Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:03:08 -0500 From: Revised List Processor (1.7e) Subject: File: "EJRNL V2N2" To: pirmann@trident.usacs.rutgers.edu _______ _________ __ / _____/ /___ ___/ / / / /__ / / ______ __ __ __ ___ __ ___ _____ / / / ___/ __ / / / __ / / / / / / //__/ / //__ \ / ___ \ / / / /____ / /__/ / / /_/ / / /_/ / / / / / / / / /__/ / / / /______/ /______/ /_____/ /_____/ /_/ /_/ /_/ \___/_/ /_/ June, 1992 _EJournal_ Volume 2 Issue 2 ISSN# 1054-1055 2545 Subscribers in 37 Countries An Electronic Journal concerned with the implications of electronic networks and texts. University at Albany, State University of New York ejournal@albany.bitnet There are 760 lines in this issue. CONTENTS: Editorial 1: Should we say goodbye to "text"? Editorial 2: Writing as reward, not punishmment LITERACY FOR THE NEXT GENERATION: Writing Without Handwriting by David Coniam Chinese University of Hong Kong DEPARTMENTS: Summary of Network Commands Letters (policy) Reviews (policy) Supplements to previous texts (policy) About _EJournal_ PEOPLE: Board of Advisors, Consulting Editors [l. 39] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This electronic publication and its contents are (c) copyright 1992 by _EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give away the journal and its contents, but no one may "own" it. Any and all financial interest is hereby assigned to the acknowledged authors of individual texts. This notification must accompany all distribution of _EJournal_. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial 1 - Should we say goodbye to "text"? _EJournal_ began as a strictly "text" journal, but the nature of text is changing. _EJournal_ started out to be a place where people could discuss the kinds of changes in "writing" that the electronic screen would encourage. Even though we expressed interest in text "broadly defined," we were still thinking mostly in images of "words on a page." We also wanted to sidestep as many print-journal conventions as we could. There would be no deadlines set by printers' schedules, no straightjackets of layout or "making up a book" or formatting. Why accept the constrictions imposed by a superseded delivery mechanism? So we worked with one essay per issue, a publish-when-ready approach, and plain-vanilla ASCII. Now, however, ASCII and the connotations of "text" are beginning to constrict our perception. "Text" is linked too closely with "print" and "printing" to suit the scope of electronic display. Even "hypertext," in so many ways properly dislocating and descriptive, (i. e., the three-dimensional image embedded in "hyper"), is somewhat limiting now that sound and motion can be included in what we transmit and display. What then should we call that stuff, those sequences of phosphor images and digitized wave forms that we are transmitting and receiving and messing around with in the Matrix? I propose "display" as a useful term. If its appearance didn't make you blink and back up in the second sentence of the paragraph above, then it might serve until a more obvious replacement slides into general use. Perhaps some analogue of "recording" will eventually dominate, but for now "display" seems suitable even though it privileges the visible over the audible. In any case, even if we don't dismiss the outmoded word "text" all at once, _EJournal_'s commitment to challenging inky-paper conventions continues. We look forward to opportunities to experiment with essays (and make-believe) that contain a-textual displays, and to essays addressing the ramifications of such a change in the distribution of imagination and information. Ted Jennings [l. 81] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial 2 - Writing as reward, not punishment One of those memorable flashes of comprehension in my career occurred when a colleague pointed out how often and how much the process of writing is associated with punishment. "Go to the board and write ...." "Sit still in your seat, you, there, and write ...." Even though teachers in grade school did sometimes like what I wrote, writing has ever since then been associated with unpleasant work. How many people rub their hands and grin when asked to take notes at a meeting? Even after that plausible association had been pointed out, and I realized that many college students still bore the scars of elementary-school discipline, I continued to overlook another negative association with writing: the agonies of struggling to make proper R's and to get those infernal capital I's -- the backslanty cursed cursive I's -- to line up properly. David Coniam reminds us in this issue's essay that young people are orally fluent long before they have enough control over their muscles to make "proper" letters. What would happen if articulate three-year-olds, even toddlers, could begin to make visible versions of their jabbering? What if the imaginative songs and stories they chant so easily could apppear on a screen? What if a chance to "write" became an attractive reward? Interesting questions, perhaps, but until recently questions that could hardly be answered. We can expect to begin getting answers soon. Display technology will reduce the agonies of "handwriting" and "penmanship"; composing will not be associated with punishment as often. "Writing" will include noise and pictures; fewer imaginations will be wounded; many youngsters will look forward to playing with keyboard and screen. No one person will be able to recall having learned *both* penmanship exclusively and keyboarding exclusively, so only historians will