Word Processors and Children’s Writing in a High-Computer-Access Setting

Abstract

Student writing products and processes were studied during a three-year period, beginning in Grade 3, at a school where students had routine daily access to word processors, and at a nearby comparison school that had only a few, infrequently used computers in its classrooms. A repeated measures MANOVA revealed that writing quality improved significantly (p < .00005) at the high-computer-access school, as determined by holistic measures of writing message (meaning and content quality) and medium (quality of the form and surface features). In-class observations support the contention that the use of word processors strongly contributed to the observed differences between sites. The attributes of the word processor that appeared to explain the observed differences were a combination of the unique ways text is edited, displayed, and manipulated with the computer.