Innovation Blog

EduTech from a Teacher-Coder: Engagement Without the Game

How to create meaningful, real-time engagement with a workflow that’s simple and actually usable in class

Whether you teach remotely like I do or are working in-person, you know that student engagement in the lesson is a paramount concern. It is important that students not be passive recipients very often or for long periods.

Gamification enthusiasts and coders who have not taught middle school seem to often believe that the answer is to make studying something more like an XBox adventure. Add music, competition, points and tokens and they will learn without even knowing it!

But I want my students’ cognitive load carrying the lesson, not the rules of the game or the points they earned or the banter with the other team. To this end, I developed “live session” interactive versions of many of the Innovation apps.

The workflow goes like this: the instructor starts a host instance of the activity, copies a special participation link and send it to students, who then get a screen for interacting. Live sessions turn the activity into an interactive activity that fosters engagement through inquiry, curiosity, discussion, debate, reinforcement.

I use the TestApp and the Étude live sessions to debrief after a test or to review for tests. the teacher screen displays the questions one at a time. The teacher host opens the session to responses and closes after the time. Student responses are displayed anonymously for debriefing.

“Engagement isn’t just activity—it’s thinking.”

I use the Grammar app live session in my French classes. I can display the prompt to the screen, open for student responses, they then submit their work and I can display anonymously for debriefing. This is exactly the same as the assignment, just displayed in a different interactive form.

The Media powerpoint application I use most often for teaching social studies and for my advanced French courses where I am delivering content. This is a very powerful and flexible application that will be discussed in detail in a later post. Suffice it to say for now that the media live sessions have all the tools we need to get brief and extended student replies and reactions, from short answer to multiple-choice and even a selection of emojis!

One of my students remarked that the live sessions were kind of a boring Kahoot! I laughed and replied that was the intention! No points, music, sound effects, rankings, scores, goofy animations. The focus is on the lesson. If anything is to be entertaining, it’s going to be me!

EduTech from a Teacher-Coder: Restoring the Teacher’s Line of Sight

For about a decade, classroom technology quietly broke something important.

Teachers lost their line of sight into student work.

I don’t mean theory—I mean the simple ability to know what students are actually doing.

Some call this “command and control,” but that misses the point.

What teachers actually need is simple: the ability to know what students are doing, in real time, so they can guide and support them.

We need the old fashioned line-of-sight supervision and guidance that instructors maintained in effective classrooms in the ages before every student got a ChromeBook with a pile of office productivity software. I knew exactly what my students were doing as I circulated the classroom. I could look over their shoulder and contribute advice to a forming essay. I could redirect students who found something off-task more interesting to do. I could ensure with some reliability that no cheat sheets were being used on tests and that students were doing their own work. I was able to keep the class workflow moving so we didn’t fall behind with delays and procrastination.

Then came ChromeBooks whose screens we could not see or were easily hidden. With that came office productivity tools designed for mature adults in paying jobs who were motivated for the most part to get their work done. Ironically, tools designed for productive adults often made classrooms less productive.

There are a number of expensive software on the market now for monitoring student screens. At my last district, we had a product that let us monitor everyone’s tabs. But I really don’t think my own workflow is much improved by surveilling a dozen tiny screencasts.

I’m retired now and I teach remotely a few hours a day. I need more than ever to know know exactly what my students are doing. It is important to maintain the pace of the lesson and to ensure assessment integrity. This post’s “EduTech from a Teacher-Coder” is the monitors and proctors in all of Innovation’s apps.

Monitor

Every application at Innovation comes with a monitor to display in real time how students are progressing on their task. The test monitor shows what question students are on and even has a messaging feature so I can quietly post notifications to students in their test. The writing app monitor displays the current essay for each student, the number of words, their use of any AI licenses. Vocabulary quiz, sorting app, the “KnowWhere” map study, cause and effect study, reading comprehension, cloze app, ordered list, forum, even the AI chat application can display student progress and often their work product. The monitors all hide the student names as an option so that teachers can display the monitor on shared screen or in front of the classroom as a way to remind everyone to keep pace.

