digital tool essay

Digital writing tools from the student perspective

Access, affordances, and agency

• Open access
• Published: 04 December 2018
• Volume 24 , pages 1563–1581, ( 2019 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Helene Dahlström 1  

15k Accesses

20 Citations

Explore all metrics

Along with digital development, new possibilities for communicating have emerged. The younger generation has adopted these new possibilities to a great extent. In order to be able to utilise the opportunities offered by digital tools when writing, access to digital tools is essential. Schools need to develop a writing education that meets students’ contemporary writing needs. In considering this, it is important to learn more about the gains and the losses in digital writing. The purpose of this study was to understand and discuss the relation between students’ digital access, students’ perceived affordances with digital writing, and student agency. The methods used were a statistical survey and qualitative interviews. Six classes from five different schools located in a municipality in the middle of Sweden were chosen as an informant group. The results indicate that the most common condition concerning students’ digital access was that students shared digital tools for writing with their families. An analysis of affordances was carried out to interpret the empirical findings from the qualitative data. Affordances that emerged were: write-ability, edit-ability, story-telling ability and accessibility. In addition, the ways in which digital access and the affordances perceived can be related to student agency were analysed. The main conclusion was that given the conditions of digital access and opportunities to practice, the affordances of digital writing can increase student agency. In turn, this suggests that writing education that focuses on student agency can contribute to equity in writing activities.

Similar content being viewed by others

Seamless Writing: How the Digitisation of Writing Transforms Thinking, Communication, and Student Learning

New Literacies and Technology: Keeping Current in a Writing Methods Course

Digitizing Writing: An Empirical Exploratory Study Towards Students’ Writing Skill Fluency Improvement in ‘Padletosphere’

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

Communication and the ways we make meaning are changing. Along with digital development, meaning making and communication have also changed. In contemporary communication, resources such as writing, images and music are all commonly used for meaning making (Kress 2010 ). Furthermore, the way we write is changing. Digitalisation has brought increased opportunities to choose among digital writing resources. Finally, the change includes a shift from an unquestioned authority that provides guidance for semiotic action in education, to communication and knowledge produced by anyone, at any time. Due to these changes, it becomes relevant to discuss how meaning is made in education, and to ask questions about the possibilities and the challenges in the use of digital tools in education (Barton 2007 ; Kress 2010 ).

As digital development is a considerable part of the change in communication, it becomes relevant to discuss whether all students have equal opportunities to take advantage of the possibilities offered. One requirement for being able to perceive the new possibilities offered, is to have access to digital tools. In Sweden, due to socioeconomic background, access to digital tools differs among primary school students (Statens medieråd 2017 ). Therefore, schools play an important role in bridging the inequality that has appeared between students (Samuelsson 2014 ; van Deursen and van Dijk 2014 ). Apart from access to digital writing tools, education that enables the potential of these tools to be discovered and utilised by the students is also required. According to Björkvall and Jacquet ( 2014 ), one starting point can be to draw attention to the affordances offered by digital writing tools. The concept of affordance is used in this article, to analyse how 10-12 year old students perceive the affordances offered when using digital writing tools. The concept of affordances is seen as relational, meaning that the affordances offered shape the conditions for what it is possible to do (Hutchby 2001 ). The concept of agency refers to students’ active participation and their ability to act independently in writing activities in a school context (Bezemer and Kress 2016 ; Selander and Kress 2010 ). Agency is also understood as something that is achieved in and through engagement with a particular situation, for example students’ narrative writing in a classroom context (Biesta and Tedder 2006 ; Emirbayer and Mische 1998 ).

The current debate about what digital writing may provide in terms of possibilities and constraints has resulted in research on how students’ writing is affected by the use of digital writing tools (Agélii Genlott and Grönlund 2016 ; Dahlström and Boström 2017 ; Mangen and Balsvik 2016 ). There is also research on students digital access in relation to equality (Samuelsson 2014 ; van Deursen and van Dijk 2014 ). However, there seems to be a research gap concerning the relation between the two fields of digital access and digital writing. In Sweden a national strategy for the digitalisation of education was created (Swedish Ministry of Education 2017a ). In this strategy three areas were in particular focus: Digital competence for everyone in the school system, Equal access and use, and Research and evaluation of the possibilities of digitalisation. Based on this strategy, changes were made in the Swedish curricula for compulsory school concerning education and students digital competences (Swedish Ministry of Education 2017b ). In relation to digital writing these changes in the curricula are aimed at education providing students with the capacity to write and edit text, both digitally and by hand. These changes can be understood as the Swedish school system intending to bridge digital diversity, and to offer students opportunities for writing education that includes learning digital writing, as well as handwriting. Therefore, learning about the possibilities that digital writing provides can be valuable when developing this sort of education. One way of learning about the possibilities of the new ways of writing is to ask the younger generation who are in education (Erixon 2016 ).

