From the (Writing) Center to the Edge: Moving Writers along the Internet

Abstract

T he Internet, an electronic network linking computers throughout the world, invites teachers to explore its uses for writing instruction because it is a text-based environment. Users communicate by writing messages that travel out onto the Internet, read the prose in its vast pool of resources, and gather information from those resources for their own writing. In high schools and colleges, new Internet environments for students who are writing in many fields have proliferated, and they continue to develop almost as fast as the Internet is developing. Among these diverse environments are the various shapes and services of on-line writing centers at both the secondary and postsecondary level. Because writing centers focus on one-to-one interaction with writers and because they invite collaboration and dialogue about writing as part of their tutorial approach, on-line programs developed in various writing centers are continuing this emphasis as they reach out to writers in new ways. An overview here of some of the new developments in on-line writing centers will indicate both the variety of ways that writers can use the Internet and the diversity of the approaches being developed in various writing centers-including e-mail services, on-line discussion groups and bulletin boards, real-time conversational opportunities, and resources writers can use as they write. Although there are far more programs taking shape than are described here, the ones I will discuss are representative of the directions being taken in writing centers across the country. To learn more about each program, use its Internet address found in the resources list at the end of this article. For schools not yet part of the 24 percent of K-12 schools using the Internet (Survey finds 1995), Robert Doty (1995) notes that