Isaiah Smithson
Designing students offers a special challenge. Of course, the programs must be pedagogically sound; composition software designed for any grade level must meet this challenge. However, programs intended for younger students must also be unabashedly user friendly. Young writers will not become better writers if they have to rely on software whose formats and prompts frustrate rather than encourage the meeting of writer and writing instruction. THE WRITING WORKSHOP, designed for grades 3-10 and for use on Apple computers, meets this challenge well.
Developed by Milliken Publishing Company, THE WRITING WORKSHOP is a complete set of composition software, consisting of Milliken WORD PROCESSOR, PREWRITING, and POSTWRITING. Each of these components combines sound writing-as-process instruction with ease of access and use.
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Milliken WORD PROCESSOR is easy to work with. Students are initially presented with a graphic of a desk. On the desk is a file cabinet, a manual, a typewriter, paper, and pen and pencil. The students' choices are simple, and the commands are logical. Students can choose "File Cabinet" if they wish to retrieve or store text, "Help Manual" if they need help with some facet of the program, "Typewriter" if they want to print, or "Writing Tools" if they wish to write. Regardless of the choice made, the graphic that replaces the initial one is as easy to understand as is the desk arrangement. Choosing "File Cabinet", for example, results in a graphic that includes an open file cabinet (the one on the desk is closed) and four choices: "Get a file to work on," "Put a file away," "Look at the names," and "Throw away a file." "ESC go back to the menu" is also an option on the "File Cabinet" graphic. In fact, no matter where students are in the program, if they get confused or change their mind, they can strike ESC and return to "Desk" to reorganize their approach or to gain access to "Help Manual." In "Help Manual," they will find clear definitions of the functions available and directions on how to use them.
The core of the word-processing component is "Writing Tools," the mode in which students actually write. Here writers are allowed to start a paper; to move to the beginning or end of one already in progress; to delete, move, or add words, phrases, or blocks; or to center a title--all with ease. Only when students wish
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to erase an entire paper are they obstructed. If they signal that they wish to start over, they are asked, "Are you sure you want to clear your paper and start over again?" Otherwise, writers are free to write, revising as they go along if they wish. If they become confused by the options available in "Writing Tools" mode, they need only return to "Desk" and choose "Help Manual." WORD PROCESSOR does not get in the writer's way: it is an unobtrusive, helpful set of tools. It invites students to write, delete, and move sections around; it invites them to give themselves up to the writing process without having to pay the penalties otherwise exacted by pencils, erasers, scissors, and glue.
Milliken's THE WRITING WORKSHOP includes three prewriting programs: "Brainstorming," "Branching," and "Nutshelling," each contained on a separate disk. Once students have become familiar with WORD PROCESSOR, they will have little trouble finding their way through the prewriting systems. The initial graphic for all three prewriting programs is the desk they have become used to in the word-processing program. Students can choose "File Cabinet" to store or retrieve prewriting, "Help Manual" for directions in using the prewriting systems they have engaged, and "Typewriter" to print their prewriting. Instead of being able to choose "Writing Tools," the fourth option offered by WORD PROCESSOR, in PREWRITING students are able to choose "Brainstorming," "Branching," or "Nutshelling," depending on which disk has been inserted.
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Students involved in a writing task will normally use the prewriting components before they use the word-processing component. However, as the Milliken documentation advises, students who are merely becoming familiar with the software will profit from playing with the word-processing program before experimenting with the prewriting programs. To expect students to learn students to learn the prewriting systems at the same time they are learning the filing, help, and printing systems is to expect quite a bit.
"Brainstorming" includes four steps. It requires students to state a topic, allows them to enter up to twenty-eight words or phrases (of no more than fifteen characters each) associated with the topics, has them categorize these words or phrases, and then has them name each category--there can be up to nine categories. Students can add or delete words and categories, move words from one category to another, change the names of categories, or even clear the screen and begin again at any point. Throughout the process, prompting is available through pressing OPEN APPLE. For students having difficulty finding a topic, for example, prompting comes in the form of suggested topics. For students having difficulty thinking of appropriate words or phrases, prompting comes in the form of a series of questions that can be chosen one-by-one, such as the following:
What very good things does your topic make you think of?
