Virtual connections and real boundaries: Teaching writing and preparing writing teachers on the internet

The difficulties encountered and questions raised by the project about use of computer technologies in teaching writing and about purposes of writing instruction more generally are described.

Abstract

The project described in this article was intended to bring together, electronically, a group of high school student writers and university undergraduate English-education majors; the purpose was to give the university students “hands-on” experience with high school student writing and to offer the high school writers an audience beyond their teacher. What seemed like a straightforward and exciting virtual connection, however, became an exercise in negotiating a number of “real” boundaries (technological, institutional, and theoretical) and, ultimately, revealed important and difficult questions about the uses of computerbased resources such as the Internet for writing instruction and for high school—university collaborations in the teaching of writing. This article describes the difficulties encountered and explores questions raised by the project about use of computer technologies in teaching writing and about purposes of writing instruction more generally.