be able to speculate about the precise effects of the change in the way young people are conditioned to undertake "writing." But the changes are occurring, and the difference will be there, and our grandchildren's children won't realize that writing once was a psycho-motor struggle as well as a mental challenge. Ted Jennings [l. 120] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LITERACY FOR THE NEXT GENERATION: Writing Without Handwriting by David Coniam Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong This essay argues that keyboard and display technology will change the way young children learn to compose texts. They will not have to learn how to "write" with pen on paper; without those mental and physical barriers between their thoughts and a screen's visible, shareable version of their words, children will be happier about "really" writing than they are when a piece of blank paper is thrust in front of them. I New technologies, new orientations How many of us will still be writing with a pen in the next century? In the 22nd century, how many people will actually know what a pen is for? These questions may seem facetious, but we need only think back to our parents, who had inkwells on their school desks, to realize that the answers are not obvious. Fifty years ago, writing could only be done in a special environment: the ballpoint pen was unknown, "fountain" pens could be unreliable, the only medium for "writing" was paper. With only a few exceptions, a "writer" produced "manuscripts," and typewriters were for two-fingered newspaper reporters, and secretaries. [l. 145] Technology has already changed the way arithmetic is learned. At high school in maths lessons in the 50s and 60s, we all had to learn by heart our times tables (Remember chanting: "one nine is nine; two nines are 18; three nines are 27 ..."?). In contrast, the Mathematics section of the U.K. High Schools' National Curriculum (1990) states that pupils still need to know their times tables, but that the tables should not simply be rote-learnt. Thanks to the ready availability of pocket electronic calculators, elementary maths classes no longer require pupils to simply memorize and recall facts. Indeed, the National Curriculum recommends that time in the maths classroom be divided between "cerebral" work involving pupils working with their tables, and work involving the use of a calculator. Certain older educators, however, lament the use of calculators in much the same way that they rue the fact that Latin is not taught in schools any more. A popular slogan was "Learning Latin is good for your mind". What nonsense: the learning of Latin was simply a test of memory and very little else. The previous allusion to learning one's times tables holds equally true for the learning of Latin, which required no processing of language and no linguistic communication between students. In maths teaching, the widespread use of the calculator has resulted in a greater emphasis on application and less on the teaching of numbers and numeracy monitored by tests of memorization. Examination authorities recognize this. They allow calculators to be taken into examinations and they require candidates to apply their knowledge to complicated tasks, rather than simply testing students' powers of memory. [l. 171] The rise in popularity and acceptance of the personal calculator bears rather close analogy to what is happening with regard to writing: future generations will need to worry less about struggling with the medium, we might say, and will be able to attend more to the message. Keyboard and screen technology will let the child produce larger amounts of interesting text, more proudly and yet with less effort, than the old muscle-bound technology permits. The thrust of this essay, then, is that computer technology will have profound implications for what and how our children -- or our children's children -- learn to write. It will also affect and alter the way in which they acquire the skill of writing, both inside and outside the classroom, both with and without teacher/adult guidance. II Old technology versus new Pen, paper and hand-writing will not disappear entirely. Furner (1985) reports a study by Templin in the early 1960s on types of handwritten material produced by a cross-section of professional and blue-collar workers. Templin concluded that handwriting was used primarily for casual or short-delivery type tasks, such as writing cheques, dealing with social correspondence, filling in forms, drawing up shopping lists, and so forth. Interestingly enough, Templin commented that professionals made rough drafts in handwritten form, even when they had access to secretarial support. Furner believes that with increases in portability and decreases in cost, computers will be used more and more in homes, classrooms, and workplaces. She feels that word processing programs for children and adults will be increasingly widely used in writing, and that the uses of handwriting will diminish in the future. Because of this decline, she recommends that only one form of handwriting be taught in schools in the U.S.A. (^1^). She does conclude, however, that handwriting will still have a place in societ("Handwriting Instruction for a High-tech Society...," 1985, p. 5). [l. 201] People will still write by hand, so instruction in "penmanship" will still take place. Handwriting has long been regarded by schools and educators as essentially building up appropriate motor skills in young learners, with a lot of emphasis given to such behaviouristic practice as copying, tracing