The focus of the study presented in this article emerged out of the challenge of giving all students the chance to utilise the possibilities of digital writing in education. Thus, the aim of this article is to discuss and understand the relation between students’ digital access, students’ perceived affordances of digital writing and student agency.

Such knowledge can lead to a deeper understanding of how writing education can be designed in order to give students more equal conditions to express meaning while writing in general, and when writing stories in particular. The analysis has been guided by the following research questions: What access to digital tools do students have? What affordances do digital tools for writing offer students when writing stories? How can the relation between digital access and the affordances perceived in digital writing be understood in relation to student agency?

2 Previous research

This section is organised in three different parts. Initially, research on digital access is presented, followed by research on possibilities and affordances offered by digital writing tools. The section is concluded by describing research on agency and digital tools.

2.1 Digital access

Technical equity is about having access to digital technology as well as the opportunity to learn the skills needed to use technology in a way that meets an individual intention (Samuelsson 2014 ). Increasing access to digital tools in school is sometimes put forward as part of the compensatory assignment, in order to give all students equal opportunities for using digital tools. However, simply increasing access, as in so-called one-to-one initiatives, often results in continuing digital inequality in terms of use, and of being able to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the digital tools (Park and Jae Kim 2014 ; Samuelsson 2014 ). An individual’s background influences how digital technology is used. A new digital divide is emerging between students who have digital competence, and those who do not (van Deursen and van Dijk 2014 ). In order for students to be able to benefit from both current and future education, that part of the school’s mission which is to provide every student with digital skills is important here (Samuelsson 2014 ). According to Samuelsson ( 2014 ), the existence of digital inequality among students can be explained by the fact that digital tools at home are often shared with other family members. Samuelsson also found that the students who had high levels of access to digital tools at home were the students who had greater digital skills.

2.2 Possibilities offered

The possibilities of using software scaffolding programs seem to be of decisive importance, according to previous research. When using programs such as speech synthesis and spelling check, students write longer texts and struggling writers are included in writing activities to a greater extent (Agélii Genlott and Grönlund 2016 ; Hultin and Westman 2014 ; Liberg 2014 ). One group of students who can benefit from using digital software programs such as word processors and speech synthesis is students with Swedish as their second language, according to Dahlström and Boström ( 2017 ). These researchers compared student narrative texts, written under three different writing conditions: using pen and paper, using digital writing tools, and using digital writing tools with speech synthesis. Results indicated that students with Swedish as their second language wrote longer texts, as well as producing more accurate language when using digital tools, in comparison with their handwritten texts. Another Swedish study, a social semiotic ethnography, showed that when students could use the digital tool resources, there was a difference in how different students benefited from them. Some students used the digital resources only as a machine for schoolwork, while others used the resources in several different contexts. For example, one student wrote blogs at home with many different readers, and at school she wrote school tasks aimed at the teacher (Björkvall and Jacquet 2014 ).

The possibilities reported by students in interview studies concern, to a great extent, how the use of word processor as a scaffolding tool can affect students’ writing (Clarke and Svanaes 2012 ; Ghandoura 2012 ; Olofsson et al. 2017 ). In a study where 100 Swedish students in the lower secondary school were asked about their attitudes towards new technology in their Swedish lessons, Erixon ( 2016 ) found that most students were positive about digital writing. Students’ positive attitudes towards writing with the new technology have to do with speed and efficiency, according to Erixon ( 2016 ). The chance to improve writing, taking notes and keeping a structure are common findings from studies regarding upper secondary school students’ perspectives on the possibilities and the challenges of using digital tools in education. Arguments mentioned it being faster and easier to write digitally. Challenges reported from these studies were technological problems, and a gap in digital competence between teachers and students (Håkansson Lindqvist 2013 , 2015 ; Olofsson et al. 2017 ).

