Far too many learners experience painful and debilitating failure in school because of challenges with written expression.  It isn’t because the writer does not have plenty to say,  or because he or she is not a creative or analytical thinker, or because of limited vocabulary.  It may be simply because the conventions of spelling and grammar are exceedingly difficult or impossible to learn.

I have met too many 6th graders who refused to write because they had learned in first grade that they “couldn’t write”.  Physical coordination challenges had hindered them from using a pencil effectively  The painful lesson that they couldn’t write had been re-enforced repeatedly by the red ink that had messed up their efforts, and by the hurtful comments of their teachers.  As 6th graders, they avoided writing at almost any cost, including consequences for not completing assignments or for acting out their frustration in disruptive behaviors.

For a wide variety of valid reasons, in every classroom there are learners who struggle with written output.  That’s why I’m delighted to share another digital tool with helpful potential for all writers.  This tool offers help for learners  and writers of all ages, not just for those who are enrolled in schools!

After the Deadline is an application that provides contextual spell checking, along with powerful grammar and style checking.  It provides helpful explanations for the grammar and style errors that it  finds.  The user can personalize the rules of the application by setting it to always ignore specific errors.  There are settings to personalize in other ways as well.

Although this writing tool is available as an extension that you can download to use off-line with OpenOffice Writer, it  is probably most valuable as an aid to online writing.  After the Deadline comes as an add-on for Firefox (version 3.613 or earlier),  as an extension for Google Chrome, or as a plug-in for WordPress blogs.  This is a tool that supports online writing almost everywhere, including Facebook,  Twitter,  GMail, etc.

Here’s a video that shows how After the Deadline works as a Firefox add-on.

NOTE:  After the Deadline was helpful in writing this blog post.  It didn’t result in a perfect post, but it did result in a better post.