Monitors let teachers see the correct responses for many activities. The monitor returns an important feature of command and control of the classroom: I need to know exactly what they are doing.

Proctor

The proctoring feature is extensive throughout all of the activities. Proctor is an after-the-fact kind of analysis and proctors come with AI interpretation and summary features. When did they start the app? How long did they spend on each question? Did they leave the screen? Paste in any text? Try to right-click and use a spellchecker or AI assistant not licensed?

Common thoughts on giving assessments in remote teaching are that it is not reliable. But if there is a strong AI-assisted proctor running during the assessment and there is an adult supervising in the room, we can be assured of an assessment result as reliable as old fashioned in-person classes.

Teacher Command and Control Supports Successful Student Outcomes

When the proper guardrails are in place, guardrails we have always had in teaching, then we can be more assured of delivering the kind of high quality, effective training that leads to student success. A dozen applications at Innovation include monitoring and they all include proctoring.

For years, we handed students powerful tools…
and took away the teacher’s ability to see how they were being used.

That was the mistake and now we’re correcting it.

A Better Way to Assign Short Student Presentations Across the Curriculum

When I started teaching in 1991, the highest level of technology in my class was my pocket calculator. Supervision was a matter of circulating the room to make sure students were engaged.

When technology became part of our schoolrooms, we had to surrender a lot of the supervision that we used to have. Students could now hide behind ChromeBooks or click away quickly when we walk by and easily become off-task and disengaged. The main reason for this was that the first technology solutions were designed for offices, not for classrooms. We thought this was a great idea, since many students would one day in the workforce be using such applications.

We were wrong about that.

Software designed for adults, for office workers and designers, is not appropriate for most classroom settings simply because it does not have the guardrails and monitoring that we used to have in pre-EdTech days.

Yes, we worked around it. We added internet filters, screen monitoring software, and the like. But that is not the same as having direct observation of our students and control over their workflows.

Many efforts to create truly classroom-friendly EdTech have focused on “gamifying” learning. Developers believed in the old trope that you could trick them into learning if they were having fun. Don’t get me started on that…

The problem I wanted to address in this post occurred in a remote AP French class I was teaching. The remote platform was Canvas. The assignment was to produce a 2-minute video presentation in French, mostly improvised, to model how the task was set up on the AP exam. The students dutifully uploaded their little videos to Canvas and it was obvious that they were reading prepared scripts and they had either an AI either do the work or correct the work. I knew from class sessions that they were not capable of that level of language proficiency and anyone watching could see they were reading.

How does one rationalize giving a high stakes grade for that?

EduTech Solution from a Teacher-Coder

Presto is an application at the Innovation platform that resolves the issue of students having AI-generated presentations and scripts without real learning or synthesis. While originally devised as an evaluation tool for world language learners, it is extremely effective in content area classes like social studies.

Students log in and are redirected to the assessment. After setting their camera and mic and starting the camera, the task begins. Only now can they see the prompts. There is a strict timer and an AI-enhanced proctor records their engagement and activity on the page. There is a time limit. Once started, they need to finish or they must be readmitted by the teacher. This prevents viewing the prompts and then starting again after research.

The proctor provides the supervision we often lack in modern education software. The time limit and the coordination of camera activation with prompt visibility prevent cheating very effectively.

“AI has made scripted assignments meaningless. Presto measures thinking instead.”

More importantly, the structure encourages authentic thinking. Students must interpret the prompts and organize their ideas in real time rather than relying on pre-written scripts. Instead of reading polished AI-generated text, they must explain ideas in their own words within a clear time limit.

For teachers, this makes evaluation more meaningful: the focus shifts from detecting AI assistance to assessing a student’s ability to communicate understanding.

Students must interpret the prompts and organize their ideas in real time. Instead of reading polished AI-generated text, they explain ideas in their own words within a clear time limit.

For teachers, this changes the evaluation process completely. Instead of trying to determine whether a script was written by the student or by an AI assistant, we can focus on what actually matters: a student’s ability to communicate understanding.

And that was the goal all along.

The Growth Bonus: Rewarding Improvement While Maintaining Academic Standards

Two students submit essays that both receive a score of 75.