The affordances of digital reading and writing were investigated as well as paper and pen affordances, in an Italian context, (Fortunati and Vincent 2014 ). The overall results showed that writing on paper had more positive affordances as compared to digital writing. The digital affordances perceived were the ability to use the automatic correction function, and being able to edit the text. Some students also mentioned that digital writing was less exhausting for their hands. The perceived affordances of reading and writing on paper and digital writing were also studied by Taipale ( 2014 ). Taipale ( 2014 ) replicated Fortunati and Vincent’s ( 2014 ) study in the Finnish context. In contrast to the Italian context, college students in Finland valued writing on a keyboard the most, especially because it enabled editing the text quickly, which increased their textual productivity. Some affordances of digital writing were taken for granted and the students did not recognise their non-digital alternatives according to Taipale ( 2014 ). Other affordances that the students described were the possibilities of documenting ideas quickly, it being easier to remember what their thoughts were, edit-ability and the ability to hide their own poor handwriting. These differences may imply that Finish students are more embedded in the digital world than Italian students (Taipale 2014 ). Writing with digital tools appears to provide new opportunities for creating texts. The digital writing process can include a great deal of editing while writing. This new process of writing means that students move back and forth in the text, and do not, as before, follow a linear writing process (Kress 2003 ; Stapleton 2012 ; Åkerfeldt 2014 ).

2.3 Agency and digital tools

Few studies were found that focused on both the affordances of writing tools, and on student agency. One study, focusing on student agency and literacy education through digital technologies involving a class of Australian 10-12 year old students, was found to be relevant. This study showed a change in agency. The students were given increased options of participating in activities that enabled them to exercise control over the learning context. While composing persuasive texts, students were observed working and reaching literacy goals when they took digital initiatives. There was no scaffolding provided on how to use the technology, and the emphasis was on the literacy content, according to Simpson and Walsh ( 2014 ). Although the purpose was not to focus on the use of technology, the teacher became frustrated when the lack of digital competence took time from the literacy education. Findings from a Singaporean study describe how writing instruction in English classrooms is still teacher directed. The perspective of students as independent writers, and of student agency, remains underdeveloped. According to Kiss and Mizusawa ( 2018 ), writing classrooms should be designed to scaffold students to discover what they can do, rather than what teachers believe the students can do. According to Klerfelt ( 2007 ), the possibilities for student agency are affected by whether or not the teacher sees digital resources as mediational means, and gives the students access to resources as active participants.

3 Theoretical framework

3.1 materiality and semiotic resources.

Written language can be produced materially in different ways. There are basic differences in the materiality of writing, meaning that the basic features of writing are related to the materiality of the technology that is used to mediate the writing (Merchant 2007 ). When using a pen and a paper to represent meaning there is direct contact with the hand that forms the letters on the paper. The patterns made on the paper are created from the memory of the form of the alphabetic writing system. When using a keyboard or a touch screen, choices are made from a palette of ready made letters and symbols, and the writing appears on a screen instead of on paper (Merchant 2007 ). The use of semiotics with a specific materiality produces semiotic affordances (possibilities of action) or meaning potential, possibilities and limitations of different semiotic resources in a particular context (van Leeuwen 2005 ). Semiotic resources can be defined as:

the actions and artefacts we use to communicate, whether they are produced - with our vocal apparatus; with the muscles we use to create facial expressions and gestures, etc.- or by means of technologies - with pen, ink and paper; with computer hardware and software; with fabrics, scissors and sewing machines, etc. (van Leeuwen 2005 , p. 3).

3.2 Affordance

Closely related to the term semiotic potential is the term affordance (Gibson 1986 ), meaning that affordances are the potential uses of a given object. According to Gibson ( 1986 ), humans, just like animals, approach objects in their world in terms of affordances, i.e. the possibilities for action that are offered to them, and not in terms of their qualities. Gibson also states that an affordance does not change because an individual’s needs change, the affordance is what it is, with the possibility of being perceived. According to Hutchby ( 2001 ), another way of defining affordances is to see them as being relational.

