As I was messing around with my newly installed edition of Microsoft Word 2003, I discovered a link on the MS website to an article that I found very eye-opening: "Teaching Research and Composition with Microsoft Office Word 2003". This downloadable Word document explains how teachers can use the software to teach a process-oriented model of writing. I expected to hate it, but found myself impressed and relatively surprised by its savviness about composition teaching. I can't tell if I'm happy to see this sort of instructional paradigm integrated into word processing -- which is such an important (but frequently overlooked) teaching tool -- or whether I'm horrified to see one of my disciplines assimilated into the Matrix for profit.

Still: the ideas in Microsoft's document are quite practical. I already integrate many of them into my practice (like using electronic commenting). Reading this guide reminded me that I should try to have my students more actively master their word processors for more than just composing and saving text. There are so many revision and critique and proofing elements built into programs like MS Word that it makes sense to ask students to utilize them in ancillary homework tasks or to even practice them live in the computer-enhanced classroom.

But as heartened as I am to see a megacorporation "talking the talk" of composition theory, I am skeptical of their vested interest in getting me to use their program to teach my students. Clearly, some elements in the document (such as the latent sales pitch for using Microsoft Sharepoint -- a collaborative Office-based intranet server) should be taken with a large granule of salt. Many of the collaborative features of Word can be utilized just as well via e-mail and/or other course management programs (like the threaded discussions on Jweb). While it's true that our graduate program in Writing Popular Fiction actually uses Sharepoint to faciliate a bulletin board and more, but the students have yet to utilize the other elements of the program for collaborative critique. Exchanging via e-mail seems to work just fine for now.

Browse the other Instructional Resources for Teachers and Technology on the Microsoft home page. Or do a search in the Pedablogue for "commenting" to read previous discussions of electronic annotation.

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