Writing and New Technologies
CLOUDBASED TEXT PROCESSING TOOLS IN ACADEMIC WRITING: POTENTIAL BENEFITS AND DIFFICULTIES
Leonardo Dalessandro¹, Sascha Dieter²
¹Schreibzentrum (Writing Center) of GoetheUniversity, Frankfurt/Main, Germany ²Schreibzentrum (Writing Center) of GoetheUniversity, Frankfurt/Main, Germany
During the past two decades, digital technologies and new media have advanced tremendously regarding their proliferation as well as their capabilities. As terms like web 2.0 , elearning and MOOCs find their way into the sphere of academia, a lot of students are right now growing up in an environment of considerably increased technological availability. What this means for higher education, has not yet been discussed widely enough. Moreover, concerns are often expressed when it comes to new media. Nevertheless, the relevance of new technologies and digitalisation as a background for academic writing is constantly increasing. In this presentation we therefore want to take a closer look at cloudbased text processing tools and show effective ways to use new technologies in the classroom. We thereby hope to shed light on their potential benefits, such as insight into and reflection on writing processes, collaborative writing, easy usability and accessibility. We will also point out possible challenges, such as premises of collaborative writing, competent use and privacy issues. With regard to the broad amount of tools available, which ones are useful and suitable for academic purposes? How may students and faculty profit from the use of online writing tools? What precautions can be taken to minimize the difficulties that accompany working in digital, cloudbased environments? With these questions in mind, we would like to debate our proposals in the concluding discussion.