Electronic Quills: A Situated Evaluation of Using Computers for Writing in Classrooms

Chapter 3: QUILL: A System to Support Literacy Development
In order to promote functional learning environments for literacy development, QUILL provided a system containing both computer-based tools and environments for writing. The previous chapter identifies six pedagogical goals that served as intermediate concepts between the broad theory underlying QUILL and the details of its component parts. In this chapter, we fill in the details of the idealization of QUILL and how that idealization was communicated to teachers.
Such an analysis of an innovation's idealization is a critical element in a situated evaluation. In later chapters, we look at different realizations that emerged as teachers and students re-created the innovation. In order to make sense of the various realizations of QUILL in classrooms, it is necessary to explicate the idealization in detail. This includes more than the hardware and software, since the QUILL system, as presented to teachers, included writing activities, materials for teachers, teacher workshops, and other manifestations of our pedagogical philosophy.
By the standards of the l990s, the QUILL software is slow and limited in what it can do. But at the time of its development, QUILL was relatively advanced, pushing the limits of the technology. Even today, while features from QUILL can be found in various other programs, few, if any, of these pro grams contain as coherent a package of tools and writing environments as did QUILL, and there is nothing comparable we know of for elementary school students. In any case, the point here is neither to praise nor to criticize QUILL, but rather to use its implementation as a vehicle for studying educational innovation and change.
It is convenient to think of the whole QUILL system as a three-part innovation First, there was software to support a new approach to using computers for teaching writing. Second, there was a new method of writing instruction that extended the writing process approach to take advantage of new technologies. And third, there was a call for a new style of classroom management, partly as a prerequisite for the successful use of the software and writing activities, but also as a desirable goal in itself, as in the ease of peer collaboration in writing.
As with any innovation, there were tangible manifestations of the different aspects of QUILL. First, there was a software package that ran on the Apple Il+ or IIe computer. The software provided writing tools that were embodied h1 the Writer's Assistant text-editing program, and writing environments (PLANNER for generating and organizing ideas for writing, LIBRARY for storing and sharing texts, and MAILBAG for exchanging messages). Each program had specific capabilities designed to assist student writers. The programs could be used individually or in conjunction with each other during a larger writing task. Second, there were activities for using the software, presented in written form in the QUILL Teacher's Guide (Bruce, Rubin, & Loucks, 1984). Third, there were various mechanisms for supporting teachers and helping them manage the use of QUILL in the classroom. These included a workshop) for preparing teachers to use QUILL, classroom support by the QUILL developers, a hotline for help with computer questions, and local facilitators, people in a school or school district who developed special expertise to help QUILL teachers. The QUILL Teacher's Guide also contained the "Cookbook," a series of suggested lessons for introducing QUILL and the writing process to a classroom .
In this chapter, we present these components of the QUILL system as much as possible as the teachers perceived them. We have included descriptions from the QUILL Teacher's Guide, to give an accurate rendition of what the teachers actually saw as the idealization of QUILL.
QUILL SOFTWARE
The QUILL software was designed to help in the creation of functional learning environments that involved expensive writing and reading. It had many features that addressed one or mole of our six pedagogical goals (PGs). It ran on an Apple II+ or Apple IIe computer with 64K bytes of memory and required two floppy disk drives, a monochrome monitor, an 80-character, upper and lower case card, and a printer. Students used the printer to obtain copies of the texts they wrote to take home, to show their teachers and friends, or to do projects such as a class newspaper. At the time of QUlLL's development, even this use of a printer was an innovation, as connecting a computer to a printer was not universally considered necessary, even for writing activities. The version of QUILL presented to teachers in Alaska included activities in which their students could send electronic messages to students in other schools both inside and outside of Alaska. For these, teachers needed a modem to connect the computer to a telephone line, a way to pay telephone charges, and access to a computer network.

FIG. 3.1 The QUILL software.

QUILL comprised four interrelated programs (see Fig. 3.1). Writer's Assistant was a general word processing program that was never invoked by name but was accessed indirectly by any function in PLANNER, LIBRARY, or MAILBAG, such as "seeing" someone else's text in the LIBRARY. PLANNER was a tool that helped students organize ideas for writing, then share their newly created organizing tools. LIBRARY was a writing environment in which students could make their writing accessible to others by storing it with the full authors' names, the full title, and keywords indicating topic, genre, or other characteristics of the piece. MAILBAG was an in-class message system in which students could send messages to other students, the teacher, small groups, or a bulletin board. Students decided which program to use according to their purpose for writing and chose it from the following computer menu (Fig. 3.2).
________________________________________________________
QUILL

1) PLANNER
Helps you to think of ideas for writing.
You can take notes and get a list of your notes
when you are finished.
2) LIBRARY
Stores your writing so you can change or
add to it later and others can read it.
3) MAILBAG
Allows you to send messages to your teacher
and your classmates or read the messages
they have sent to you.

________________________________________________________

FIG. 3.2. The QUILL main menu.

In what follows we describe each program and its suggested uses, beginning with the most general and most widely used program, LIBRARY.
LIBRARY
LIBRARY created an environment that enabled students and teachers to share their writing. Students and teachers could write about any topic they chose and store their writing in LIBRARY so that it was available to others. In a typical word processing program, at the time of QUILL's development, texts were stored and accessed with short, often obscure file names. In contrast, pieces of writing in LIBRARY were stored and accessed by the author's full name, the co-author's name, the full title, and up to five keywords. This piece of QUILL was actually an electronic model of the familiar card catalog system in a library.