and other exercises and writing drills. Furner comments that such practice is generally of limited value and she argues that effective instruction needs to take account of handwriting as a perceptual-motor skill: To learn to write the child must form a mental representation of lower-case and capital letter form, numerals, punctuation marks, and general procedures of writing including size, spacing, alignment, straightness or slant, joining of letters ... (pp. 5-6). This is a succinct description of how much a young person must learn and remember in order to write by hand, yet it still does not address the difficulties of applying such "knowledge" to the task of physically inscribing those different shapes legibly on a piece of paper. Tapping a keyboard is easier. My son is a case in point. He is now four and has been (literally) bashing away on the computer since he was nine months old. This was not intentional: when he was eleven months old we discovered he was asthmatic, and letting him play on my old BBC computer for ten minutes a day distracted him long enough for him to take his medication with a minimum of fuss. By the age of twenty-two months, he knew where all the letters were on the keyboard, and could type in different letters upon request. His "keyboarding" has continued and developed over the last two years, and it was not until he reached the age of three and a half that I made the decision to begin teaching him to write with pencil and paper. [. 230] I would like to comment on a few of the problems my son has faced. Some of the problems I examine are English-language specific; nonetheless, I feel much of what I put forward can be extrapolated generally to the case of younger learners faced with the task of writing. The keyboard is an obvious visual palette from which the child can see and choose the letters he wants to write with. And even though the QWERTY keyboard layout is not user-friendly (either to the ergonomics of the hand or in the layout and assignment of keys) these factors have little impact on early child writing. The overriding factor for a child is not speed or efficiency, that is, but simply the labour required to produce the characters. The easier it is for the writer to make letters, the more letters will be made. Papert makes the point that an adult with a word processor expects a first draft to be essentially "unacceptable" -- expects to revise because it will be easy to revise. This kind of fluency, however, is a luxury that a young child who is writing with a pen does not have, since: The physical act of writing [is] slow and laborious.... For most children rewriting a text is so laborious that the first draft is the final copy, and the skill of rereading with a critical eye is never acquired. (_Mindstorms_, p. 30) When working with a pen, a child must remember how to move arm and wrist and fingers to shape each letter. On the keyboard, all the letters are available at a glance; different letters do not need as much deliberation while - or before - they are retrieved from the memory store. The load on short-term memory is therefore lighter. The fact that on the keyboard a letter can be quickly picked out means the writer is less likely to lose track of his next target, the next letter. When my son uses the computer to write his name, he says to himself "Kevin" and moves easily from one letter to another. With a pen (to reiterate the contrast) he has to recall each letter, frame it "correctly" on the page and between the lines, size it, and concentrate on making the proper trail of ink on the paper. [l. 265] Penmanship practitioners have to learn two alphabets, upper and lower case. In terms of handwriting, common practice has been to teach children to write everything initially in upper case. Lower case is introduced later, and the struggle to differentiate when to use which case then commences. The difference is less of a problem when the child is working with a keyboard. Initially, my son worked at the keyboard in upper case; the move to the concept of: When writing a name, the first letter is big and the rest are small was surprisingly easy. All the child has to do is press the SHIFT key before typing. The logic - or confusion - of why English needs both upper and lower case can be left for later explanation. Learning to put spaces between words is accomplished much more easily on a computer than with pen and paper. My son moved to: Kevin [SPACE] Coniam without a great deal of prompting. In contrast, figuring out the proper spacing between the two names on paper is not as easy for a child as it is for an adult: How big should the space between each word be? Should it always be the same size space? Why does the space between two words need to be bigger than that between two letters? Why not a new line between words instead of a space? One major convention (in English) is that writing proceeds from left to right across the page. (Brodie comments on how the linguist Sir Richard Burton recalls his experiences of first learning to write Arabic. Since he was teaching himself, Burton wrote from left to right as he did English, [rather than from right to left] - only realizing his mistake when an Arab friend happened to look at some of his writing! [_The Devil Drives_, 1984].) This may not offer as great a hurdle to handwriters as some other conventions, but it offers none at all to users of keyboard and screen, even left-handers like Kevin. [l. 300] These four conventions -- letter formation, cases, spacing, direction -- look easy to adults. But they are at least as great