At first glance, their performance appears identical. But the stories behind those two scores may be very different. One student might have scored a 74 on the previous assignment—essentially maintaining the same level of work. Another might have improved dramatically from a 60.

In both cases the essays themselves may be similar in quality. Yet one student clearly demonstrated substantial learning along the way.

This raises an interesting question for teachers: should grades reflect only the current piece of work, or should they also recognize improvement over time?

In many courses, particularly those that emphasize writing and analytical thinking, improvement is an important part of the learning process. Students revise strategies, incorporate feedback, and gradually strengthen their arguments and use of evidence.

To recognize that progress without distorting the meaning of grades, some assignments may include what we call a growth bonus.

The idea is simple: meaningful improvement deserves recognition—but the quality of the current work must still matter most.

How the Growth Bonus Works

The growth bonus uses a mathematical rule that compares the current score with a previous comparable assignment.

Three values are involved:

R – the raw score on the current assignment
B – the score from a previous assignment
T – a readiness target representing strong course-level work (often around 82)

The adjusted score is calculated as:

Adjusted = max(R, R + 0.8 × max(0, R − B) − 0.2 × max(0, T − R))

In plain language, the formula does three things at the same time.

First, it rewards improvement from the previous assignment. If a student improves by ten points, most of that improvement is reflected in the adjustment.

Second, it moderates extremely large score jumps when the current essay is still below the level expected for the course. This keeps the adjustment from turning a developing essay into a top-tier score.

Finally—and importantly—the formula guarantees that the adjusted score can never be lower than the original score.

The growth bonus can help a score. It cannot hurt it.

A Quick Example

Suppose a student scored 61 on a previous essay and 72 on the current one.

The improvement is:

72 − 61 = 11

Most of that improvement is rewarded:

0.8 × 11 = 8.8

Because the essay is still somewhat below the readiness target of 82, a small moderating adjustment is applied:

0.2 × (82 − 72) = 2

The adjusted score becomes:

72 + 8.8 − 2 = 78.8

The student’s improvement is recognized, but the final score still reflects the level of the current work.

What Happens If the Score Declines?

If the new score is lower than the previous one, the improvement term becomes zero. In theory the formula could produce a slightly lower number—but the rule

max(R, …)

ensures that the final score never drops below the original score.

In practice, this simply means the raw score stands as it is.

Why Not Just Use Standardization?

This approach adjusts scores based on the statistical distribution of scores in the class.

A simplified version of the formula looks like this:

Standardized score = ((R − μ) / σ) × s + m

Here:

R is the raw score,
μ is the class average,
σ is the standard deviation,
and the constants s and m determine the new spread and average of the scores.

Standardization can be useful when a test turns out to be unusually difficult or unusually easy. However, it measures performance relative to the class rather than improvement over time.

In some cases it can also produce surprisingly large adjustments. A raw score in the low seventies might become a ninety simply because the class average was low.

The growth bonus approach focuses instead on learning progress—recognizing students who improve while still keeping grades tied closely to the quality of the work itself.

Why the Readiness Target Matters

The readiness target used in the formula—often around 82—represents the level of performance typically associated with strong work on AP-style writing rubrics.

It is not a passing threshold or a minimum expectation. Instead, it serves as a reference point that helps keep score adjustments realistic.

Students who are already writing at a strong level will see modest adjustments. Students who are improving rapidly will see more noticeable ones.

The Larger Goal

Ultimately, the purpose of the growth bonus is not to inflate grades. It is to encourage the kinds of behaviors that lead to real academic progress: revising writing strategies, strengthening arguments, integrating evidence more effectively, and improving clarity and precision of language.

Grades should communicate meaningful information about learning. They should reflect both where a student stands today and how far that student has come.

The growth bonus is one way of recognizing both.

The Classroom Is Not a Game (and Not an Office Either)

Though retired, I still teach a few courses a day remotely. This week, I attended a professional development meeting for one of the companies for whom I teach, where a presenter used a popular interactive presenting app. The presentation itself was excellent. The app, however, was another matter entirely.