LIBRARY provided a social environment for students' writing in which sharing, evaluating, reading, and editing one's own and other people's writing were united in a communicative framework. It promoted sharing because each composition was indexed in ways that invited access. Student writers needed to think about their audience since they had to choose keywords by which other students would choose to read their pieces. Students using QUILL often responded to this need by designating one of their five allowed keywords to "advertise" their piece, using eye-catching words such as "loony" along with more straightforward informative keywords.
When a student chose the LIBRARY option, the options in Fig. 3.3 would appear:
        ________________________________________________________
                        LIBRARY

        1) SEE          Read LIBRARY entries by choosing keywords or titles

        2) ADD          Put a new entry into the LIBRARY

        3) CHANGE       Change an old LIBRARY entry

        4) QUIT USING LIBRARY

        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.3. The LIBRARY main menu.
A student who wanted to SEE an existing entry could select it using three separate indices. As in a card catalogue in a library, entries were indexed by title and author, and by subject, or keyword. Alternatively, they could be accessed by specifying their entry number. Thus, after selecting the SEE option from the screen above, the student would see the following (Fig. 3.4):
        ________________________________________________________
        
                Do you want to choose an entry by using:

                1. Keywords
                2. Title and author
                3. Entry number
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.4. Three methods for accessing LIBRARY entries.
If the student decided to choose an entry by keyword, a screen something like Fig. 3.5 would appear:
         ________________________________________________________
                         
        There are entries for these keywords:

        1. Review                       6. Entertainment
        2. Food                         7. Delicious
        3. Pizza                        8. Italian
        4. Animals                      9. Games
        5. Restaurant                   10. Movies
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.5. Choosing entries by keyword.
Following the selection of a keyword, the student would see a list of all en tries with that keyword (Fig. 3.6):
Choosing the title and author option would produce a list of all the entries on the disk from which a student could choose a single piece of writing; choosing by entry number would call up a single entry. In any case, students could choose to print out the entry selected or view it on the screen using Writer's Assistant. A sample restaurant review from the QUILL Teacher's Guide, is shown in Fig. 3.7.
Students could also ADD to a LIBRARY disk. After choosing option 2 on the first menu they would be placed in the Writer's Assistant program and could write any text. When the draft was done, the writer could add keywords (using a procedure that was also used for planners). First, a list of previously used keywords was presented (Fig. 3.8):
    
         ________________________________________________________
        
                Key word: Pizza
                There are 3 entries with this keyword.

        TITLE                   AUTHOR #1       AUTHOR #2

        1. Rita's Pizza         Steve
            Keywords: Pizza/Review/Italian

        2. Gigliotti's          Joan            Vinnie
            Keywords: Pizza/Restaurant

        3. House of Pizza       Ed
             Keywords: Pizza/Review/Delicious
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.6. Selecting a LIBRARY entry.
        ________________________________________________________
        
        Pizza lovers, slay away from Rita's Pizza! I m sorry To say that 
        poor Rita hasn't the knack for making pizza. When I ate there,
        I had to wait 25 minutes for my pizza. The crust was mushy and 
        the sauce tasted like tomato Juice. The center of the pizza had too
        much oil on it and it dripped all over my hands and the lable
        when I picked it up. Maybe I went there on a bad day. It just 
        seemed like everything was lousy. The only good thing about 
        Rita's Pizza was that it had a room with video games.
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.7. A sample LIBRARY entry.
        
     ________________________________________________________
        
        You may choose one of these words to add 
        to your list of keywords

                1. Story                7   Visitor
                2. Zoo                  8.  Friend
                3. Review               9.  Food
                4. Animal               10. Cold
                5. Practice             11. Shower
                6. Revision
     ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.8. Choosing keywords to attach to a LIBRARY entry.
The writer could select up to five keywords. Following the selection of previously used keywords a screen for entering novel ones would appear (Fig. 3.9):
        ________________________________________________________
        
        Keywords: /Review/Practice/
        You can add your own keyword If you don't
        want to add a word press the  key and
        then press . Type your word and
        press .

        Games

        You gave "Games." Is that okay?
        Type YES or NO and press .
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.9. Adding a new keyword to a LIBRARY entry.
In this example, the writer has already chosen "review" and "practice" as keywords and is about to add the keyword, "games." This third keyword will be attached to the writer's entry, and will also be added to the master list for possible use by other writers. Keywords were one way to address PG2 (integration of reading and writing). Students saw that their own writing could be accessed and read by others, just as they could find and read what their classmates had written.
Each entry could have one or two authors. (Additional authors could be added by using groups or conjoining names.) The explicit request for a second author was a way the software addressed PG5 (collaboration).
Finally, the student could CHANGE previous entries in LIBRARY. He or she would select an entry to revise and then follow the same procedure used for ADDing. CHANGE was delineated as a separate menu item in order to highlight for teachers and students both the possibility and desirability of revision, thus reifying PG6 (revision).
LIBRARY encouraged writing with an awareness of audience, facilitated sharing, and eased the teacher's record-keeping burden by providing an easy way to assemble a student's portfolio. The fact that a single composition may have been written by more than one student presented no problem with QUlLL's LIBRARY. The QUILL Teacher's Guide presented the following vision of its use:
     A teacher wants to help students develop skills in giving instructions.  
She decides that the students will each contribute an article to a class
"How To Do It Manual." Leah wants to write some instructions for
building a bird leader and add it to LIBRARY. She uses the QUILL
Library dish that contains.other "How To Do It" articles. She adds an
entry to this disk, which already contains five articles by other students in
the class. When she finishes her article, Leah types her title, "How to
build a Bird Feeder to Attract Birds," and then her name. The program
then asks for one or more keywords-words that will give others a good
idea of what her article is about. Leah looks at the list of existing
keywords, generated by students who have already entered their pieces.
She selects"outdoor" from the list as one of her keywords. She also wants
to add another, more specific keyword to the existing list. She types in
the word "carpentry." The program automatically updates the keyword
list, and "carpentry" will appear the next time anyone uses this disk, either
to add their own article or read those other students have written. Her
article thus becomes part of the "How To Do It Manual," automatically
indexed for quick referral. 
     Later, Arnold tells Leah he has read her article and couldn't follow one
piece of the instructions. After she explains it to him, he suggests a way
she might make her piece more understandable. Together, they rework the
offending paragraph and save the new version Arnold then has the
opportunity to add his name as a second author of the piece and, with
Leah's permission, he does. Other students will now see both authors'
names when they list all the articles on this disk. 
     Leah used LIBRARY to add information; Jeff wants to use it to find
information. He needs some information about sharks for an adventure
story he is writing. He chooses the LIBRARY disk containing an Animal
Encyclopedia his class has put together and looks through the keywords.
The list is long and starts out: arctic, cats, fish, horses, whales . . .Sharks
do not appear on the list, so Jeff decides to look at all entries with the
keyword "fish." After he chooses this keyword, the titles of four articles
about fish are shown on the screen, one of which is called "Denizens of
the Deep." He suspects the article might be about sharks, so he decides to
read it. The article gives him some new information about sharks, but it is
not as focused as the article he is writing. He decides to add his article to
the Animal Encyclopedia when it is finished, and to add the keyword,
"sharks" that will make it easier for fellow students to find his article.
Easy access to LIBRARY provides important information for Jeff's
writing, as well as motivation for him to contribute his own piece to fill in
a gap in the Animal Encyclopedia .
PLANNER
PLANNER was designed to help students generate and organize ideas and reflect on their writing as it took shape. It was a specific way that the software was designed to help achieve PG1: to help children develop skills for planning and critical thinking. It could also be used to help achieve PG6: to encourage students to do more sophisticated kinds of revision.
A planner 1 consisted of a series of questions or prompts that encouraged students to l)rainstorm, organize, or revise their piece. In addition, because students could create and modify planners as well as use them, planners could be shared and edited, just like any other piece of writing. l he process of constructing a planner was, then, a metacognitive process: one in which students had to think about the process of writing.
When a student chose the PLANNER option, the menu in fig. 3.10 would appear:
        ________________________________________________________