This view emphasises the relational aspects of the affordances, meaning that affordances cannot be seen as human properties, nor as the properties of artefacts. Rather, affordances can be seen as the space between the human and the artefact, where opportunities for action are offered.

Hutchby also stresses that humans have to learn about some affordances offered. For example, some affordances are designed into the artefacts, such as different software programs that are designed as digital tools, as Norman ( 1990 ) stated earlier. There are different ways of responding to the affordances of action and interaction that an artefact offers. It is possible to study this variation of responses empirically, if we accept the possibilities for agentic actions in the relation between human intentions and the affordances of the artefacts. (Hutchby 2001 ). All the resources that we use to communicate have affordances. Danielsson and Selander ( 2016 ) describe the term affordance as the meaning potential offered, or as the possibilities and the limitations of various semiotic resources in a certain context, for example a school context. From a didactic perspective, the opportunity to choose between different semiotic resources could be advantageous for student agency. In this article the concept of affordance is used to analyse the possibilities for action that primary students perceive when using digital writing tools, when creating stories. In this article, the concept of agency is used in order to analyse how the affordances perceived by the students can be understood in relation to student agency. Below, this concept is described further.

Meaning making and the production of texts are central concepts in social semiotics where the word making implies a maker, and therefore, the concept of agency becomes central (Kress 2010 ). In educational settings there has been a shift in agency, from the fact that teachers previously created agency for the students, towards the learner’s (student’s) agency being in focus (Bezemer and Kress 2016 ). Different tools for writing offer different choices and digitalisation has increased the possible choices for meaning making. These choices are made by the individual in a social context, e.g. in the classroom (Kress 2010 ). The tools can be seen as a means of mediating the purposes that the student has (Björkvall and Karlsson 2011 ). Student agency means that students are allowed to acquire an action space. When students are given scope for action, and the teachers have a permissive attitude, then student agency can take place (Baynham 2006 ).

Agency can be understood as something that is achieved in, and through, engagement with a particular temporal relational situation, for example engagement in the writing of stories in a classroom situation (Biesta and Tedder 2006 ; Emirbayer and Mische 1998 ). The idea of achieving agency moves the explanation away from the individual, where agency can be seen as an individual possession. Agency is not something people can have. This view allows for the empirical possibility that the achievement of agency is related to the availability of resources (Biesta and Tedder 2006 ). The availability of resources is closely related to agency and design in a social semiotic theory, where the individuals’ meaning making design, relates to choices (Selander and Kress 2010 ). The concept of design is described further in the next section.

The concept of design for understanding communication can be said to reflect the linguistic change brought about by a shift in the power relationships in society, as well as in school. Due to changes in communication, schools which were previously expected to be the sole supplier of knowledge, now have an altered task. Knowledge is now being created everywhere by everyone. Young people perceive themselves as producers of the knowledge they need, and as authors of texts that meet individual and social needs. This new way to produce knowledge tends to collide with the sometimes more traditional and authoritarian student and knowledge perspectives found in education (Kress 2010 ). Therefore, this shift of power is of importance to how teachers design their teaching. The concept of design can be helpful in understanding these new complex learning situations (Leijon and Lindstrand 2012 ).

Design, as a concept, has replaced competence , in a social semiotic approach when discussing knowledge, communication and meaning making. Design is seen as an essential principle in the process of meaning making. According to Kress ( 2017 ), the process of meaning making is made in a sequence of interactions involving at least two actors. One individual’s action is initiating and the other individual’s action is responsive, but they both make meaning out of their interest. For example, the initiating actor, can be the teacher. Making choices and with the resources available, he or she designs the teaching based on an educational interest. The second actor, the student here, creates his or her own learning from the resources given them by the teacher. How different students respond to what is offered depends on interest and previous experiences concerning the resources offered to them. Here, design is semiotic work and it produces meaning (Kress 2010 ).

In this study, design has three meanings. First, design involves how the media available have been constructed for communication. Second, the concept of design in a didactic perspective can be seen as a way to form the conditions for learning (Selander and Kress 2010 ). Third, for the learner, design involves how a learner is given opportunities to make his or her own choices, based on the semiotic resources available and according to the purpose and aim of the representation (Kress 2010 ; Rostvall and Selander 2008 ). Therefore, being familiar with the affordances provided by different modes and media is crucial to making choices (Kress 2010 ).