I will grant that, as a developer of educational technology myself, I am a harsh critic. But I suspect even the hundred and fifty or so others on that Zoom call would agree. The app was heavily gamified, filled with sound effects and floating reaction emojis designed to promote “engagement.” Each emoji triggered a popping bubble sound as it drifted across the screen. Participants continued clicking them even after being asked to stop, while the presenter was attempting to explain how to construct a complex AI prompt. The result was not engagement, but distraction.

My earlier posts have noted my long-standing skepticism of gamification. Its promoters often cling to the old trope that if students are having fun, they will not even realize they are learning. Forgive me for sounding like the old fogey that I am, but that idea has always struck me as pedagogically misguided. I want students to know they are learning. More importantly, I want them to learn how to guide and regulate their own learning. Attention should be directed toward the material, not toward points, sounds, or game mechanics.

If you explore the Innovation platform, you will notice that it is intentionally plain. Interactive tools include emoji responses, but they are subtle, silent, and easily disabled. This is by design. The platform reflects how I actually teach, rather than how a game designer imagines learning should feel.

Because most teachers are not developers, we often adapt software that was never designed for classrooms in the first place. We rely on office productivity tools or on educational software built by developer teams whose instincts lean more toward gaming than pedagogy. I occupy an unusual position as both teacher and developer, and I find great satisfaction in coding applications that behave the way a teacher actually needs them to behave.

The Classroom is Not the Office

Having taught since 1991, I have lived through the entire technological transformation of education. My first classroom had chalkboards and binders. My last, before retiring three years ago, had 1:1 student laptops and a SmartBoard. One persistent problem has been that much of our classroom software originated outside education, particularly in office environments.

When we placed laptops running word processors and spreadsheets in front of students, we gained powerful tools but lost a degree of visibility and supervision. In 1991, it was nearly impossible for a student to hide off-task behavior behind a notebook. In 2026, it may be a hidden browser tab. What was marketed as “real-world experience” often came at the cost of instructional control.

At Innovation, I aim to design learning spaces that originate in education rather than being imported from the office or the gaming world. Our writing tools include optional AI proctoring and live monitoring so instructors can observe student work in progress. Our assessment tools provide similar oversight, along with messaging features that allow teachers to guide, redirect, or support students in real time.

In short, the goal is not to make learning noisier or more entertaining. It is to make it more focused, more observable, and more teachable.

Good educational technology should not compete with the lesson for attention. It should support the teacher, clarify the task, and fade quietly into the background of learning.

After more than three decades in the classroom, I have come to believe that the best tools are not the loudest or the most entertaining, but the ones that respect how learning actually happens: through focus, guidance, and sustained attention. If our software cannot preserve those conditions, then no amount of animation, gamification, or sound effects will make up for what is lost.

Precision in Assessment: Why Standardization Outperforms the Traditional “Curve”

In secondary and post-secondary education, teachers often face a “measurement gap.” This occurs when a highly rigorous assessment—such as a mock professional exam or a complex technical project—yields raw scores that accurately reflect performance benchmarks but fail to align with the broader institutional grading scale.

To bridge this gap, many educators rely on a “curve.” However, traditional curving often lacks statistical validity. Standardization, specifically through the use of Z-scores, offers a more mathematically sound and equitable alternative.

The Limitations of Common “Curves”

The term “curve” is frequently applied to two common but flawed methods:

The Flat-Point Addition: Adding a set number of percentage points to every student. While “fair” in its uniformity, it does nothing to address the variance or “spread” of the scores.
The Ceiling Curve: Adjusting the highest score to 100% and shifting others accordingly. This makes the entire class’s grades dependent on a single outlier, which can lead to volatile and inconsistent results.

These methods are essentially “band-aids” that fail to account for the relative performance of the cohort.

The Logic of Standardization (Z-Scores)

Standardization treats a set of scores as a distribution. By converting raw scores into Z-scores, we determine exactly how many standard deviations a student’s performance sits above or below the group mean.

The formula for calculating a Z-score is: z = (x – μ) / σ (Where x is the raw score, μ is the mean, and σ is the standard deviation.)

Once we have the Z-score, we can “re-map” it onto a target distribution (such as a school’s historical GPA mean). This ensures that a student who performs at the 90th percentile on a difficult assessment is rewarded with a grade that reflects that 90th-percentile standing in the gradebook.

