iPads in the Writing Center

Over on the listserv WCENTER a few weeks ago there was a discussion of iPads and their uses in writing centers.  I brazenly stated that I was going to keep a list of apps that people mentioned, so here goes:


From Neal Lerner of Northeastern University:

GoodReader: Used for reading and annotating files. Ultimately, we hope to have writing conferences in which writing consultant and student are reviewing the student's paper on GoodReader, jointly annotating, and saving the file for the student writer to use when revising. 

Box.net: Used for transferring and having access to files.

Dropbox: Also used for transferring and having access to files.

iThoughtsHD: A mind-mapping tool, useful for idea generation and breaking through those writing blocks.

iBrainstorm: Another tool for generating ideas and then organizing those ideas in ways that nicely lead to a written form.

PlainText: A text editor, useful for taking notes during a consulting session, which can then be sent to students.

Dragon: Voice recognition, ideally useful for recording tutoring sessions.

From me (Clint Gardner):

1) we’ve been playing with both Skype and TinyChat (www.skype.com/www.tinychat.com) for real time online tutoring. 

 2) iBooks has some free writing/language-related online books; there is also Google Books, Nook, and Kindle apps.

3) Wolfram Alpha has a cool app that can answer some pretty complex questions (not writing related)

4) We’ve also played around with voice recordings of sessions. And I’ve been intrigued by Dragon Dictation app.

5) Salt Lake Community College uses Citrix, a server layer that allows iPads and other devices access to office application suites like Microsoft Office. It is pretty slick. 

6) Our home-brewed online reporting system is set up to recognize when a *Pad or smart phone visits it, and formats its output accordingly. I was inspired to update our system to recognize such devices when one of our Peer Writing Advisors showed me how she wrote her reports on her iPhone. Talk about not having a problem with software keyboard.   

From Stephanie Lovelass of Illinois Central College

We use Pages, Dropbox, and various dictionary and translation apps the most. We recently launched Skype-based appointments using the iPads. The Skype app has definitely come in handy! If you're interested, I would be happy to compile a list of apps! 

That is all so far.   If you have more useful apps, post them in a comment and I'll edit this post.

Mobile Poetry Collective: iPad Note Poem #2: September Morning by Clint Gardner

Mobile Poetry Collective: "Round" by Dawn Mendoza

Dawn Mendoza reads her poem "Round."

Mobile Poetry Collective: "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth

Paula Michniewicz offers up William Wordsworth's "Daffodils" to the Mobile Poetry Collective:

Mobile Poetry Collective!

A new Undersea World feature for you just in time for National Poetry Month: Mobile Poetry Revolutionary Collective! Join the revolution and call in the poem of your choice to 801-930-0674. It can be your own work or a favorite of yours. Be sure to state your name, identify the author (even if it is your own) and the title. I reserve the draconian right to exclude any submission I see fit. The submissions will be featured here on The Undersea World.

Here are some prototype samples from various folks:

Carrie de Azevedo-Poulsen gives us "Thanks" by W.S. Merwin

Cordelia Willgren offers up Naomi Shihab Nye's "At the Seven Mile Ranch, Comstock, Texas"

Ethan Millard give us Jaberwocky by Lewis Carroll

The Death of See by William Carlos Williams

WCENTER Survey

Last week, I was talking with colleagues about a future super-secret project (stay tuned) and we got to wondering how many two-year college writing center folks were on WCENTER. WCENTER is the preeminent listserv for writing center folks. I've been a member since 1992, but I don't recall anyone trying to figure out who (demographically) was on the list. Rather than burdening list members with a huge demographic survey, however, I just decided to stick with the original question: what types of institutions are WCENTER users coming from. I only left it up for a few days, so I'm not saying that this survey has captured all potential WCENTER readers/respondents, by the way. My Survey Monkey professional account was expiring, however, and I wanted to download the data. (so much for self-funded research, eh?)

In any case, here we go:



I did suspect that four year plus universities and colleges would dominate the users of WCENTER, given the list's history and the development of the writing center movement.  It is what it is. I think the number of two-year (associates) schools is pretty decent and no doubt is more now than it ever has been, but I don't have any direct evidence of any trends since this, as I said, is the first institutional demographic survey I am familiar with for WCENTER. It would seem that we in the two-year community might want to do some outreach to our colleagues to inform them about the list, however, given that two-year colleges represent a more significant portion of higher education these days.
I am a little disturbed by the lack of Secondary/Elementary school members of the list and that may reflect a divide in our community that is difficult to bridge. Secondary educators do have their own list, but it isn't nearly as active as WCENTER. Secondary writing center directors, of course, are extremely busy folks with much heavier teaching and directing roles. Again, it is what it is.

Since I am pretty heavily invested in the International Writing Centers Association, and the super-secret project I mentioned above (stay tuned) will be proposed to IWCA, I also wanted to see how many WCENTER members claimed membership in IWCA:



There are a couple of things that interest me about this chart. First, it is interesting that nearly 8% are uncertain of their status as members of IWCA. This, I think, goes hand-in-hand with the fact that I think the 75% membership claim is inflated. While IWCA does have over 700 members, I know from my experience in IWCA leadership that many people think they have a membership who don't. Many seem to think that subscribing to Writing Lab Newsletter makes them a member. I could, of course, be completely wrong in my bias, and perhaps the survey numbers are correct. There is really no way to verify that at this point.

Results of survey on new media tutoring

A few weeks ago, I queried both the WCENTER and WPA email lists to get their response to a rather unscientific study on tutoring and new media in writing centers.  These are the charted-up results.  I hope to provide some commentary on them at some point when the (new)Jazz are not playing. UPDATE: comments ahoy!

The number of respondents is 118 (n=118). The questions that allowed multiple answers are represented as area graphs to give a better sense of the overall spread of the response.


Most of the respondents were from higher education. This is no doubt due to posting the survey on WCENTER and WPA-L. I am uncertain of the demographics of either of those lists, but I have a well-informed hunch that not many non-higher education folks participate in them.




The purpose of my research is, ultimately, to write an article about tutoring in new media (for wont of a better term) at open access institutions. I was somewhat surprised by the nearly 20% of respondents who don't know if their institution is open access or not.



No surprises here. It was good to see tutors taking part in the survey, however.



Most institutions employ peer tutors. I am going to break this statistic down at some point to see how that plays out at institution type. I fear my sample size is not big enough to have any statistical relevance, however.



It would seem that traditional academic texts are the norm for all institutions. Multi-modal texts (which I didn't define in the survey, but I'm assuming people think means texts with images or graphics) are at about half the respondents, and web pages come in third. I won't make any claims about these results, but I do wonder if the responses mean that writing centers are not seeing students with such texts or they turn away students who are writing in these media. I prefer to think the latter is true, not the former. I would prefer to think that writing centers aren't seeing students with other types of texts because students aren't coming in with them, not that writing centers are turning such writers away.



The responses to this one are going to motivate the thesis of my web text, I think. I am interested in interviewing writing center directors to determine why such education is not included in the curricula.



Given the response to the above question, this one seems even more telling. If students are coming in with new media texts, how are tutors prepared to respond to them?



I wanted to see this statistic just to get a sense of what is going on as far as online tutoring. Once again, it would seem that students are submitting purely alphabetic texts to online tutoring (given the disparity between the type of tutoring offered and the results of this question.) It would be interesting to drill-down into this question to see if online tutoring is more new media-related than in-person tutoring.




As I said, these are just the rough results. I be updating this tomorrow, I hope with a bit more information and some statistical numbers.