Cloud-based Writing in K-12 Schools
Professor Mark Warschauer has been awarded a Google Grant: Cloud-based Writing in K-12 Schools.
Abstract
Though learning to write is a vital skill in today's knowledge economy, writing is poorly taught in K-12 schools. And learning to write collaboratively with others is seldom taught at all. Building on a successful study funded by a Google Research Award last year, we seek to investigate the ways that Google Apps for Education, and particularly Google Docs, is used in writing instruction in a successful public school district providing one-to-one computer access with netbooks and open source software. Using interviews, observations, a survey, server data, and test score outcomes, this study will investigate how Google Docs is integrated into instruction for diverse students, what are the particular uses for collaborative writing and for receiving and responding to peer or teacher feedback, what the relationship is of use to student test score outcomes in writing, and how all of this can contribute to the design of an online writing environment that incorporates Google Docs and that matches the needs of K-12 schools.
