Learning to Write Differently

Book excerpt: This volume explores in detail the ways that working with word processing interacts with the social processes of classrooms to shape participants' theories and practices of writing. It offers an expanded image of the ways teachers construct writing curricula that includes word processing, and reveals an interactive, long-term relationship between the writing contexts teachers and children construct and the capacities and requirements of writing tools. The volume also builds an analytic framework for thinking and talking about teachers, students and technology, which captures the dynamic interrelationships over time of classroom cultures, teachers' interpretations and decisions, and uses of word processing. The authors argue that over time both teachers and children learned ways to write differently with word processing. That is, working with word processing shaped the ways teachers thought about teaching and learning writing, and also shaped the ways beginning writers understood and practiced the activity. This volume makes clear that word processing itself does not make children write better, prompt them to revise more, or teach them new writing strategies. But, when teachers and students work together with word processing, they often construct social contexts within which children have opportunities to learn new writing strategies, new ways to think about strategies they already have, and ways to execute those strategies efficiently.