Local startup’s WriteOn AI showcased to Carson City trustees as classroom feedback tool
Summary
District leaders and a classroom teacher previewed WriteOn (also described by the presenter as Riton) — an AI-driven writing coach that scaffolds the writing process, requires students to revise their own work, and has been piloted with dozens of teachers and thousands of student sessions in Carson City.
Brandon Bringhurst, the district’s chief academic officer, opened a board workshop presentation by introducing WriteOn and inviting its founder, Perry, to demo the product for trustees and staff.
Perry told the board WriteOn is designed to give “focused, actionable feedback” and to scaffold writing in steps — topic sentence, evidence, revising, proofreading — so students “have to make those corrections” themselves rather than receiving full rewrites. “You never give kids the answer,” Perry said, describing a teacher-facing interface that lets instructors monitor student progress and step in when needed.
Kaylee Davenport, an EL designee at Bordewick Bray Elementary School who has used WriteOn in class, told trustees she’d seen “incredible results” with students who receive sentence-by-sentence feedback. Davenport said the program’s instant feedback has helped students add detail and think through their ideas and allowed teachers to compile writing portfolios that show student growth.
Perry shared early pilot numbers: 94 teachers had signed up in the district, “over 2,000 students” had used the product, more than 5,600 distinct writing sessions were recorded, and the system had delivered “over 224,000 pieces of individual feedback.” He described a small case study in which students’ confidence rose about 30% during a 10-week test and average WIDA writing scores increased from 3.5 to 5.1 for those participants, while noting the sample size was small.
Trustees asked detailed questions about spelling, autocorrect, and the risk of students gaming the tool. Perry said WriteOn flags spelling errors and progressively gives more specific hints; if a student is stuck after multiple attempts there is a skip option so the student can move on. Trustees pressed on academic integrity; district staff emphasized a curriculum-first approach and teacher training to define when and how AI is appropriate.
The presentation closed with district leaders saying the tool will be made available more broadly next year but left optional for teachers during an initial phased rollout.
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