                                PLANNER

        I) Use          Use a PLANNER to start working on your writing.
        2) CREATE       Make a new PLANNER.
        3) MODIFY       Change an old PLANNER.
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.10. The PLANNER main menu.
The USE, CREATE, and MODIFY options were analogous to those for LIBRARY (SEE, ADD, CHANGE), the essential difference being that the text within a planner was interpreted to produce a question-response interaction with a student. Planners were selected by exactly the same procedure as for LIBRARY, by keywords, title and author, or entry number. Thus, after selecting the USE option, the student would see the menu in Fig. 3.11.
        ________________________________________________________
                Do you want to choose a PLANNER by using:

                1. Keywords
                2. Title and author
                3. Entry number
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.11. Three methods for accessing planners.
In the student decided to choose a planner by title and author, something like Fig. 3.12 would appear.
In this example, there are three planners on the disk. They are listed in order of creation, with title, authors, and keywords. In the student decided to choose a planner by selecting a keyword first, a screen with all the keywords on that disk would appear first (Fig. 3.13), just as in the LIBRARY program.
Following the selection of a keyword, the student would then choose a planner from a list of all the planners with that keyword. Once a planner was selected, the student would see an introductory message (written by the creator of the planner), such as the one in Fig. 3.14.
        ________________________________________________________

                There are 3 PLANNERS on this disk.

        TITLE                   AUTHOR #1       AUTHOR #2

        1. Lab Report           Susan           Zack
            Keywords: /Report/Science/

        2. Book Review  Jenne           Steve
            Keywords: /Report/Review/

        3. Mystery Story        Jonathan
             Keywords: /Story
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.12. Selecting a planner.


        ________________________________________________________

                There are PLANNERS for these keywords:

                1.  Story               5.  Newspaper
                2.  Report              6.  Entertainment
                3.  Science             7.  Review
                4.  Food
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.13.   Choosing a planner by keywords.


        ________________________________________________________

                This planner suggests topics for you to include
                in a review of a restaurant. Choose those that are
                appropriate for your review.
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.14. An introductory message for a planner.
After seeing the introductory text, the student would see a list of topics, and respond with anything from short answers to extended text. In the case of the restaurant review, the student might see the list in Fig. 3.15.
After selecting an item from the list, the student could then write any amount of text on that topic. In the example here, most of the questions suggest short replies, but students could write as much as they wished. Other planners contained more open-ended questions. The notes created in this way could be used as a starting point for a later writing task.
Students or teachers could also create and revise their own planners. They used Writer's Assistant to produce a text file with the introductory message followed by the list of topics or questions, Which were later presented in a appropriate format to the user of the planner.
        ________________________________________________________
                