a barrier between a young learner and "writing" as grammar and punctuation and spelling are for older children. Why, if it were not for pressure and promise, would anyone choose to suffer through learning to write with pen and paper? The fact that with a pen each individual letter is such a struggle is quite demotivating for the young learner. Too often, when he was younger, the only way to get Kevin to complete a handwriting task was to threaten him. The ability -- or indeed desire -- to work by oneself is another point worth examining here. I quite frequently hear the computer being turned on and my son doing some letter or word-writing or word-recognition games by himself in his bedroom. A very successful piece of software here has been Superior Software's "SPEECH!", which produces human-like sound. I wrote a simple BASIC program which interfaces with the speech software so that when a letter is typed in, the computer speaks the name of that letter: "K" --> /kay/ "E" --> /ee/ "V" --> /vee/ and so on. -- finally concatenating all the individual letter sounds to produce a "word" or string of sounds. "Hey Dad, come and look at this funny word I've typed in - is that a real word?" I hear my son call out. Upon seeing something like "asdfsefm" I smile, and say - I hope not too condescendingly - "Good stuff, Kevin; well, that's not quite a word, but let the computer try and say it anyway." [l. 331] "Hey Dad, come and see this word I've written" is a cry I have never heard from my son when he is writing with pen and paper. That kind of writing -- with a pen -- is done only at my request. The colours and sounds and feedback that the computer gives (no matter how overtly behaviourist the learning styles currently employed in software may be) hold interest and lend much more motivation even than a cajoling parent sitting beside the child. Levin (1988) reflects the same perspective. She comments on the tedium of writing for a kindergarten child, and suggests that computers can provide support for kindergarten writers: Children can experiment with letters and words without being distracted by the fine motor aspects of handwriting.... Perhaps more importantly, five-year-olds can learn to use the computer as a tool for exploration and experimentation ("Methodologies of Reading and Writing ....," pp. 58-9, 1988). She discusses the fact that for kindergarten children written language is scarce and it is the spoken language that gives them control over their environment. Use of the computer -- to enable children to write, or even just begin to write -- may, she suggests, give children a greater sense of control and power over their environment. Guddemi and Mills (1989) likewise note, in a study of literacy development, that children seemed to prefer computer-activities to pen-based ones; they were more aware of general alphabetic principles following computer-based work; and they were more willing to experiment and take risks with their own writing when at the computer ("The Impact of Word Processing ....," 1989). [l. 360] Imaginative software encourages children to pick up skills. I have struggled hard with paper-based activities for my four-year-old, and have not got far beyond basic copying and such not especially inventive moves as crosswords and hangman! In contrast, the computer has a considerable number of different focuses: - speech-producing software, (e.g., Superior Software's SPEECH!) - simple large-font word processors (e.g., Tedimen Software's FOLIO) - simple phonic picture games where the child has to type in the first or last letter of an object - letter and word-matching games According to the computer manufacturers, the next significant change in computers and computer use for the average person will be the introduction of pen-based computers. Such machines work on the basis of handwritten input: The computer is equipped with a "pen" and a writing tablet. A user uses the pen to write in hand upon the tablet, and handwriting recognition software then interprets the different handwriting. Ironically, I do not feel the advent of pen-based computers will significantly change the way we write. Pen-based computers pose exactly the same problems as do ink pens and paper: One cannot write fast enough with a pen. In contrast, even if one is not a touch-typist, the amount of data that can be got down on a keyboard at any one time still represents at least a four-fold increase over what can be physically written with a pen, a point that is confirmed by investigations into college student writing (see Edwards, "How Computers Change Things," 1991; Bangert-Drowns, "Research on Wordprocessing and Writing Instruction," 1989). III Getting beyond barriers [l. 389] Guddemi and Fite (1990) report on a computer literacy project in the US called Head Start. Their project examined instruction among a group of 115 kindergarten and preschool children, half of whom had instruction centering around a computer and half who did not. The researchers concluded that the computer-managed exercises had resulted in pupil gains, even though the study was limited by duration and amount of computer time per student. This matches with my personal observation that not only does computer use result in easier access to the written word for the child in terms of equal time spent on pen- or computer-based writing, but that the child is prepared to put in his/her own time in the exercises or "games." Guddemi and Fite further comment that: . . . computers strengthen specific skills, foster creativity and problem solving, and enhance the writing process ("Is there a Legitimate Role for Computers ..." p. 5). For the younger learner, pen-based writing is essentially an exercise consisting of output with no communicative purpose. The child may be copying something: Parent: "Come on, Kevin; write 'Happy Birthday James' on this present before you give it to James this afternoon. I've written it; now you copy it." Or the child may be pressed to pretend to want to write something: Parent: "What would you like to write this afternoon, Kevin?" Child : "Bus." Parent: "OK, how do you spell bus?" Child : "I don't know; you tell me." And so the charade of pen-paper "writing" continues. In contrast, on a computer, the child can get a reaction to "writing" he has chosen to experiment with. The speech-synthesizing program itself, mentioned earlier, provides response to letters, words, or indeed nonsense "scribbling" that is typed in on the keyboard. [l. 425] There are other ways to associate keyboard and screen with acomplishment. One moderately formal system involves LOGO, a computer language designed for children. With it a young child can create lines by using simple commands to move the "turtle" icon. The typed instructions: BK 200 LT 90 FD 100 would produce a figure that resembles the letter "L," for instance (see Papert). The point here is that the child comes to realize that pressing the keys produces a recognizable outcome, and (by extension) that writing need not be a tiresome activity which is only done under duress at Daddy's insistence. Papert discusses certain aspects of the traditional teaching situation (with regard to mathematics). He suggests that where children have to learn "what is good for them" no matter what, an unfavorable attitude towards learning is all too easily engendered: . . . by forcing the children into learning situations doomed in advance, [school] generates powerful negative feelings about mathematics and about learning in general (p. 9). This uncomfortable feeling is one I have got myself in connection with the foisting of pen and paper writing on my son. Concerning the use of LOGO mentioned above, what the child is doing is effectively scribbling on the computer. Scribbling as an activity is now regarded as an essential part of a child's writing-development process (Warash, "The Computer Language Experience Approach," 1984). Rather than being simply garbage and thought of as a waste of paper, scribbling is now seen as an integral part of the learning-to-write process. What might be a meaningless scribble to an adult may well have meaning for the child who produced it. Warash discusses the degree to which preschoolers ascribe importance and meaning to scribblings or other forms of "illegible" written output. She comments that just as a scribble a child has made on paper has more meaning for him/her than something an adult may have written (however "legibly"), a "scribble" on the computer may have even more "meaning" for the child for two reasons: It has been produced by the child, and the "components" of the scribble are more easily deciphered. She comments on the advantage the computer has in this respect: . . . it gives the child the opportunity to produce a perfectly-typed picture or letter. The child has the responsibility of making the decision about what he wants to type (p. 4). [l. 469] Further, she comments that the computer is a great motivational tool because the child: has complete control over all the keys. Each key the child pushes does something different.... A child is given control over a machine that enables him to draw shapes that he normally cannot draw freehand (p. 4). In Warash's study at the West Virginia Child Development Laboratory, children were found to verbalize considerably more over pictures they had "drawn" on the computer than over those they had "drawn" freehand. She concludes that young children appear not to have been given the credit they should have for their capability of working meaningfully with computers: Working with words may not seem appropriate for preschoolers but the children have set the pace... (p. 6). Lawler, in another report (1980), discusses how he encouraged his six-year-old daughter, Miriam, to write letters with a word processor. He comments that motivated focus on the message may well produce unintentional developments in the child's appreciation of the form: . . . if the child can create text which she is willing to dwell upon as reader, she may gradually perceive the structure of the text.... Thus an initially unstructured form of expression would be fit, piecemeal, into those conventional forms which have been found effective for communication ("One Child's Learning ...," p. 16). Getting a child to focus on the content, then, may result in unexpected spin-offs in the child's perception of form, even though this may not have been explicitly taught. Admittedly, Lawler is discussing the use of the word processor by a child who has mastered the rudiments of literacy; nonetheless, the arguments which here concern motivation and peripheral learning hold in a comparable manner for much younger learners. [l. 50] Papert comments that word processors can make a child's experience of writing more like that of a real writer. Adults need to accept the premise that as they write with word processors, so should children (even though children may not have the same purpose or produce similar outcomes): The image of children using the computer as a writing instrument is a particularly good example of my general thesis that what is good for professionals is good for children (p. 30). IV A transition