For the last 18 months, we've been almost exclusively focused on Frankenstories. Now that the game is in a good spot, we want to spend some time on Writelike.
Writelike is our mentor text modelling resource
If you have no idea what Writelike is, it's our online mentor text modelling resource.
Where Frankenstories is a game, Writelike is more like a textbook with lessons, snippets, text patterns, and worked examples.
Writelike is effective but it's repetitive, so we invented Frankenstories as a way to introduce more surprise, pressure, & pleasure into the writing process.
Now the two resources are complementary: Writelike is like training in the gym; Frankenstories is like playing on the field.
This year will be about making Writelike easier for teachers to use
Our first priority with Writelike is to streamline class admin and account creation.
- Writelike will switch to using student and class codes instead of email logins, as we do in Frankenstories.
- We'll streamline the teacher views to make it easier to manage classes and lessons.
- We're going to remove the Peer Review feature. We feel that the comment feed on individual pages plus Wrotevote provides most of the peer feedback benefit.
- We'll leave teacher comments and "grading" in place, but we'll make it easier for students and teachers to see feedback.
- We'll remove the concept of the "Myself" group, just to make the whole system simpler. Teachers will make classes, invite students with a class code, and assign lessons—that's it.
Also, Writelike will become subscription-based
The bad news is that Writelike will become subscription-based.
The lessons will stay freely accessible (some teachers simply use them for reference and inspiration) but the class creation, assignment, feedback and reporting tools will require a subscription.
The good news is that the Writelike subscription will be the same as Frankenstories—low-cost and priced per teacher—and both tools will be bundled, so Frankenstories Pro will include a Writelike subscription, and a Writelike subscription will include Frankenstories Pro.
Next year we'll enhance the lesson experience
Early next year, we want to develop some new features to improve the teacher and student experience in lessons. For example:
- A presentation mode that hides all the instructional content and focuses on snippets, examples, and text boxes.
- The ability for each student to create their own gallery of inspiration images.
- And more!
We'll also be working on new Writelike lessons
We'll be completing a few missing lessons in Narrative Skills and Functional Grammar as well as publishing lessons on argumentation and persuasive writing (and more).
Let us know if you have Writelike feedback or requests
We'll be reaching out to regular users of Writelike to ask for requests, but if you have any ideas or feedback, this is a great time to let us know.
Writelike will always have a different purpose and feel compared to Frankenstories, but we want to find ways to make it simpler, lighter, and more flexible, absorbing, and rewarding.