Ongoing feedback is essential for engaging writers at all levels. Direct reactions from readers help students see their work as others do. Feedback helps students monitor their own effectiveness as communicators and evaluate their success in meeting their own goals or the aims of an assignment.
Computers offer opportunities for both kinds of feedback in a timely way.
Students select characters and scenes, develop plots, write stage directions and dialogue, create a narrative sequence, and add music and sound. In this way they can immediately evaluate the effect of their composition in terms of its dramatic outcome. Hollywood is a highly engaging, creative tool which draws students into composing and promotes self-evaluation with immediate, powerful feedback. Netscape Communications Corporation. Used with permission.