                1) What is the name of the restaurant?
                2) Where is it located?
                3) On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the
                     restaurant?
                4) Would you go back again?
                5) Who owns it?
                6) What kinds of foods are served there?
                7) What is their specialty?
                8) How is the service?
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.15. Questions from a planner.
Planners could have a variety of purposes. They were often used to support brainstorming. They could be used to remind the writer of items to include in a text within a conventionalized genre, as in the restaurant review example. They could be used as aids to revision (PG6), by suggesting questions to consider in evaluating a first draft. They were also used to structure data collection that led to expository writing. Students in one class created interview forms; in another they used planners for recording laboratory data.
The QUILL Teacher's Guide presented the following vision of the use of PLANNER:
 To use planners as an idea generating device, a teacher might involve students
 in a brainstorming session to generate a list of questions or topics to consider
 for an assignment. If they are writing movie reviews, the students might con-
 sider acting quality, photography, intended audience and subject, to name a few.
 The teacher can make this list into a planner on the computer, so that when stu--
 dents begin composing their movie review, they can use it to help them start gener-
 ating ideas. Later in the writing process, PLANNER can help students revise
 their work. It might ask students to identify a possible weak point in their piece
 or think of another example they might include. Using a revision Planner stu--
 dents can rework a written draft.
        For example, Steve and Karen are going to write a review of their favorite
 restaurant, Chich's Parlor. Using their class-generated Planner for restaurant
 reviews, they type in responses to most of the topic questions (overall assessment,
 best food, price, atmosphere, location, hours, needed improvements, appropri-
 ate patrons). They print their notes on the printer and can then decide how to
 organize what they want to say, composing sentences and paragraphs from their
 notes .  
        Once Steve and Karen have finished the review, they can use a revision Plan-
 ner to help them refine their work. This Planner might ask them if they were
 persuasive enough when they described Chich's as the best restaurant, or what
 changes could be made to the end or the beginning of the review that would make
 the piece more persuasive, so that a reader might decide to visit that ice cream 
 parlor.
        Across the room, Melinda and Jose are working on a review of a movie. They
 decide to modify Steve and Karen's restaurant review planner since they feel some
 of it is relevant to their piece. They keep the questions on overall assessment,
 appropriate patrons, and needed improvements and substitute for the other ques-
 tions some that are more useful for their purpose. They then post a note on the
 electronic bulletin board using MAILBAG (see later) telling everyone that they
 have constructed a movie review Planner, in case someone else would like to use it.
MAILBAG
MAILBAG supported direct communication among individual students, groups of students, and teachers. It combined features of the post office, the telephone, and a bulletin board; written messages could be sent between individuals, or a message could be posted to provide information to a group.
MAILBAG made concrete the ideas of audience and purpose that are so central to effective writing. Students could not use MAILBAG without specifying an audience, as that was as much a part of using the environment as ad dressing a letter is in the postal system. Moreover, their audiences were real (fellow classmates and teacher) and were likely to respond. In several class rooms, teachers round that students communicated with them in ways they had not in the past, making suggestions about scheduling (one student said he liked having the week's schedule on the blackboard) and subject matter (another student requested more time for art instruction), or discussing personal problems. Some of the most interesting MAILBAG entries are probably those no one will ever read. In several classrooms, teachers told students that MAILBAG was "private" and that no adult would ever eavesdrop on their electronic conversations. Not surprisingly, those disks filled rapidly-but the teachers have yet to see what is on them.
When a student chose the MAILBAG option, the following screen would appear (Fig. 3.16):
        ________________________________________________________
                                
                                MAILBAG

        1)  READ        Read messages to you, a group, 
                        or the Bulletin Board

        2)  SEND        Write messages to other people, groups or the 
                        Bulletin Board.

        3)  QUIT USING MAILBAG
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.16. The MAILBAG main menu.
Note that there was no modify or change option as with PLANNER and LIBRARY. Although in software terms MAILBAG was simply a program that provided an alternate method for accessing files, we intended it to be interpreted by students and teachers as an electronic mail system. Thus, as with ordinary postal mail or other electronic mail systems, once mail was "sent," it could not be changed. We expected that this limitation would foster a different type of writing-more informal, more conversational, less "percent. " The contrast between LIBRARY and MAILBAG was intended to stress the different purposes writing can serve in a variety of functional learning environments. In general, MAILBAG was a reification in software of PG4 (meaningful communication with real audiences).
If the student wanted to READ mail, the screen in Fig. 3.17 would appear:
        ________________________________________________________
        
                Which would you like to do?
                        1. See YOUR OWN mail.
                        2. See the mail of a GROUP.
                        3. Look at the BULLETIN BOARD.
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.17. Choosing among mailboxes.
Mail could be sent to a student's or teacher's real name or to an agreed-on pseudonym. To use option 2, mail to a GROUP, several students would have to decide on a group name (which they sometimes kept secret) to use on MAIL BAG. In contrast, the BULLETIN BOARD was essentially open mail for all to read. Following the entry of the person's or the group's name, a list of messages would appear. From this list the reader would select which messages to read and/or print out.
The writer of a MAILBAG message used Writer's Assistant, just as for PLANNER and LIBRARY. Once the message was complete, the following screen (Fig. 3.18) would appear:
        ________________________________________________________

                Type subject and press .
                _ _ _ _

                Type sender #I and press .
                _ _ _ _

                Type sender 02 and press .
                (If there isn't another sender press
                the  key and then press .)
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG. 3.18. Providing header information for a MAILBAG message.
Note that QUILL provided for two "senders." In LIBRARY and PLANNER, there was also space for two co-authors. The software was designed this way to encourage collaboration (PG5) and because having a limited number of computers inclined most teachers to have students work in pairs or small groups. If more than two students worked together, they could use group names or compounds, such as "Ralph S & Maria J" for the authors.
After author(s) were specified, the next screen (Fig. 3.19) asked for recipients.
        ________________________________________________________

