Matthew Ramirez was teaching writing classes to students at the University of California at Berkeley when he started to get frustrated. Mixing his experience as a teacher with some advanced learning technology, he and his business partner started WriteLab – a Berkeley, California-based software company that helps students strengthen their writing skills by providing quick, customized feedback. WriteLab can even adapt its feedback over time to students' individual writing styles. "Focus on problems that eliminate waste – wasted time, wasted energy, or wasted space," Ramirez advises.

CSIEC (Computer Simulation in Educational Communication), is not only an intelligent web-based human-computer dialogue system with natural language for English instruction, but also a learning assessment system for learners and teachers. Its multiple functions--including grammar-based gap filling exercises, scenario show, free chatting and chatting on a given topic--can satisfy the various requirements for students with different backgrounds and learning abilities. We will summarize the free Internet usage within a six month period and its integration into English classes in universities and middle schools. The evaluation findings about the class integration show that the chatting function has been improved and frequently utilized by the users, and the application of the CSIEC system on English instruction can motivate the learners to practice English and enhance their learning process.

In this article, we describe a deployed educational technology application: the Criterion Online Essay Evaluation Service, a web-based system that provides automated scoring and evaluation of student essays. Criterion has two complementary applications: (1) CritiqueWriting Analysis Tools, a suite of programs that detect errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics, that identify discourse elements in the essay, and that recognize potentially undesirable elements of style, and (2) e-rater version 2.0, an automated essay scoring system. Critique and e-rater provide students with feedback that is specific to their writing in order to help them improve their writing skills and is intended to be used under the instruction of a classroom teacher. All of these capabilities outperform baseline algorithms, and some of the tools agree with human judges in their evaluations as often as two judges agree with each other.