The study aims to develop knowledge about affordances offered by digital writing tools and student agency. Since one prerequisite for perceiving affordances with digital writing tools is to have digital access, it also became relevant to describe how student access to digital tools was related to student agency. In order to encompass this aim, a research design that included both qualitative and quantitative methods was used. The design can be described as mainly qualitative, but in order to describe digital access applicable to a wider range of students, a survey was included in the study.

4.1 Participants

The participants included in the study were 111 Swedish middle school students, 10-12 years of age. Six classes from five different schools located in a municipality in the middle of Sweden were chosen as an informant group for this study. One of the schools was located in a multicultural suburban area, while the other four schools were located in smaller rural areas. The data collection started with qualitative interviews, the 12 participants were strategically sampled, in the sense of being chosen with the aim of fulfilling the criteria set in advance, in order to provide the study with relevant data with which to answer the research questions. The criteria were:

A focus on the middle years with the motivation that this age group can be seen as already knowing how to write, because the focus was not on how to learn to write.

The participants should have experience from writing with digital tools as well as with pen and paper. Therefore, classes where students were only allowed to use either digital tools or pen and paper were not an option.

The selection of classes for the survey can be regarded as a cluster sampling (Grey 2013 ). Clusters, in this study, mean that students are naturally placed in classes, and all the students in the classes participated. The criteria were the same as for the smaller sample, i.e. the interviews. In these classes there were 99 students, aged 10-12. The data was generated in six different schools in the central region of Sweden, during 2016–2017.

4.2 Procedure

The data were collected and analysed both separately and as a whole. Initially, in the first phase the interview strand was conducted and completed. Phase two, the survey, with the aim of gathering information about students’ access to digital tools, also gave the opportunity to collect a broader view on some of the questions in the interviews. As the number of students included was limited, the results apply to this particular group of students alone, and it is therefore difficult to make any generalised claims.

4.2.1 Qualitative interviews

Qualitative interviews were completed with 12 students, aged 10-11 years old. There were six boys and six girls with various access to, and competence in digital tools for writing. As the aim was to understand the students’ views concerning the affordances of digital writing tools, semi-structured interviews seemed to be the best method for the purpose, as interviews are seen as a powerful tool to collect qualitative data (Kvale 2007 ). An interview guide was constructed with open questions, which also made it possible to ask supplementary questions if needed. The questions were about students’ views on the possibilities and constraints of using digital tools. Some questions concerned students’ access to digital tools. The interviews lasted for 15-30 min. All interviews except one were recorded. One student did not want to be recorded, so in this case, notes were taken. All the interviews were transcribed. This strand of inquiry was supplemented by 67 open-ended answers from the survey. Of the 99 questionnaires, 67 students had written answers to the open-ended questions.

To analyse the data, an affordance lens was used in order to be able to acquire students’ perceptions about the affordances when using digital writing tools, when creating stories. The analysis is influenced by an relational perspective on affordances (Hutchby 2001 ). The focus was on the possibilities that emerged in the meeting between students and the material tools, in the action of writing stories. The first step in analysing the data, was to get a brief understanding of students’ expressions, using an affordance lens. This was done by an initial general listening to the students meanings as expressed in the interviews, and by reading their open-ended answers. The next step was to transcribe all the data. In this manner an understanding of the data emerged and through an affordance lens, it was possible to identify affordances and some of their key characteristics. The affordances identified were based on the action possibilities described by the students, and the corresponding characteristics of each affordance. Thereafter the concept of agency was used for further interpretation and analysis, in order to understand what the different affordances could mean in relation to student agency.

4.2.2 The survey

A total of 99 students in four different schools were given the opportunity to answer the survey. All the students answered. One reason for the 100% response rate was that I personally visited most of the classes and participated during the lesson when the students filled in the questionnaire. In two of the classes, the class teacher taught the lesson when the students answered the questions herself.

The survey was operationalised from the study’s research questions, and consisted of 15 questions. The survey started with some background questions, followed by Likert-scale questions about digital access at home as well as in school. Some questions addressed the frequency of using different tools. The questionnaire also contained a number of questions concerning students’ views about using different tools for writing stories. Some of these questions were open-ended questions.

