Wikipedia Draft:Writer's Toolbox Company Profile

Writer’s Toolbox is an online writing program powered by artificial intelligence, used by schools across Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and South East Asia to improve student writing outcomes.

Writer’s Toolbox is cloud-based and the programme provides the student with an interactive environment where their writing skills are both reinforced and extended. Students can practice writing techniques they learn in class and gauge and monitor their own progress. The key advantage of this purpose-built educational writing tool is feedback. Artificial Intelligence built into the tool reads student work and provides individualised feedback according to the student’s age and ability level. What’s more, the tool plots a learning journey for each student so that their writing skill level and cognitive processing skills around writing advance.

Writer’s Toolbox is available for purchase for schools and personal use at home.

With offices in Auckland and Brisbane, Writer's Toolbox works with over 170 schools helping teachers and students improve writing outcomes. Every day of the week—from Townsville to central Brisbane to New Zealand’s deep south, Writer's Toolbox coaches are busy in schools delivering workshops and coaching to lift teacher capability and student results.

History
Writer’s Toolbox was founded in Auckland, New Zealand, by Dr Ian Hunter in 2011. Concerned about falling writing standards in his university students, Dr Hunter began a 25 year research project to develop a writing system that every student could master. It was originally called Write that Essay, named after the book Dr Hunter wrote of the same title. But over the years, the company has expanded to a system that teaches every aspect of writing development from Year 1 to the final years of high school, it just made sense to adopt a name—Writer's Toolbox—that better represented what the company actually does.

Dr Hunter founded Writer's Toolbox on two fundamental beliefs: that every student can be taught to write well—and grasp the life possibilities they deserve. And that the teacher is the dynamic force for change in the classroom. Teaching writing is every teacher’s responsibility.

St Paul’s Collegiate became the first school in the world to sign up to Writer’s Toolbox based on Dr Hunter’s pencil drawings in 2013. In 2014, version 2 of the programme was released with additional features including Freewriter.

In 2015, upwards of 30,000 students were using Writer’s Toolbox in schools. Within the same year, we saw the first adoption of Writer’s Toolbox by overseas schools and the launch of diagnostic writing tests (CSI) online.

Work commenced on Writer’s Toolbox to become the first AI-driven educational writing programme started in 2017.

2020 was a big year for new feature launches. Sentence Train, module activities, in-depth school performance data, marking tool, main dashboard, dynamic paragraph and sentence scaffolding, student goal setting and many more features were introduced to Writer’s Toolbox.

In 2021, Writer’s Toolbox was a finalist at the New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards for “Best User Experience” and made the Honours List at the 2021 Webby Awards (international ‘Best of the Internet’ awards). Towards the end of 2021, the company rebranded to Writer’s Toolbox to better represent what the product offers.

In 2022, Writer’s Toolbox was again, a finalist for the “Most Innovative Hi-Tech Creative Technology Solution” at the New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards. This award category recognises the genuinely innovative hi-tech products that use creative content or interactive design. What began in 2011 as an online writing tool has developed into the world’s most advanced educational writing tool. Students seamlessly complete work remotely in a fully-scaffolded online world. Easy to use interfaces deliver content-rich tasks across any written subject. No other writing programme in the world takes the student from Year 3 to their final senior year in an explicit, structured program of incremental skill development.

Writer’s Toolbox software
Writer’s Toolbox provides instant feedback on writing quality, instructional video, personalised learning journeys, Daily Writing Challenges, writing and reading comprehension activities, quizzes, and detailed reporting features to track writing progress.

Diagnostic writing test
The Composition Skills Index (CSI) is a scientific writing diagnostic test to identify key writing strengths and weaknesses across your school. The CSI is one of the few educational diagnostic tests that can be used to analyse your student writing ability from Year 3 to Year 13. Instead of waiting for external exam results, the CSI test offers a unique view into your student writing capability. The diagnostic test is online and lasts 20 minutes. The diagnostic test analyses student writing output, sentence structures and style (articulation/fluency), technical strength (spelling, capitalisation, punctuation), structural strength (coherence, development, repetition), and overall composition ability (precision, composite measures). Schools receive reports on student’s writing within three weeks. Reports pinpoint suggested areas of improvement—both for the cohort of students tested and for the individual student. Information produced from the CSI test can be used to assess value add and for school targets and goals.

Teacher writing conference
Writer’s Toolbox hosts 2-day writing conferences either on ZOOM or in-person to registered teachers in New Zealand and Australia. All attendees are provided complimentary access to Writer’s Toolbox during the two day period and can expect to learn practical strategies to improve writing results in the classroom. The first conference took place in 2019, and received massive success. Since then, more than 500 registered teachers have attended the conference.

Classroom resources
Writer’s Toolbox sells cross-curriculum resources for teachers to use with their students in the classroom. From posters and writing journals to books to interactive, magnetic train sets, the classroom resources are designed to improve student writing and facilitate traditional classroom teaching.