The Gateway Writing Project is an affiliate of the National Writing Project. With our website, we are not trying to distribute information to our students, but rather we are attempting to engage them in a dynamic conversation. The World Wide Web offers our students an instantaneous, almost unmediated environment for thinking. Just as an essay may provide a snapshot of the line of argument of an individual's learning on a particular topic, the membranous structure of a hypertextual composition, like our class website, may show us the social and collaborative structure of a community of learners creating knowledge. It is important to note here that it is not technology that is driving the learning.
Good educations are still the products of great conversations.
The computer is just allowing us to follow our conversations beyond the walls of the classroom. The mere presence of a hypertextual environment does not move students rapidly beyond their level of intelligence. On the contrary, most of the students probably will only enter the discussion, as they do in normal conversations, at their previous level of understanding of the material. Some of our students will eventually provide further essays to enlighten other students down the line, as a student from last year contributed an essay on Nat Turner. Probably many of our students will barely get beyond email discussions, or help others with their revisions.