What very bad things does your topic make you think of?
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What scary things does your topic make you think of?
What happy things does your topic-make you think of?
What times of the year does your topic make you think of?
What colors or designs does your topic make you think of?
Pressing OPEN APPLE provides suggestions for all steps of "Brainstorming."
Whereas "Brainstorming" helps students generate specifics and then move to generalizations, "Branching" helps them begin with generalizations and then move to specifics. The program asks students, first, to state a topic; next, to list four main ideas connected with the topic; and finally, to create four lists of details pertinent to each of these main ideas. As with the "Brainstorming" program, abundant coaching is available through the OPEN APPLE key. A set of topics different from that offered in "Brainstorming" is available, and the above-quoted questions offered to students in "Brainstorming" are available in "Branching" eliciting details.
"Brainstorming" and "Branching" are the flip side of one another: whereas the first program facilitates inductive investigation of a topic, the second encourages a deductive approach. However, "Nutshelling," the third prewriting program, is unlike the first two. addition to helping students generate and
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organize material, it helps them clarify their notions of purpose and audience. Students can choose from five types of writing: "Explanatory Essay," "Persuasive Essay," "Descriptive Essay," "Letter," and "Story." With each of the types comes a series of sentences to complete. For example, students choosing "Persuasive Essay" would be called on to complete the following sentences:
Students can complete each thought with a few words or several sentences. Obviously, the more thorough students are in nutshelling, the more likely are their resultant essays to be thorough, well-structured, and well-directed. Students who use all three prewriting programs are likely to lose interest in actual prewriting and to settle for mechanical responses to the prompts in the latter stages. However, students who use either "Brainstorming" or "Branching" and then use "Nutshelling" will probably be able to sustain their interest and surely will profit from having used both programs.
There are several valuable features built into the Milliken prewriting programs. All of them are "authorable." That is, teachers can tailor the programs for specific objectives or
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assignments by changing the topics, adding questions or activities, or alerting requirements built into programs. (The replaced materials are not lost; they can be used later.) Finally, if students encounter any problems with operating the prewriting programs, "Help Manual" is always available.
POSTWRITING is the most imposing component of Milliken's WRITING WORKSHOP. It consists of three programs and five disks that provide a variety of revision tools. Whereas WORD PROCESSOR and PREWRITING are straightforward, POSTWRITING requires a little more time and practice for learning just what each element of each program offers. "Spelling Checker," one of the programs, checks spelling. The other two programs, "Mechanics Checker" and "Proofreader," do what their names imply, but they also assist in other revision tasks.
"Spelling Checker" scans each word and pauses at the suspicious ones--words similar to, but not exactly like, those on its list and words not on the list at all--underlining them to alert students to possible misspellings. If students determine the word is, in fact, correctly spelled, they can pass to the next words and can add the word to a temporary list so that the "Checker" will not continue to single it out as suspect. If students think that, indeed, the word is misspelled, they can call up lists of similar words and inspect them for the correct spelling, choosing either "check" or "search" to do so; and they can "replace" all occurrences of the misspelled word throughout their paper;
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and/or they can "edit" their text. "Spelling Checker" offers all of these options each time it singles out a possibly misspelled word.
"Mechanics Checker" offers three modes: "Use of Words," "Choice of Words," and "Typing Checker." "Use of Words" checks for some pronoun problems, for overuse of "and," and for fragments beginning with "because." If, for example, students write phrases such as "Because of lack of money," the phrase is underlined and a message appears on the screen saying, "This sentence may be incomplete." If students request help, they are given an explanation: "Sentences which begin with because usually need a comma. To find out if your sentence is complete, check your handbook or see your teacher." (Milliken provides a brief handbook to which students can refer.)
"Choice of Words" checks for "tired" and "tricky" words. Usually the check provided is useful. For instance, students who use the phrase "lots of" will be alerted that this is a tired phrase and will be offered synonyms: many, numerous, several, plenty of, enough of, and a number of." They can decide if they wish to substitute one of the alternatives. And students who confuse "here" with "hear," "then" with "than," "it's" with "its," or other homophones and tricky pairs are given clear examples of the different uses of the terms. These words are underlined when they appear in the text, and sample sentences are given to help students be certain they are using the appropriate word:
Can you hear me? I am over here.