Why Standardization is the Professional Choice

Maintains Rubric Integrity: Educators can grade with extreme rigor against high-level standards without fear of destroying a student’s GPA. The raw feedback remains honest, while the gradebook remains fair.
Corrects for Assessment Difficulty: Not every test is of equal difficulty. Standardization automatically adjusts for a test that was “too hard” or “too easy” by focusing on the student’s relative mastery within the cohort.
Statistical Defensibility: If a grade is challenged, the educator can point to a transparent, mathematical process based on the class distribution rather than an arbitrary “bump” in points.

By adopting standardization, we move away from “adjusting numbers” and toward “aligning distributions.” This practice respects the data produced by the assessment while ensuring that the final grade accurately reflects a student’s standing within the academic environment.

Innovation 2.0

The few who read this may have seen the post a while back called “Sunset“in which I reflected on the difficulties and, well, failures I suppose of trying to develop an LMS as a small business without a huge bankroll for a coding team and marketing. In 2007 when I started this and made some money from my inventions, the internet was very different.

So then AI came along. There is plenty of material for blog posts on how this transforms my teaching (I still teach remotely part-time). The big effort for me was trying to devise ways to prevent or at least make difficult the inappropriate use of AI by my students. Interestingly, I turned to AI to do this.

Like my colleagues who did not just surrender to AI student work submissions, I first worked on changing how I designed my assignments. That only goes so far.

Next I rolled up my sleeves and started tweaking my own code in this platform which I use for teaching remotely. Things like timers, detailed logging and response of student activity in a browser, hiding things until time has passed, and eventually on to getting an API key from OpenAI so that I could add a button that would analyze the logged data from student interactions on the platform and understand likelihood of inappropriate usage.

Once I started tweaking my old code, I noticed increasingly that the AI I was using to correct it, making enhancement above my coding ability, was itself increasingly having trouble with old-fashioned and out of date coding practices in the Perl language. I asked it about this. It explained that the code base I had (which is admittedly 20+ years old) was out of date such that it would not support a moderate customer base. The database itself, holding the work of myself and customers some going back twenty years, had obsolete features beyond the scope of this post to explain. The work to re-code and update this was enormous and overwhelming. That’s when the “Sunset” blog was written.

But then I had a cool idea for an application. I needed a way to let my AP French students practice and be evaluated asynchronously for conversation skills. I wanted to write this in a modern way using up-to-date code base. I used AI to write it. I was not as proficient in PHP as I was in Perl. I was tired of coding and wanted to focus on curriculum development.

The result was smashing! And from there I kept building… Three months later, I have nearly completed Innovation 2.0. Wow. I have moved from coding myself to directing the AI to to the detailed coding. I am now the creative director, no longer consulting programming language manuals or searching stackoverflow.

What’s especially exciting for me is that the new software works exactly as I wish it to. And it’s all in one place! That was why I started coding 30 years ago anyway! I like to build and invent.

So in January I will be using innovation 2.0 with my own students to refine and debug it and then move customers over in February and start offering this platform publicly. There are great new apps I can offer, a fully-integrated AI support system with guardrails and controls, effective live monitoring and more!

Innovation Assessments LMS: Next-Gen Release

We’ve tightened core authentication: teachers and students can now connect Google Sign-In, making it easier to jump into any of the 12 apps (Étude, Test, Grammar, Writing, Word Study, Ordered List, Conversation, Chat, Forum, Media, Ventura, and the course hub) without managing multiple passwords.
Teachers get sharper control and visibility: My Students now links directly into a new Manage Enrolments matrix for one-click course assignments. Course pages display Canvas-style visibility badges so you can hide or reveal tasks instantly, and the student course view hides anything marked invisible. Submission dashboards in Étude, Test, Grammar, Conversation, Ordered List, and Writing now sort alphabetically and drop the developer-only raw JSON viewers, so grading workflows stay focused.
Live and asynchronous speaking tools are more authentic. Conversation tasks and upload workflows now coach students on cadence—natural rhythm, pauses, and intonation—plus we added an easy-to-copy student join link in Chat Monitor so hosts can share the live room with a single click. Chat’s monitor dashboard also highlights AI usage limits, host controls, and live transcripts for each room.
The LMS navigation feels smarter: “Login Preferences” is available to both teachers and students (with role-aware sidebars, help text, and instant Google linking), the teacher sidebar is scrollable and auto-hides developer tools unless you’re David Jones, and “Manage Rubrics” now supports copy-modify/delete operations with a single tap.
Media and forum workflows keep pace. Teachers can bulk-copy forums, toggle task visibility, and delete an entire forum plus its threads/posts with FK-safe cascading. The Create Task page has unified button styling, refreshed descriptions, and an updated “Coming Soon” panel (Survey, Audio Playlist, File on Server, Link to Webpage), making it easier to explain each element to staff.