The students answered the survey questionnaire on paper. The questionnaire measured students’ access to digital tools at home, as well as in school. The response alternatives to these particular questions were. if they had access to devices of their own or if they had shared access within the family. First the data were coded, by numbering the different answers. The coded data were then analysed using cross tabulation. Students were also asked about which tools they used most frequently for writing. Frequency distribution was used to answer the question. The different descriptive analyses were carried out in the software program SPSS. The analysis of the open-ended questions concerning digital access was conducted using content analysis (Miles et al. 2014 ). Based on the research questions, students’ expressions from interviews and together with the open ended questions, were sorted into content areas. The next step was to divide the areas into suitable meaning units, followed by condensation of meaning units. Finally, the condensed meaning units were allocated a code. The codes were then sorted into different categories. Together, the categories reflect the main message of the interviews (Graneheim and Lundman 2004 ). Finally, six categories could be formulated into three themes. The concept of agency was used for further interpretation and analysis, in order to understand what digital access could mean in relation to student agency.

4.3 Trustworthiness, credibility and ethical issues

One way to establish trustworthiness in a study is to ensure credibility. According to Merriam ( 1998 ) creditability addresses the question of how congruent the findings are with reality. One strategy used in this study in order to see how the findings are congruent, is to account for personal biases that may influence the findings. The researcher is the major instrument of data collection and analysis (Creswell 2014 ). As a former teacher and special needs educator I entered the study with an preunderstanding about the phenomenon under investigation, namely students’ digital writing. This preunderstanding can be seen as adding something but also aggravating how congruent the findings are with reality. In the sense of having an understanding about both the context and the phenomenon under study, it is an addition. However, the fact that I had this understanding can be seen as aggravating, due to the potential of foreseeing some of the findings. In order to add more credibility to the findings in this study two different kinds of debriefing sessions have been carried out. Firstly a seminar with other researchers was conducted, in order to discuss the interpretations of the data. Secondly to increase their credibility further, the findings have been discussed with teachers who have experience of writing in education, in order ensure that the findings are consistent with their own teaching experience. According to Miles et al. ( 2014 ) asking people who have similar experiences to the participants involved in the study, is one way of seeing if the findings are congruent with reality. Finally, the examination of previous research findings is done to further ensure trustworthiness, when comparing the findings’ congruence with past studies.

The participants were informed about the purpose of the study in advance. Since the students were not old enough to give their written informed consent to their voluntary participation in the study themselves, their caretakers had to give their written permission. The research followed the ethical codex of the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet 2017 ), and the empirical data has been processed accordingly.

In this section, a description of the students’ access to digital tools is provided. The findings from the open-ended questions in the questionnaire, together with the findings from the interviews are then presented, according to the categorisation of affordances. Finally, these empirical findings are further interpreted and analysed in relation to student agency. This will be discussed further in the discussion section.

5.1 Access to digital tools for writing

Firstly, access to digital tools for writing was investigated, covering students’ access in their homes, and at school. All the students had access to smartphones, but as the study was about tools for writing stories, smartphones were excluded from the study. The students responded in the questionnaire, answering whether or not they had personal access to the different tools at home, if they shared them with the family, or if they did not have any access at all.

Table 1 shows that the students had a high level of access to digital tools for writing at home. Students had the greatest access to computers, but the majority of the students had to share the computers with their family. Regarding having a device of their own, the tablet was the most common tool with 59 students having their own tablet. As described in Table 1 , there was a small number of students who did not have access to a computer or a tablet at all.

The results from the content analysis show a similar pattern, a majority of the students described having access to digital tools for writing at home. Some students had a high level of access. One student noted:

I have my own computer, phone, I have two iPads and I have some headphones I think, and a TV of my own.

That sharing digital tools for writing in the family sometimes meant that they felt that they had a low level of access, was expressed by one student:

I love writing stories on the computer but do not use it very much because my dad has the computer, like, all the time.

All of the students reported that the school had computers to use for writing.

Tablets to use for writing were reported by 72 students. But according to the students, they were not allowed to use them to the extent they wanted to:

We have tablets at school, but my class has never used them.

When analysing the students’ access to digital tools for writing, it becomes apparent that students who had the opportunity to use and practice with digital tools, could design their texts more freely. Practice was frequently mentioned as something important by the students, in order to be able to use the digital tools in the way they wanted. Although students perceived some of the affordances offered, they explained that they had to practise in order to be able to take advantage of them.