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Then press return. Are you taller than I am?It's a gorgeous day. The cat is licking its paws.
Sometimes, however, the checker is useless. Were students to write a sentence such as "This explanation is too vague," the "too" would be underlined by the checker and the writer would be reminded that "This is a tricky word for some people." But the explanatory sentences offered would be irrelevant to the problem:
Give the book to him.
I want the book too.
There must be two books.
"Too" in the sense of "overly" seems not to be acknowledged by the program.
"Typing Checker" is also uneven. This checker is looking not for spelling errors, but for what would seem to be obvious typing errors. If students begin a sentence with a lowercase letter, the program underlines the word in question and cautions: "Check to see if the first letter of the sentence is capitalized." Or if students make typing errors such as "slee;p," the program highlights the mistake, "slee;p," and notes: "There may be a typing mistake in the underlined area." However, since "Typing Checker" is sensitive to end-punctuation marks placed in the middle of sentences and to absence of spaces after any punctuation, it also underlines phrases like "St. Louis" or a sentence such as, "`I feel awfully tired,' he
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said." One of the few grammar rules that has no exceptions in American English is that periods and commas go inside quotation marks, but students will be challenged by "Typing Checker" every time they follow this rule.
These examples illustrate some shortcomings of "Choice of Words" and "Typing Checker" (and of revision programs in general), but they also point up one of their strengths--students using these programs have to make decisions about their own text. Since revision programs cannot be a selective as English teachers, these programs alert students that one of their words may be misspelled, that there may be a better choice for tired words, that a phrase beginning with "because" may be incomplete, or that there may be something wrong with the typing of "St. Louis." Whether the program is "perceptive" or "misguided" in its suggestions, it is making only suggestions. All of the Milliken programs require students constantly to make rhetorical choices. "Proofreader," the third postwriting program, offers a variety of choices. First, it offers five modes of proofing: "Make Comments,' "Sentence Length," "Paragraph Length," "Read for Style," and "Final Check." "Make Comments" allows teachers (or students) to insert comments in the text. Teachers can scan the sentences, and any notes they insert are automatically enclosed in brackets. "Sentence Length" and "Paragraph Length" give bar graphs showing the length of each sentence in relation to all other sentences in the same paragraph and showing the length of each paragraph in relation to all other paragraphs in the same paper. Both options give word counts of each paragraph.
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Thus, writers are graphically confronted with sentences and paragraphs that are dramatically shorter or longer than the rest of their sentences and paragraphs; if they wish, the EDIT function allows them to choose individual sentences or paragraphs in order to take a closer look and, possibly, in order to change them.
If students choose "Read for Style," each sentence in their composition is underlined, one after another, and students are asked, "is this a good sentence?" Students can either edit the underlined sentence, pass to the next one, or ask for help. If students request help, they are given the following advice:
Think about your purpose.
Remember sentence variety.
Use concrete words.
Take out dead words.
Help your reader.
"Style" is probably the least useful element in "Postwriting." Its advice is sound. However, the program underlines every sentence; it isn't able to select suspicious ones. When "Spelling Checker" scans the text and pauses now and then, students are likely to pay attention. After all, something has alerted the program. But when the program underlines every sentence and repeatedly asks a question--"Is this a good sentence?"--to which most students can give only an uncertain reply, students probably are not going to maintain their interest and probably are not going to gain much benefit.
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"Final Check" has a similar weakness. Like "Style," it offers students several editing options:
If students choose number 3, for example, each sentence in the text is underlined in turn, and students are asked:
Are all commas placed correctly?
Is the end punctuation correct?
Is other punctuation correct?
As each sentence is underscored, students have the options of "pass," "edit," and "help." "Help," in reference to number 3, offers the following advice:
Use commas in a series ("red, white, and blue").Also use commas between:
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- Two combined sentences that begin with a word like because. "Because I won, we had a party."
- Two complete sentences that are connected by and, or but.
> A sentence should end with one of the three end-punctuation marks: ? ! .
