3.757 Daedalus (36)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca)
Thu, 16 Nov 89 17:51:21 EST
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 757. Thursday, 16 Nov 1989.
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 89 04:28:00 EST
From: islhad@es.uit.no
Subject: RE: 3.747 queries (124)
In response to Bill Purcell's inquiry about Daedalus, I'd like to
report that I watched two classes using it last semester while I
was on a visiting appointment at UT-Austin. And I was most impressed:
I have rarely seen such engagement and activity in a writing class--
or in any class, for that matter. The interactive nature of the
program is one of its most striking assets, to my mind. And I felt
that the students (one graduate class and one freshman comp. class)
were taking full advantage of the opportunity to comment on each
other's work, revise according to suggestion, and discuss the
writing process itself AS it was taking place. This suggests to
me that the program is easy to teach and use--and, indeed, I learned
to get around in 3 of its 6 or 7 cells in about 5 minutes.
My contact with the program was, of course, too brief to allow
me to comment on its longterm advantages in teaching writing. (You
might want to write John Slatin in the English Dept. at UT-Austin
for his comments on that--though not, perhaps, "unbiased," he has
used the program a long time with different levels of classes.)
But my initial impression was so positive that I wanted to record
it--I've been pressing for my home institution to buy the program.
Helen Aristar-Dry
islhad.es.uit.no