scenario Computer technology has advanced remarkably since the advent of the PC in 1981. With regard to advances in computer miniaturization, and the feedback of such technology into daily life, significant progress has been made even over the last two or three years. In early 1990 I made the move to buy myself a laptop -- a machine that weighed seven kilos, and represented (in those days) the height of portability. Two years on, seven kilos with a 40-megabtye hard disk of storage space depicts obsolescence -- with even the moniker "laptop" now standing for out-of-date technology. The current trend is toward smaller, lighter and even more portable; first came the two to three kilo "notebook," and now the half-kilo "palmtop," which is literally the size of a big fist, has arrived. As technology brings us more portable and affordable computers, and as our attitude toward such technology changes, the process of helping young people learn to write is likely to change. Inkwells and "times tables" will be buried in history lessons; learning to shape letters with a pen in order to make convenient personal lists will be postponed until mature muscles can handle the task easily. Penmanship, hand-writing, manu-scribing won't be a barrier between mind and message. Keyboard and display will make composing, creating, expressing and story-telling easy and fun instead of boring and hard. "Look what I did!" will be the cry, not "Do I have to copy it over?" The way in which written Chinese used to be taught in the first years of Chinese primary schools (and still is in many schools in China and Hong Kong) can be seen as representing an extreme of misplaced emphasis. Not only was the order of the strokes in which one wrote a character important, but considerable emphasis was also placed on the way the brush that produced those strokes was held. And the content of writing classes rarely involved more than copying and recopying of characters. For many youngsters, the form that "writing" took far outweighed any actual message that was conveyed. [l. 547] The future the computer holds for initial writing (in English at least) is that our youngsters will be presented with a much more transparent medium for self-expression than that which they encounter at present. It may also result in a rather different classroom environment in that there will be greater flexibility for learner manoeuvres; the greater array of writing activities available to learners may lessen some of the tedium of accommodating to the medium of writing. There could be less teacher pressure and more learner independence. Opportunity to experiment with the new medium may enhance learners' motivation to write. As for education outside the classroom, Papert eloquently prophesies the empowering potential of the computer: I believe the computer presence will enable us to modify the learning environment outside the classroom so that much if not all the knowledge schools currently try to teach with such pain and expense and such limited success will be learned, as the child learns to talk, painlessly, successfully, and without organized instruction (p. 9). The computer will let our younger writers of the future express and negotiate "meaning" without the worries that go with having to draw acceptable shapes on lined paper. Whereas at present the final written "product" is always a long way off, the prospect of getting the story told quickly by way of keyboard and screen may make children look forward to writing. In the developed world, where the school desk of the 21st century will have a computer on it instead of an inkwell, our children's children may well be the last generation that receives formal classroom instruction in how to use a pen. While the demise of the pen may result in the demise of the skills of calligraphy and "penmanship" (or result in these skills being brought into the art class), it may also result in the demise of certain obstacles to communication faced by our young learners. With those obstacles out of the way, young children may find writing an imagination-stirring pleasure instead of a tedious schoolroom exercise. [l. 577] NOTE (^1^) Currently both manuscript and cursive forms of handwriting are taught in the USA. REFERENCES Bangert-Drowns, Robert. 1989. Research on wordprocessing and writing instruction. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association. (San Francisco, CA, USA. March 1989) Brodie, Fawn M. 1984. _The devil drives: the life of Sir Richard Burton_. Norton & Co. Edwards, Bruce L. Jr. 1991. How computers change things: literacy and the digitised word. _Writing Instructor_, Vol. 10, No.2, pp. 68-76. Folio. 1986. Tedimen Software: Southampton, UK. Furner, B.A. 1985. Handwriting instruction for a high-tech society: will handwriting be necessary? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English Spring Conference. (Houston, TX, USA. March 1985) Guddemi, Marcy and Fite, Kathy. 1990. Is there a legitimate role for computers in early childhood? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. (Washington, DC, USA. November 1990) Guddemi, Marcy and Mills, H. 1989. The impact of word processing and play training on literacy development. _Journal of Computing in Childhood Education_ 1, pp. 29-38. Lawler, R.W. 1980. One child's learning: introducing writing with a computer. A. I. Memo no. 575. M.I.T.: Cambridge. Artificial Intelligence Lab. [l. 614] Levin, Jill. 1988. Methodologies of reading and writing in kindergarten. ERIC/ reference details unavailable. Papert, Seymour. 1980. _Mindstorms_. Basic Books: U.S.A. Speech! 