For other punctuation marks, see your Handbook.
As with "Style," the problem in "Final Check" is not the advice given the students, but the program's lack of selectivity. "Style" and "Final Check" may well serve as excellent tools for teachers wishing to give grammar lessons using students' texts--because teachers can choose significant sentences and give immediate information--but the two modes seem too inclusive to be of service to students revising on their own.
WRITING WORKSHOP's accompanying binders include a variety of supporting materials. The most important section is the documentation, the instructions on how to use the several programs. Sometimes there is disagreement between the directions given in the documentation and on the screen. For example, in giving writers a choice of type size, the documentation instructs users to "Press B for big letters (40 columns) or L for little letters (80 columns)." However, the program itself gives the following code on the screen:
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L Large Letters (40 column Display)
S Small Letters (80 column Display).
Does pressing "L" give the user little or larger letters? Milliken has revised some of its programs and some of its supporting materials, and there are a few instances like this one in which the two don't match. Usually, though, the documentation is excellent; conflicts are absent and the instructions are clear. Bold-face type directs users from subject to subject in the documentation; concise explanatory prose tells users what to do; and graphic simulations on each page show users how to do it. The programs themselves are so clear and logical that teachers could find their way through most selections unaided by the documentation. However, when the documentation is necessary, it's almost always thorough and lucid.
Milliken's binders also include "Student Activities," "Teacher Activities," and "Extension Activities." These are exercises in prewriting, writing, and revision that can be put on the computer or on paper. Like the software, "Activities" focuses on generating and organizing ideas, on analyzing audience and purpose, on developing concise, clear, and unhackneyed prose, and on learning mechanics. A few sentence-combining exercises are available, too. The explanation to the teacher on how to commit these exercises to disks is uncharacteristically cryptic--most teachers will probably have to experiment a little in order to figure out how to prepare "Activities" disks for
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their students. The exercises themselves, though, are sound. Like the software, the supplementary materials are an exemplary means of facilitating the writing process.
Milliken's THE WRITING WORKSHOP is impressive. As its title suggests, THE WRITING WORKSHOP actually is a workshop--it creates a scene in which computers, students, and teachers can interact. And as the titles of the individual components suggest, PREWRITING, WORD PROCESSOR, and POSTWRITING focus on the writing process-- students are allowed to prewrite, write, and revise, recursively. PREWRITING encourages students to develop ideas and gives directions on how to organize them. Since the WORD PROCESSOR component is easy to work with, it leave students free to change their text as they change their ideas. And the POSTWRITING programs, although they do raise some false alarms for students, provide a variety of ways for students to re-see their work and to attend to usage conventions. In all programs of THE WRITING WORKSHOP, students remain active, constantly making and re-making rhetorical decisions. Students fortunate enough to learn the principles of writing with this software will develop habits and expectations with respect to writing that will serve them throughout their education.
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My review of Milliken's THE WRITING WORKSHOP should be read in light of the following perspective. I'm one of those people who knows nothing about machines, from hand-operated can openers to computers. When my car suddenly loses power on the freeway, I'm one of those people who can do no more than coast to the shoulder, turn the key, pump the accelerator a few times, and then lean dejectedly on the side of the car until someone pulls over to help me. The only reason I raise the hood is to alert passing motorists that there's a crisis at hand; there's no point in my actually looking at the exposed engine or unscrewing or hammering on anything. I'm that way about computers and software, too. Friends lend me composition software so I can try it out, and I send the disks back blank--I have no idea how I erase them. Programs instruct me to do a simple maneuver. I do it, and the result is nothing the program was expecting. However, I didn't have any trouble with the Milliken program. I got where I wanted to go, time after time, and the program disks are still full. My success is significant--if I can handle this software, a child can. That's not humor. That's truth. And that's a credit to the design of the Milliken software.
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TITLE: THE WRITING WORKSHOP
PUBLISHER OR MARKETING ORGANIZATION:
PRICE: $450.00
SEPARATE PROGRAMS:
| MILLIKEN WORD PROCESSOR: | $ | 69.95 |
| PREWRITING: | 195.00 | |
| POSTWRITING: | 225.00 |