The Learning Commons
Online Writing LabsThese On-Line Writing Labs (OWLs) provide valuable information and services that the LC is not able to offer. For instance, many OWLs offer on-line tutoring to students at their home colleges or universities and to writers everywhere. Others offer an enormous selection of materials on writing, including (but not limited to) punctuation, documentation, and grammar. Since we aren't able to create our own version of these OWLs, The Writing Zone focuses on writing at Guilford while still providing access to these resources. What follows is a list of OWLs that we've found particularly useful as well as our comments and descriptions of their services. Purdue University's On-Line Writing Lab Purdue University's OWL is the online wing of their face-to-face Writing Lab and offers a variety of resources that anyone can use, including e-mailing your paper in to be read by one of their tutors, research guides and resources, grammar guides and lists of even more writing center sites. An extensive site, the Purdue OWL contains approximately 150 pages, including 130 "handouts" and exercises available for public use. These documents are original to the Purdue Writing Lab and cover a range to topics including: general writing concerns; grammar, punctuation and spelling; research paper, job search and professional writing; and English as a Second Language. Purdue's pointers to other internet sources lead you to indexes for writers, guides to style and editing, business and technical writing, children and writing, professional organizations, and listserv groups. Finally, this OWL aids in web research by providing links to search tools and selected directories and indexes for research. The Roane State Community College Online Writing Lab While RSCC's OWL is smaller and more specialized than Purdue's, it offers some useful material and links. Resource categories include "Composition and Documentation," "Editing, Grammar, and Punctuation," "Nursing: Home Health and Transition Papers," and "Articles," apparently written by RSCC writing center staff. The "Composition and Documentation" category includes discussion of different types of papers, such as cause and effect, descriptive, evaluation, and narrative essays. The editing pages address such issues as sexist language, misused words, and prepositions and idioms. In addition to these materials, the RSCC OWL provides links to other OWLs, various writing resources (including a list of annoying proverbs/cliches), Library of Congress pages, community college and university links. For students constructing web pages, this OWL provides links to a help page on web-related issues, a style guide for online Hypertext, a series of how-to HTML coding pages, and a link to a particularly useful online web designers' spell/code checker called Doctor HTML. The On-Line "Writery": Writing at MU The On-Line Writery announces that "you are entering the conversation zone for writers" and advertises itself as a place for writers at Missouri University or elsewhere who are involved in any kind of writing. The Writery provides various resources for all kinds of writing and is generally a very inviting place. Although priority is given to Missouri University students, all writers may avail themselves of Writery services and resources. There are several ways to contact Writery cybertutors: via group e-mail, ZooMOO (MU's own MOO), and by personal e-mail (particularly if you are trying to get in touch with a tutor you've worked with before). You can also check out short biographies and home pages for all the cybertutors on the job at the Writery. The Writery uses MOOs to conduct much of its business. The MOO is a real-time, text only, online conversational medium. MOO stands for Multi-user dungeon, Object Oriented. This is basically a chat software program in which users create rooms (dungeons) to talk within. MOOs can seem complicated at first, because the program which runs them requires users to know a basic series of commands, such as speak, emote, look, etc. The MU Online Writery embraces online tutoring whole-heartedly. The Cybertutors are genuinely interested in writing, their own and that of others, and discussing writing with students/clients. Using Inclusive LanguageThe language we choose is extremely important. One thing we find essential is choosing language that doesn't alienate or exclude people. The following are links to Websites that focus on inclusive language:
|
The Writing ZoneWorking Through the Paper: Diary of James Cook, First Voyage |