                You can send your message to up to five
                addresses. If you don't want to send your
                message anywhere else, choose #4.
                        1. Send this message to a PERSON.
                                2. Send it to a GROUP.
                                3. Post it on the BULLETIN BOARD.
                                4. None of the above.
                Type a number and press .
        ________________________________________________________
        FIG 3.19. Choosing recipients for a MAILBAG message.
The teacher's guide presented the following vision of MAILBAG's use:
 MAILBAG has two complementary functions. First, students can send messages.
 In a classroom With an active MAILBAG, Jacqueline sends a message to Mari-
 lyn about a very embarrassing experience at the movies on Saturday. Matt sends
 a message to the Animal Club, asking for good sources of information about sharks.
 The teacher sends a message to all the boys telling them that a new Boy Scout
 troop is being formed and giving them information about joining. Jon uses the
 Bulletin Board part of MAILBAG to ask the class if any of their grandparents
 were born in this town. He has an oral history assignment and wants to inter-
 view some old timers about their school days in the one room school. In each
 of these cases, MAILBAG is an efficient vehicle for sharing and seeking infor-
 mation, and at the same time providing opportunities for written expression that
 are not often present in school. 
     MAILBAG's second function is to receive messages. In that same classroom,
 each student "checks his or her mail." First, students look at their personal mail
 by typing their name and receiving a list of their messages, selecting those they
 wish to read. They can then request mail for specific groups to which they be
 long. Finally, they can view the Bulletin Board and read messages that have been
 posted for everyone. For example, Maria consults MAILBAG by typing her name.
 She has two messages, one titled "Urgent" and the other "Secret Letter. " She
 reads both and learns that her mother has left her lunch money for her at the
 office (a message conveniently left for her by the teacher), and that her ardent
 (but as yet unidentified) admirer wants to meet her after school. When she asks
 for messages for the Soccer club, she finds out there is a practice on Thursday
 after school. Consulting the Bulletin Board, she learns that Wallie is looking for
 recommendations for a new adventure book to read and is soliciting opinions
 for and against each book suggested.
Writer's Assistant
Writer's Assistant (Levin, Boruta, & Vasconcellos, 1983) was a general word processor that students used for any writing. It contained all the standard word processing capabilities, such as insert text, delete, replace, and find. By making textual changes easier, we hoped Writer's Assistant would make revision more frequent and more comprehensive, in pursuit of PG6 facilitating revision.
To encourage revision, the QUILL curriculum and workshop followed many of the suggestions developed by other research on the writing process (Graves, 1978, 1982; Newkirk & Atwell, 1988). We recommended the use of writing conferences-meetings between the teacher and individual student writers, or small group meetings-in which students would discuss problems they were having with their writing. The writing conference was a setting in which the focus was to be on meaning, not simply on formal details, and where the reasons for changes could be discussed in terms of the audience and purpose for the text.
In the Alaska QUILL workshops, we used examples from other QUILL class rooms to illustrate meaning-centered revisions. The effects of one teacher's comments can be seen in changes across two drafts (Figs. 3.20 & 3.21) of a "New Jersey resolution" written by two fourth-grade boys. The assignment was to develop a resolution that the legislature could pass to help improve New Jersey.
Their discussion with their teacher about this piece focused on the need for snappy conclusions and on how long it would really take to kick a drug habit. The emphasis was on the content of the resolution, not simply on grammatical features. Benjamin and Darren then produced the final draft (Fig. 3.21; changes in boldface).
        __________________________________________________________________

                        Drugs are Dumb
                        Benjamin M.           Darren S.

        What is bothering us the most in New Jersey is underaged kids
        are taking drugs. Their not getting enough education. Some kids
        even get killed! Adults should educate their children not to take
        drugs. It would take a few months or weeks to get over this problem.
        It is important to solve this problem because sometimes people get
        killed.

         Keywords: /psychiatrist/drugs/children/killed/education/
        __________________________________________________________________
        FIG.3.20. First draft of "Improving New Jersey" composition
To accomplish these structural changes with a typewriter or paper and pencil the writer would be forced to recopy the whole piece. A text editor can make revision easier to accomplish. It can change a student's concept of changings text from "erasing something until there is a hole in the paper" to" "pressing A few keys on the computer."
        __________________________________________________________________

                        Dangerous Damaging Drugs
        Benjamin M.                             Darren S.

        What is bothering us the most in New Jersey is underaged kids are
        taking drugs. They're not getting enough education. Some kids even
        get killed! Adults should educate their children not to take drugs or
        not to get involved with drugs. To get help you should go to a
        psychiatrist, Try not to take drugs. If you take drugs, go for help! It
        would take an unlimited amount of time to get over this problem. It is
        important to solve this problem because sometimes people get killed.
        So be smart, make sure you don't take drugs!
        
        Keywords: /psychiatrist/drugs/children/killed/education/
        _________________________________________________________________       
        FIG. 3.21. Final draft of "Improving New Jersey" composition.
Despite QUILL's focus on meaning-centered revision, we also promoted the idea that computers could help with low-level formal corrections of things such as spelling, punctuation, and subject-verb agreement. There was, for ex ample, a command called MIX, which displayed all the sentences in a stu-- dent's text (defined as a set of words followed by a period) starting at the left margin (Fig. 3.22).
A student could quickly scan the list of sentences and see if any first letters of sentences were not capitalized, if end punctuation were missing, if there
     _____________________________________________________________________      

        We'll tell you some things about Shungnak.
        In the winter it is very cold.
        In the summer it is very warm.
        A lot of people in Shungnak like to go hunting and go get wood.
        They shoot a lot of animals and bring them home and share.
        A lot of people go camping in the summer.
        If they seine they will get a lot of fish.
        They smoke salmon fish for the long winter.
        Some people make dried fish for fish for the winter.
        In the winter we have dog races.
        Sometimes we need water.
        We just get ice.
        Next we put hot water so it could melt.
        We go ice fishing in the winter.
        It is fun playing slide in the winter on top of steep hills.
     _____________________________________________________________________      
        FIG. 3.22. A Mixed text in sentence format
     ________________________________________________________________________           
        We'll tell you some things about Shungnak. In the winter it is 
        very cold. In the summer it is very warm. A lot of people in 
        Shungnak like to go hunting and go get wood. They shoot a lot of 
        animals and bring them home and share. A lot of people go camping 
        in the summer. If they seine they will get a lot of fish. They smoke 
        salmon fish for the long winter. Some people make dried fish for fish 
        for the winter. In the winter we have dog races. Sometimes we need 
        water. We just get ice. Next we put hot water so it could melt. We go
        ice fishing in the winter. It is fun playing slide in the winter on top of 
        steep hills.
    ______________________________________________________________________      
        FIG. 3.23. A MlXed text in paragraph format
were any run-on sentences, if the sentence length or structure was repetitious, or if there were any sentence fragments. The computer would not identify any of these problems; it just made it easier for students to see and repair problems. The sentences could then be reformatted into a paragraph (Fig. 3.23).
QUILL also included a feature (WORD) that could be used for limited checking of spelling and word choice. It used a dictionary that students and teachers themselves compiled. If a word was in the dictionary, the writer could highlight it, for example, "deer," and the computer would present choices of similarly spelled (e.g., "dear") words with their definitions.
The QUILL Teacher's Guide gave the following description of the use of Writer's Assistant:
        

