Another View of WANDAH: HBJ Writer

Bill Emmett

doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1156

Writing Center Journal 1987 web Open Access

Another View of WANDAH: HBJ Writer

Bill Emmett

Abstract

At best it's hard work, often it's very difficult, and -to a great number of high school students -it's "boring," "stupid," and "impossible."But wait.Look down in the writing room.It's a bird.It's a plane.It's Super WANDAH : HBJ Writer, Faster than a speeding ballpoint, more powerful than a typewriter, able to leap tall essays in a single class period, Super WANDAH helps students produce writing that is clear, precise, and fun to read, writing that is an example of truth, justice, and the American way.Well, perhaps I exaggerate a tad.Maybe WANDAH can't do it all, or even most.But it's possible that we've given her a cape she wasn't supposed to be wearing.Is her real name Clark Kent?Or has Kryptonite robbed WANDAH of all power.Let's go back to the beginning, which occurred not on some distant planet but in some sunny corner of UCLA.WANDAH began life as a rather innocuous writing program to assist incoming freshman with their writing skills.At the same time, the head of Logan High's English Department had completed a course with the Utah Writer's Project.With a missionary's zeal, she sought to bring the entire department into the waters of process writing.Soon we were saved as well.But that didn't stop our department head.Something was needed to help the work along, something that could assist our efforts in converting uninspired writers from the darkest corners of the eleventh and twelth grades into born-again thinkers and writers, capable of heavenly composition."Could not that something be a computer, Time's Man of the Year?" reasoned our department head, and quicker than you can say "floppy disk," Logan High had sixteen computers, four printers, and WANDAH.

Journal: Writing Center Journal
Published: 1987
DOI: 10.7771/2832-9414.1156
CompPile: Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access: OA PDF Gold
Topics: writing pedagogy digital rhetoric
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Another View of WANDAH: HBJ Writer

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