Is Technology Used To Support Writing Instruction? (1)

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The two grade levels also show quite distinct patterns of change between 2002 and 2007. While twelfth-grade students were more likely to use computers for all three tasks in 2007 than in 2002, eighth-grade students re-ported slightly but significantly less use of computers for writing drafts and for revising.

There are several different factors contributing to these results. One is certainly the continued spread of computer technology and the increasing availability of computers both in school and at home, which has led to greater use of Breitling Replica computer-based tools of all sorts. At the same time, many classrooms do not have computers available at all times for all students, so that much of the time students begin assignments by hand in class, moving their work to a computer after they have already gotten started.

There is still another factor that may be limiting the use of computers at Grade 8: Many high-stakes exams are still given with paper and pencil rather than from a computer-based platform. (NAEP data indicate that even in ...
... 2002 some 92% of seventh- or eighth-grade students faced a state exam in English language arts.) This makes some teachers, and indeed some districts, reluctant to allow their students to make regular use of word processing, in case students might find it difficult to make the transition back to paper and pencil in the exam context. Michael Russell and Lisa Abrams, for example, found in a 2001 survey that nationally some 30% of teachers report that they do not use computers when teaching writing because it does not match the format of the state assessment, and 4.4% report that school or district policy actually prohibited computer use for the teaching of writing.

Although the impetus for these policies is understandable, they have the perverse effect of limiting students' ability to use the tools that will be required for success in higher education and the world of work, where word processing and computer use are now taken for granted. This problem may be ameliorated in the relatively near future, as large-scale testing, including NAEP, migrates toward computer-based delivery. The Breitling Replica Watches framework for the 2011 NAEP writing assessment, for example, calls for eighth- and twelfth-grade students to be assessed with word processors, with access to a variety of commonly available editing tools (Act, Inc., "Writing").
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