Project Development History
The Beginning
The Writing Exchange began development in the autumn of 1995. Its first stage was conceptual development of the idea to use the Internet to create a writing mentoring program to assist middle school students to develop their writing skills through friendly, remote interaction with high school students with excellent writing skills.
The concept was not just technological but also behavioral. Issues such as: how to pair apprentice and mentor; how to develop an e-mail culture among uninitiated students; what method for mentor feedback would be most appealing to apprentices; how and to what degree to involve teachers; what are appropriate rewards for the apprentice and mentor; etc., only begin to indicate the rich and often unpredictable social/behavioral context in which the Writing Exchange would function.
The second stage was the creation of a pilot study using two Chicago Public Schools, a fifth grade class at The Newberry Academy and hand-picked high school students at Von Steuben High School. For three months the Institute of Design development team observed the interaction between apprentice and mentor, getting first hand knowledge of their technological confusion and mistakes, their enthusiasm for the project and their high expectations.
The pilot study used off-the-shelf software (Claris Works and Eudora) along with the Institute of Design's server to simulate the environment to be created. This ad hoc assembly allowed the team to observe student behavior and match real student actions against our assumptions about their behavior. This early study provided insights with which we were able to alter and improve the design of Writing Exchange.
A tight funding stream and quick development schedule have brought us to this point: Ed, a primary tool for the Writing Exchange, is downloadable in two Macintosh versions (Power PC and 68K); E. Laine, the Unix-based system software is also downloadable; Eudora remains as the mail exchange program. If future funding can be found, the mail operations will be folded into Ed and the functionality of Ed will be expanded.
Writing Exchange is functional. The technology is a facilitator rather than the focus of this project. The true focus is to excite children about communicating through writing. As we submit proposals to gain continuing funding for the next steps in this project, we are interested in feeback from users. Please send us e-mail at Writing Exchange and happy writing.
We would like to thank Dr. Jane Rosen's fifth grade class at The Newberry Academy, Dr. Jane Rosen, Renaud Beaudoin, the principal at Newberry, the high school mentors at Von Steuben High School, Lucy Kowalski, the head of the English department, and Harold Kiehm, the principal at Von Steuben for their participation in this pilot study.
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