"Writing," "Reading," "Listening," "Learning," "Teaching," are all terms whose meanings in this late age of print seem blurred and overlapping as word processing and electronic conferences, along with a myriad of other technological innovations, change the very nature of what it means to be writers and readers, teachers and students. Contributors to this issue examine these terms and speculate on the form they take in the many local settings that comprise our writing classes.

Leading off this issue is Anthony DiMatteo with his "Communication, Writing, and Learning: An Anti-Instrumentalist View of Network Writing." Throughout this article, DiMatteo explores the theoretical underpinnings of networked classroom conversation in which students read the writing of speech. In arguing against the conduit metaphor of communication, DiMatteo suggests that the "turbulence" of networked writing can be used to heighten students' sense of themselves as meaning makers. Next, Joel Nydahl reconsiders an old friend--word processing--and presents both a review and critique of word-processing research. He then calls for a closer and more careful study of word processing in relation to composition instruction, suggesting that a good ten years into computers and composition studies our research remains confusing and contradictory.

Moving to Computers & Pedagogy, Karen Nilson D'Agostino and Sandra D. Varone turn their attention to basic writers. In so doing, they explore the many changes that computers support and argue that teachers can now teach while students write. D'Agostino and Varone describe a system of responding to student texts that leads teachers through the roles of interested readers to resource persons to collaborators. In each of these roles, the computer screen becomes the focal point, enabling a kind of collaboration that was difficult with paper and pen. But to collaborate, we must listen, and Charles Moran, in our Computers & Controversy section, wants to know if we indeed are listening, reading, and hearing what our co-participants say in networked conversation. Are we all so involved in contributing to a polylogue of voices that we fail to listen to the messages of our colleagues? In exploring this question, Moran reminds us that we seek "convergent conversation," not "divergent monologues" and that the community we seek to establish online with our students needs the careful attention that in this environment only reading can supply.

In "Questions and Issues in Basic Writing and Computing," Pamela Gay returns to basic writers and reviews 18 studies that have basic writing and computers as their focus. Throughout her review, Gay calls for a new pedagogy that allows basic writers to know that they are being "listened to and valued" rather than merely monitored. Much that she argues for, in effect, can be seen in the pedagogy that D'Agostino and Varone developed in the earlier article. Finally, Ellen Redding Kaler reviews Computer Writing Environments: Theory, Research, and Design (Britton and Glynn, Eds.) arguing that it is a worthwhile text for those of us who teach writing with computers.

We hope you find this issue as interesting and stimulating as we do: we have enjoyed listening to our colleagues and reading their writing, all the while learning from their writing and their teaching. With this issue, we also announce for November a new section, Computers & Practice, which will be based on our colleagues' day-to-day teaching. On deck for this section, we have Charlie Moran's great description of how he orchestrates online conferencing and Doug Hesse's innovative series of writing activities for stand-alone computers. We invite you to contribute so that we can share new practices with our colleagues as more and more options become available to us.