        The Writer's Assistant helps students enter and revise written text quickly,
         easily, and clearly. Using this program, students can write their pieces,
        then correct spelling, spacing, and punctuation; remove, add or rearrange
        words, sentences, or paragraphs; try out new ways or expressing the same
         ideas. Editing can be done while entering text onto the computer, or it can 
        take place after the student works on a printed-out version of the original 
        text either alone, with other students, or after conferencing with the teacher.         Revisions are easy, and they eliminate the frustration or "spoiling" a piece 
        of work by erasing, crossing out, or having to start over. Help commands 
        are included as part of the Writer's Assistant, to offer on-screen assistance 
        when using the Writer's Assistant commands.  
        The Writer's Assistant can be used with the MAILBAG, LIBRARY, and
        PLANNER. When students store a piece of writing in the LIBRARY or
        write a message using the MAILBAG, they can edit what they are writing.
        QUILL's Writer's Assistant is a valuable tool for facilitating writing for all
        students, although it is especially helpful for those who are easily discour-
        aged or mistake-prone, or for students who are "messy" writers.
Summary
The QUILL software provided tools to facilitate writing by students and teachers, and environments to foster real communication. In addition to these broad purposes, the software embodied specific features designed to satisfy our six pedagogical goals. Some of these are summarized in Table 3.1.
_____________________________________________________________________
Pedagogical Goal                        Software Features

PG1. Planning                   PLANNER: Creating and using planners 
                                Reading others' entries in LIBRARY

PG2. Integration of reading     LIBRARY as a shared text environment 
        and writing             SEE in LIBRARY =>texts will be read by others

PG3. Publishing                 Writer's Assistant formatting features

PG4. Meaningful communication   MAILBAG: Messages to individuals, groups,                                               Bulletin Board

PG5. Collaboration              Slots for two authors
                                Bulletin Board and group mail
                                Keywords as shared indexing scheme

PG6. Revision                   MIX and WORD in Writer's Assistant
                                CHANGE as separate option
                                Revision planners
______________________________________________________________________  
                        TABLE 3.1 QUILL Software
QUILL ACTIVITIES
The QUILL software had many features to support our six pedagogical goals. But The technology alone could not change classroom writing practices. Doing so required the adoption of new writing activities and, for some teachers, a new approach to teaching writing.
We hoped that individual teachers would create most of the QUILL activities for their own classrooms out of setting-specific interests and needs, as that sensitivity to local audience and purpose was central to the QUILL philosophy. But we realized that teachers needed support in getting to the point where they could develop their own activities. The QUILL Teacher's Guide (Bruce, Rubin, & Loucks, 1984) described suggested QUILL activities in a written form. It also contained a general description of QUILL and software documentation, but its primary purpose was to support teachers in developing effective writing activities that addressed one or more of our pedagogical goals.
For example, the teacher's guide described the process of producing a class newspaper on the computer, and this became a popular activity in QUILL classrooms. Assembling a newspaper addressed several pedagogical goals. Students could identify a real audience for their articles-other class members, other students in the school and parents-thus supporting PG4 (meaningful communication with real audiences). Writing jointly authored articles encouraged focused social interaction among the students, thus supporting PG5 (collaboration). The computer made writing and editing articles simpler, thus supporting both PG6 (revision) and PG3 (publishing). The QUILL Teacher's Guide contained suggestions about how to manage a class newspaper for those teachers who needed help in getting started. Below is an extract from the guide for a class newspaper activity (from p. 85):
Modern Times: A Class Newspaper
Programs: PLANNER/LIBRARY
Materials:
Samples of the various types of newspaper articles
PLANNER and LIBRARY disks
Purpose:
¥ To write in different formats: news items, book and TV reviews, sports stories, want ads
¥ To edit and revise for appearance and clarity
¥ To encourage students to evaluate and make judgments about the interest value of
different articles
Preparation:
1. Choose a managing editor and an editor for each section of the newspaper.
2. Decide what sections should appear in the newspaper: for example, class, school,
or town news section; sports section; book, movie and TV review section;
poetry section; classified ads; biographies; notices of coming events; joke section;
opinion section; and so on.
3. Prepare models and/or explanations of news items not familiar to the students.
4. Create a publishing schedule. Decide when the newspaper will come out.
5. CREATE Planners for news articles, sports articles, and so on.
Procedure:
1. Have students write one or more news articles either individually or col-laboratively
in LIBRARY.
2. Students should use keywords to classify articles: ad, news item, recipe, review.
3. Section editors should use keywords to find their articles and discuss revisions to
make the articles clearer or more interesting.
4. Each section editor uses Writer's Assistant to make revisions. The revised article is
then submitted to the managing editor for approval.
5. Managing editor will use Writer's Assistant to prepare a masthead. A table of contents
might also be made. These can be prepared as LIBRARY entries.
6. Add LIBRARY title and author listing as a headline and byline for each article.
7. The managing editor is responsible for the overall layout of the mast-head, sections, and
so on. Each section editor is responsible for the lay-out of his or her section.
8. The newspaper can be produced by the printer in 80-column format. Make enough
copies for everyone in the class plus extras. Alternatively, the class can produce 40
column versions of each article and paste together.

