teaching in a Collaborative 1-1 Chromebook environment for the last five years. Other teachers describe me as anal because I’m real picky about punctuation and grammar. Prior to switching to Chromebooks we used a feedback/commenting system based on 3 colours of highlighting and handwritten comments. We have been struggling since then to find anything better with which to replace it. I really like CheckMark because you can customise it by creating your own comments. It doesn’t take long to get used to it but the programme is a little erratic. Sometimes the little blue boxes appear when you click and sometimes you have to re-click and wait. CheckMark is not that effective either when you have a lot of comments to make because you can’t see which comment relates to which error. Maybe each comment needs a number and the number gets inserted where you highlight the error in the text???
Chris Craft
July 16, 2018 @ 8:31 am
Hi Trish,
Thanks for reaching out. We’re working on an updated version of CheckMark that will fix this bug. Stay tuned to our Facebook page for details – https://www.facebook.com/edtechteamproductdev/
Chris
Annie Krespil
November 3, 2018 @ 3:38 pm
I apologize if you answered this above. Does checkmark work with Google Classroom? I’m having difficulty making them cooperate.
Chris Craft
November 4, 2018 @ 3:56 am
CheckMark works in Google Docs and Slides. So as long as you’re opening Docs or Slides, it doesn’t matter whether that’s from the Drive interface or from Classroom. So, yes, it works with Classroom. Reach out to me if you need any help! 🙂