Online tools for writing

In the wake of my reading the Pew Internet and American Life study called "Writing, Technology, and Teens" (press release is here; PDF of the whole report is here), I've been thinking about what kind of online tools could help students write. I've learned about a few -- I'm trying to decide if it makes sense to tell students about them.

Dr. Paper: not free and originally developed for high school students, supposedly formats APA style correctly

Paper Calendar: free, will make a schedule for your paper-writing tasks

Late Night Writer: free, will ask questions to take you from topic to thesis to supporting paragraphs to finished (if disjointed) essay

yWriter4: free, writes a novel for/with you

Google Docs: free, create, collaborate, share documents online (I'm thinking of using this for class)

Buzzword: free (for now?), like Google Docs but an Adobe product

More to come, perhaps.

Period Trick

I found this trick on Steven Krause's teaching blog (found to the right on my higher ed. blogs), entry for April 8, 2008.


http://view.break.com/232903 - Watch more free videos

Perhaps this lesson will be a "public service" to my colleagues and a reason NOT to specify page-lengths with essays/papers. Word counts might be a better way to let students know how much depth you want them to go into.