Here are some of the other activities described in the guide.
"Where I'd Like to Live": Students do research on different places they would like
to live, using encyclopedias, travel brochures, maps, and magazines. They use PLANNER
to record what they learn and LIBRARY to store descriptions of
their fantasy choices. Comment: This activity involved a use of PLANNER
as an information recording and organizing device, thus emphasizing a different aspect
of planning (PG1). It also highlighted a way of integrating reading and writing
(PG2), as students explored various sources in order to gather informa- tion for
their choicelocales.
"Animal Encyclopedia": Rather than simply using reference books written 
by others, students can create their own. One idea is an encyclopedia for 
animals built around a classification system the students themselves devise. 
Comment: This
 activity was intended to foster collaboration (PG5) 
and the integration of writing and 
reading (PG2) as students read each 
other's encyclopedia entries and added 
their own contributions to the 
class text. 



"Disease Digest": Students do research on the symptoms and the treatments 
for diseases they have had. They use magazines, brochures from hospitals 
or clinics 
  and books such as Baby and Child Care, by Benjamin 
Spock (1985). They create  and publish (PG3) their own digest of childhood 
diseases indexed with keywords such as "contagious," "headache," and 
"spots." Comment: Similar to the animal  
 encyclopedia, this activity 
fosters integration of reading and writing (PG2) and collaboration (PG5). 
 


"Classified Ads": Students work in groups to study the classified section 
from a  newspaper. They create their own classified ads for things they 
want to sell or 
  exchange, announcements they want to make, or 
services they need or have to offer. 
 These are posted on the Bulletin 
Board and other students respond with individual  
 messages in 
MAILBAG. Comment: This activity assumes honest in- tentions to  
exchange, so that students are engaged in meaningful communication 
(PG4). 
 


"Television Series": Students in small groups plan a television (or radio, 
play, movie, or book) series. They use a LIBRARY disk to store character 
descriptions and successive installments in their series. These could be plot 
summaries or actual scripts. An activity such as this could extend over a long 
period of time. Comment:: As students would get feedback on their series 
they would revise (PG6) and when they had installments ready to share 
they would publish (PG3). Performing part of the series as a class play 
would be a special form of publishing. 



"Game Review": Students discuss their favorite games, why they like them, 
how they're played, and special equipment needed. They write a Game 
Review planner and then use it to create a disk with reviews of their favorite 
games indexed by attributes they have decided are most relevant. Comment:: 
Because students would know that other students would want to read about 
new games, or their opinion of old games, this activity exemplified meaningful
communication with real audiences (PG4).
Activities such as these were presented in the guide simply as possibilities.We did not expect teachers to carry out the activities exactly as described. In stead, we wanted these concrete suggestions, drawn from other classrooms, to stimulate their thinking about activities that would be appropriate in their own classroom. Teacher-invented activities that drew on students' interests would be most likely to achieve goals such as meaningful communication (PG4).
SUPPORT FOR TEACHERS

Many of the QUILL teachers had never used computer before. Others had never used a process approach to writing. All of the teachers were concerned with classroom management issues. Many of them relied on a whole-group approach to teaching, which seemed difficult to integrate with having a single computer for 30 students. Teachers who did successfully introduce QUILL into their classrooms had to cope with other demands on their time and even conflicts with school or district practices. As we continued to field-test QUILL, we became even more aware of the need for teacher support, and we expanded the teacher support system. By the time we implemented QUILL in Alaska, the system included a "cookbook," teacher workshops, classroom visits, a hotline, local facilitators, an electronic mail network, monthly mailings, and a year-end conference: QUILL Cookbook. In addition to specific activities such as producing a class newspaper, the QUILL Teacher's Guide contained a "cookbook" for introducing a class to the use of QUILL and to ideas such as brainstorming, planning, revising, use of keywords, collaborative writing, and electronic mail. It was not designed to be a rigid specification of how to use the software, although it was sometimes interpreted that way. We quote here front the QUILL Teacher's Guide (p. 59):
   The QUILL Cookbook is a twenty-step plan for introducing QUILL in the class
   room. Beginning with Step 1, "Introducing the Computer," The lessons build
   student and teacher competency in using computers to develop writing skills. Stu-
   dents will use QUlLL's MAILBAG, LIBRARY, PLANNER, and Writer's As-
   sistant programs. Each step is organized by objective, preparation, and proce-
   dure. The steps should be done in order, but they can be adapted to meet your
   teaching style and the needs of your class.   
        The QUILL Cookbook often has students work in pairs to read, plan, com-
   pose, and revise texts. Pairing not only encourages oral language skills develop
   ment but also allows students to use the computer more frequently. Once you
   have completed the Cookbook and the students are comfortable using the com-
   puter, you can be more flexible in designing your own computer-based writing
   activities .       
        The "roadmap" to the Cookbook [Fig. 3.24] illustrates the sequencing of the
   steps and their relationship to one another. It will take from 4 to 6 weeks to finish
   the steps, depending on the amount of time allotted for using the computer, the
   number of computers you have available, and your students' expertise. The Cook
   book schedule should help you allot time for QUILL.
Workshops. Workshops for teachers introduced both computers and the writing process. A typical 3-day schedule, such as we used in Alaska, was the following:
                               QUILL Workshop Schedule

DAY 1           Introductions
                Overview of QUILL
                Writing workshop (see later)
                Introduction to the Apple II
                Beginning Writer's Assistant: editing a sample file
                Using MAILBAG to SEND and RECEIVE messages

DAY 2           Create and USE a restaurant review planner
                Discussion of how and when to integrate PLANNER into class-
                room writing projects
                ADD a restaurant review
                SEE others' reviews
                Comment on these texts using MAILBAG
                CHANGE a restaurant review

DAY 3           Teacher's Guide
                Advanced Writer's Assistant
                Utility disk
                Discussions of classroom issues



   The agenda was designed to introduce teachers to the important parts of the QUILL software and curriculum by having them carry out writing activities similar to those their students might do. We chose restaurant reviews as a topic because it was an interesting one to most teachers and it permitted short pieces of writing. It was also a topic in which the teachers could be the experts. We wanted to encourage them to see writing as a form of communication in which students could talk about what they knew best.
FIG. 3.24 The Cookbook roadmap.