App-by-App Highlights

Étude/Test/Grammar/Writing: Alphabetized submission rosters, lightweight UIs, AI license tracking in Grammar/Writing, and Google linking across all auth flows. Live tests record into test_task_student_responses, and we expose the schema dynamically via the updated inspect_schema.php.
Conversation (Record & Upload): Cadence coaching cards, Chromebook recording guides in the sidebar, admission logging, and Safari upload workflows that mirror the in-browser recorder.
Chat: Google Sign-In ready, live monitor with copyable join link, AI partner/peer modes, host controls (start/close, pair, reshuffle), and cadence-free text boxes (spellcheck disabled in chat and writ) to keep speech and writing authentic.
Forum: Manage Rubrics now clones/deletes as needed; forum visibility obeys course toggles; forum submissions keep their evaluation links; deleting a forum removes all threads/posts/AI usage.
Course Hub: Manage Enrolments grid, Canvas-style visibility icons, module-level controls, and student course views that hide anything not marked visible.
Media/Ventura/Word Study/Ordered List: Unified CTA styling, better descriptions, topic-specific guidance, and easy access to each element’s evaluation links from the student side.

Why It Matters

This release cements Innovation Assessments as a coherent suite rather than 12 separate tools. Authentication, visibility, enrolment, cadence training, grading, and schema inspection all work the same way across apps. Teachers can share tasks, manage rubrics, and run live sessions with less friction; students get natural speaking guidance, Google sign-in, and cleaner course views. We’re pushing the beta to customers now—watch for teacher-to-teacher sharing options (one-time copy codes) coming soon.

🎧 Recording for Upload (Using Chromebook or Chrome Browser)

If you can’t use the direct browser recording feature, you can record your conversation using your Chromebook’s built-in tools (like Voice Recorder or Memos) or a free online recording tool, and then upload the file.

Part 1: Record Your Audio File

Open Your Recording Tool:
- Chromebook App: Open the Voice Recorder app or Memos app on your Chromebook.
- Online Tool: Open a new browser tab and navigate to a simple, free online voice recorder (e.g., searching “online voice recorder” will give several options).
Start Recording: When you are ready, start the timer or recording app and give your responses to the prompts in the conversation task.
Stop and Save: Stop the recording once complete. Look for a Save, Download, or Export button.
Name the File: If the tool prompts you, give your file a clear name (e.g., MyConvoTask.mp3). This makes it much easier to find later!

Part 2: Locating the Saved File (The Hard Part!)

Once you click Save or Download, the file goes to your local storage, most commonly the Downloads folder.

1. Using the Chrome Downloads Bar

After the file saves, you should see a small bar at the bottom of your Chrome browser window showing the file name.
Click the small arrow (⯆) next to the file name.
Select “Show in folder” from the menu. This will open the file explorer right to the location of your file.

2. Using the Files App

If the downloads bar disappears, you can find the file using the Chromebook’s file manager:

Click the Launcher (the circle icon in the bottom-left corner).
Type “Files” and open the Files app .
In the left sidebar, click on “My files” or “Downloads”.
Look for the file name you gave it (e.g., MyConvoTask.mp3) or look for a file saved right around the time you finished recording.

3. Uploading to the Task

Once you’ve located the file in your Downloads folder, you can go back to the Upload Version of the Conversation Task and use the Choose File button to select and submit it.