1984. Superior Software: Leeds, UK. Warash, Barbara Gibson. 1984. The computer language experience approach. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English Spring Conference. (Columbus, OH, USA. April 1984.) Department of Education and Science and the Welsh Office. 1990. Mathematics in the National Curriculum. In "The National Curriculum," HMSO: London. David Coniam b096770@cucsc.bitnet Faculty of Education Chinese University of Hong Kong [ This essay in Volume 2 Issue 2 of _EJournal_ (June, 1992) is (c) copyright _EJournal_. Permission is hereby granted to give it away. _EJournal_ hereby assigns any and all financial interest to David Coniam. 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But if you would like to bring any publicly available information to our readers' attention, send your review (any length) to us, or ask if writing one sounds to us like a good idea. [l. 673] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About "supplements": _EJournal_ plans to experiment with ways of revising, responding to, re- working, or even retracting the texts we publish. Authors who want to address a subject already broached --by others or by themselves-- may send texts, preferably brief, that we will consider publishing under the "Supplements" heading. Proposed "supplements" will not go through full, formal editorial review. Whether this "Department" will operate like a delayed-reaction bulletin board or like an expanded letters-to-the-editor space, or whether it will be withdrawn in favor of a system of appending supplemental material to archived texts, or will take on an electronic identity with no direct print- oriented analogue, will depend on what readers/writers make of the opportunity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About _EJournal_: _EJournal_ is an all-electronic, Bitnet/Internet distributed, peer-reviewed, academic periodical. We are particularly interested in theory and practice surrounding the creation, transmission, storage, interpretation, alteration and replication of electronic text. We are also interested in the broader social, psychological, literary, economic and pedagogical implications of computer-mediated networks. The journal's essays will be available free to Bitnet/Internet/Usenet addresses. Recipients may make paper copies; _EJournal_ will provide authenticated paper copy from our read-only archive for use by academic deans or others. Individual essays, reviews, stories-- texts --sent to us will be disseminated to subscribers as soon as they have been through the editorial process, which will also be "paperless." We expect to offer access through libraries to our electronic Contents, Abstracts, and Keywords, and to be indexed and abstracted in appropriate places. Writers who think their texts might be appreciated by _EJournal_'s audience are invited to forward files to EJOURNAL@ALBANY.BITNET . If you are wondering about starting to write a piece for to us, feel free to ask if it sounds appropriate. There are no "styling" guidelines; we would like to be a little more direct and lively than many paper publications, and less hasty and ephemeral than most postings to unreviewed electronic spaces. We read ASCII; we look forward to experimenting with other transmission formats and protocols. Back issues of _EJournal_ are available from a Fileserver at Albany. [l. 712] A Table of Contents listing, along with abstracts, can be obtained by sending the message GET EJRNL INDEX to the *LIST* address: LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET . To get a specific back issue, note its filename and send the message GET to the *LIST* address: LISTSERV@ALBANY.BITNET . [Note: Sending the message "index ejrnl" to the List address will call forth an unhelpfully crude listing of all the issues by volume and issue number.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Board of Advisors: Stevan Harnad, Princeton University Dick Lanham, University of California at Los Angeles Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries Joe Raben, City University of New York Bob Scholes, Brown University Harry Whitaker, University of Quebec at Montreal -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Consulting Editors - June 1992 ahrens@hartford John Ahrens Hartford ap01@liverpool.ac.uk Stephen Clark Liverpool crone@cua Tom Crone Catholic University dabrent@acs.ucalgary.ca Doug Brent Calgary djb85@albnyvms Don Byrd Albany donaldson@loyvax Randall Donaldson Loyola College ds001451@ndsuvm1 Ray Wheeler North Dakota eng006@unoma1 Marvin Peterson Nebraska - Omaha erdt@pucal Terry Erdt Purdue Calumet fac_aska@jmuvax1 Arnie Kahn James Madison folger@yktvmv Davis Foulger IBM - Watson Center george@gacvax1 G. N. Georgacarakos Gustavus Adolphus geurdes@rulfsw.leidenuniv.nl Han Geurdes Leiden gms@psuvm Gerry Santoro Pennsylvania State University nrcgsh@ritvax Norm Coombs Rochester Institute of Tech. pmsgsl@ritvax Patrick M. Scanlon Rochester Institute of Tech. r0731@csuohio Nelson Pole Cleveland State ryle@urvax Martin Ryle Richmond twbatson@gallua Trent Batson Gallaudet usercoop@ualtamts Wes Cooper Alberta -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- University at Albany Computing Services Center: [l. 754] Isabel Nirenberg, Bob Pfeiffer; Ben Chi, Director -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor: Ted Jennings, English, University at Albany Managing Editor: Ron Bangel, University at Albany -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- State University of New York University Center at Albany Albany, NY 12222 USA