There was flexibility in the schedule to allow teachers to focus on what they felt was most critical for them. Their initial concerns were usually about using the computer, and then more specifically about Writer's Assistant. Later, concerns about how to manage QUILL activities in the classroom became paramount.
The writing workshop, designed by Don Graves (personal communication, 1983) took from 2 to 4 hours. We placed it first on the agenda in order to emphasize that QUILL was a new way of teaching writing, not just a new technology. It was intended to give teachers a brief "tour" through the writing process with an attentive partner as an audience and to model for them how a different approach to writing might look in a classroom. It thus introduced one form of collaboration in writing (PG5), and also reefed the role of planning throughout the writing process (PG1). The steps of the writing workshop were the following:
  1. The leader and teachers swapped a few "everyday" stories orally, as
     preparation for writing. 
  2. Each participant made a list of four things she might write about. After
     choosing two, she told her partner briefly about each. 
  3. Based on her partner's reaction, she chose one topic and wrote quickly
     about it on one 3" x 5" card. 
  4. Each person told her partner what she has written; the partner asked 
     one question about the content of the story.
  5. On another 3" x 5" card, everyone wrote her story from a different
     angle. (She could continue with the same angle, if it was going well.) 
  6. Each person made a concept web including the events that preceded
     and followed her story and the people involved; she told her partner
     about the surprises that emerged from the web. 
  7. On a third 3 " x 5 " card, everyone wrote her story again, this time
     bearing in mind the surprises that emerged in step 6. 
  8. Each person solicited some help from her partner on a troublesome
     aspect of her writing and wrote a fourth 3 " x 5 " card using that help. 
  9. Everyone close four lines she had written somewhere along the way
     and polished them. 
  10. Participants were invited to share something they had written (from
       any of the 3" x 5" cards) with the rest of the group.
Teachers round this activity both enjoyable and enlightening; it gave them particular insight into how their students might feel in school writing situations. Some had trouble getting started, but found their partner helpful in getting them ''unstuck''; they sometimes even developed a surprising bond with their partner during this relatively short workshop. But while they felt comfortable reading their writing to a partner, participants would often reluctant to share with the entire group. Thus, the workshop allowed them to experience both the power of having a real audience for their writing and the potential awkwardness that might result when a group was not yet a "literacy community." The workshop also brought teachers face-to-face with the importance of audience feedback (PG4), the connections among reading, writing, speaking, and listening (PG2), and the role of multiple revisions (PG6).
Teachers came to QUILL workshops concerned with learning how to use the new software, so they had patience for only a limited amount of off-computer writing before they got their hands on the keyboard. The list afternoon, therefore, we introduced the QUILL software by having teachers send one another MAILBAG messages. We simulated an electronic network by having each teacher send her partner a message in MAILBAG, then swap disks and read one another's message. In addition, each teacher sent a message to the Bulletin Board (the mailbox available to everyone), and read the messages that others had posted there, thus doing exactly what their students would later do.
Most of the remainder of the sessions focused on using QUILL, and, in particular, on Writer's Assistant. On the third day we returned to discussions of curriculum integration and classroom management. We shared with the group some examples of writing that students in field-test classrooms had done, in particular, a TV script written collaboratively by a group of girls in a sixth grade classroom in Hartford.
Other Support. We followed up the workshops with 1- or 2-day visits to each classroom. This enabled us to work collaboratively with teachers in solving the myriad of practical issues that arose in introducing QUILL and to work towards activities appropriate to specific classrooms. The NETWORK maintained a hotline to provide follow-up help. Teachers could call for help with hardware, software, or classroom problems. The software included the hot line number, and would display it if an unexpected software condition arose. We also encouraged schools to identify a "local facilitator," responsible for visiting classrooms, troubleshooting, and generally supporting teachers after the initial workshops. In some schools and districts, this was the computer coordinator; in others, it was the language arts coordinator.
In the Alaska setting, there were some additional support elements. There was extensive use of long-distance electronic mail for communication among teachers, developers, and the local facilitator; the growth structure and content of this network are analyzed in depth in chapter 7. Carol Barnhardt, the local coordinator, also sent monthly mailings containing samples of student work, ideas for activities, and software tips. Finally, there was the year-end conference2, which served as a focal point for the teachers to discuss their re-creation of QUILL.
These support activities were designed not only to help teachers implement QUILL, but to provide them with literacy environments that mirrored those their students were experiencing. We believed that in order for teachers to establish successful functional learning environments that involve written language, they would need to think broadly and critically about a range of literacy practices. Moreover, they would need to participate themselves in similar functional learning environments. These environments are mutually reinforcing (see Fig. 3.25). When teachers engage in meaningful literacy practices they are better able to serve as mentors for student apprentices; in turn, their teaching and even their own literacy development are expanded as they observe students' learning. In chapter 7 we discuss the development of a functional learning environment for teachers based on an electronic mail community that was synergistic with the students' writing experiences.

FIG. 3.25 Mutual reinforcement of functional learning environments

SUMMARY

QUILL was a project to encourage real communication, a focus on audience and purpose, revision with a reason, and the development of a literate community. In software, curriculum, and teacher support, it embodied a particular approach to literacy development. Yet even in its most detailed form, this specification was only the starting point for the realization process. In each setting, the innovation looked different, adapted and appropriated by a particular teacher in a particular school in a particular cultural context. One of our goals in this book is to characterize these differences and to identify the reasons they arose. In the next chapter we look more closely at the settings in Alaska in which QUILL was used. This provides the background for our detailed analyses of QUILL realizations in chapters 5, 6, and 7, as we construct a situated evaluation of QUILL.

Notes

"PLANNER" refers to the QUILL program, which operate upon a list of questions generated by the teacher or a student.
Barnhardt (1984) is a conference paper that describes the Alaska QUILL project.

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