I left Tina Bacci's presentation thinking "My God, she uses EXCEL as a TOOL FOR WRITING!"
This University of Rhode Island graduate student discussed the history of computers as writing tools, noting that software development tended to deal with invention strategies, whereas the trend these days is to focus on the multimodality in layout and design that computers afford.
Bacci suggested that rhetorical invention online had been often overlooked. She asked: "Where CAN we be now?"
Three paths to consider:
- Use PowerPoint as a writing tool throughout the drafting process: doing so, Bacci asserts, helps the student avoid writing a "thesis driven" first draft and makes the student more likely to revise her work. Because the PowerPoint slides can contain both visual and verbal information, their use widens the kind of thought students use to write--from the strictly verbal to the visual and metaphorical.
- Use Publisher to create sites for papers: this gives students an online place to think through and create their papers, and, as such, will change over the course of the project. The page also functions as a place to store information of all media and to develop the writing assignment itself.
- Use Excel to develop timelines, lit reviews and working bibliographies: Excel gives the student writers a visual medium for categorizing and organizing information, as well as creating graphs and so forth to watch trends. Excel can also function as an outline program, and, with the main ideas in cells, makes it easier for students to cut and paste information as well as hyperlink to other sites.
In each case, the technology and the rhetorical needs drive both process and product and are, in my humble opinion, worth a try. Or two.
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