Writing is essential for all students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills across various subject areas and tasks. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) indicate that first graders should write opinion papers, explanatory texts, and narratives. Further, the CCSS requires students beginning in kindergarten to explore digital tools to produce…

Many students with learning disabilities (LD) and emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) struggle with the writing process. Technology has shown to be effective in supporting prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing of written products. This article explains the use of one technology-based graphic organizer with embedded…

In this Symposium focused on MOOCs, this journal carries forward a tradition of attending to the technologies associated with composing and the teaching of composing. In the May 1983 issue of "College Composition and Communication," for example, most of the articles focus on composing and include a mix of inquiries, from Jack Selzer's on the…

We propose a two-component theory of text signaling devices. The first component is a text-based analysis that characterizes any signaling device along four dimensions: (a) the type of information it makes available, (b) its scope, (c) how it is realized in the text, and (d) its location with respect to the content it cues. The second component is…

In this article, I discuss research on the use of technology to support the writing of students with learning disabilities. Struggling writers can benefit from a wide range of computer applications for writing. Word processing, spelling checkers, word prediction, and speech recognition offer support for transcription and revision. Word processing…

Prompted by the federal No Child Left Behind law and state mandates for improved proficiency in writing and other skills, district leaders have intensified their focus on writing in elementary and middle schools. Many are integrating word-processing software and other technology tools into their curricula to strengthen the instructional and…

Education Matters" is the monthly newsletter of the Association of American Educators (AAE), an organization dedicated to advancing the American teaching profession through personal growth, professional development, teacher advocacy and protection. This issue of the newsletter includes: (1) Fixing D.C.'s Schools: How a 38-Year-Old Rookie…

Multimedia has had a widely recognised impact on society, but it is still under-represented in the literacy pedagogies of many schools. This may relate to the way we view assessment for literacy, which is still almost wholly monomodal. Students assessed at a low level as producers of verbal text may respond positively when working multimodally,…

The paper reviews the advantages and disadvantages of using word processing programs with learning disabled students, describes some available programs, delineates criteria for selection of word processing programs, and considers expanded uses of word processing with this population. Advantages of word processing programs for learning disabled…

Discusses the learning philosophy of LOGO and how it is utilized with a word processing program to help former drop-outs learn to write. Some teaching techniques with descriptions of how they can be applied are included. (MBR)

In a class of eight students, an attempt was made to determine the effects on student collaboration of using the computer as a writing instrument and the influence the computer might have on social relationships in a high school writing class. Student collaboration consisted of several kinds, including: (1) the sharing of technical help for using…

Offers five high school teachers' comments regarding how the computer has changed their lives in the classroom, the uses they make of it, and what it promises for the immediate future. (SR)

This report contains profiles of computer-based writing programs at 49 colleges which were originally submitted for empirical assessment by a 3-year project sponsored by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education and the City University of New York. The profiles, representing two-year and four-year, public and private, rural and…

A writing exchange project at Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Vermont, funded by Apple Education Foundation and McDonnell Douglas, examined what happened when high school students use word processors and a modem to write to distant audiences. In the first exchange, students interviewed each other in pairs and wrote short…

A program in a special school provides 60 deaf students (ages 9-19) with microcomputer access for three to four hours per week. The microcomputer is being used to develop student writing skills (creating, editing, refining), to publish a desktop school newsletter, and to participate in a telecommunications network. (DB)