5.2 The importance of having the possibility to practise with digital tools for writing

The opportunity for digital practice, or the lack of digital practice appears to play a crucial role in how the students express themselves concerning writing with different tools. Results from the content analysis showed that some students wrote on computers or tablets all the time at home. As one student states:

I'm used to working with the computer and iPad at home. I write a lot on the computer at home. So I am pretty good on the computer. The computer is my best tool.

On the other hand, other students described a lack of opportunity to practise, due to the low level of access at home. They did not have computers or tablets, or they shared them with the family. Due to their lack of experience of computer use at home, it was difficult to write on computers at school. One student explains this relationship:

I always write with a pen, we don’t have a computer at home so when I write on the computer at school, it can feel quite strange. It is hard to find the letters on a tablet or a computer.

After they had written on tablets at school, some students with little experience of writing digitally described how it would have been good if they had initially learnt to master the tablet. One student expressed it like this:

If you started by learning to find the letters, then it would be faster for everyone to write stories. Then you could write three chapters during one lesson instead of one. The more you practise on the iPad, the longer the text will be.

Some students expressed wanting to write with digital tools more. The most common tools for writing in schools included in this study were shown to be pen and paper. A total of 58% of the students claimed that the most common tool used while writing stories in school was the pen, compared to 42% of the students who used digital tools most frequently.

In summary, these results provide insights into the access this particular group of students has to digital tools for writing. Even though students perceive some affordances, they still experience the need to practise in order to be able to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by digital writing tools.

5.3 Affordances

This section will present the findings of the affordance analysis. According to the students, the use of digital writing tools provided the most possibilities for writing stories. The constraints were fewer, and students described more obstacles when they had to write by hand. In this section, the four affordances identified are presented. Following this, the constraints perceived when using digital tools for writing stories are addressed.

5.3.1 Write-ability

There are different descriptions about the possibilities of writing a readable text, as afforded by digital writing tools. Often this meant that the students could write without spelling errors, and could use correct punctuation. As one student formulated this:

With a pen, I do not know if I'm writing correctly. I have a little trouble spelling so writing on a computer is better because then I see when I spell wrongly, and I can write more.

For some students, this included the possibility of writing faster. To write faster could also be related to the possibility of writing a readable text in so far as it enabled teachers to read the text, as well as they themselves. This relation is expressed by a student:

It's faster to just press a key instead of shaping letters, you do not have to erase. It is possible to write a lot and quickly and yet it is possible to read it. If you write by hand, you must write slowly so that it is possible to read it.

The possibility of using difficult words was perceived by some of the students. When the students used scaffolding tools such as the word processor or speech synthesis, the possibility of using words that they could not spell correctly could be seen as an affordance. A number of students also noted that they perceived the possibility of hearing if something in their writing was wrong.

5.3.2 Edit-ability

Students expressed that the affordance of edit-ability allowed them to edit the text, and that it became easier to erase and re-write. The students found it was a relief not to have to think about erasing by hand, and rewriting with a pen. One student said:

It is easier to erase. If you make a mistake, it will turn red and you don’t have to use a rubber. You can just press a button to clear it without making it messy. It looks bad when you have to use a rubber and everything on the paper turns grey.

Some students explained that the edit-ability offered the possibility of writing without fear of making mistakes. If they made mistakes using digital tools, it was easy to correct. It was also easy to rearrange text if they got new ideas while they were writing, according to some students.

5.3.3 Story-telling-ability

When they could listen and hear what they had written, students perceived the possibility of being inspired to continue their story. Listening to the story, alone or together with friends, was something many students described as inspiring for the story-telling process. Some students pointed out another possibility offered, namely that it became easier to concentrate on story creation when they could relax about the formal aspects of writing. One student expressed it like this:

It is easier to concentrate on the story when you don’t have to bother about the spelling and asking the teacher or a friend all the time.

As mentioned, students felt freer to use words that fit the intention they had in their writing. This freedom to choose words based on their intentions, was made possible by of the use of the word processing program and the access to spelling scaffolding.

5.3.4 Accessibility

In this article, accessibility refers to the possibilities students have for participation based on equal conditions in the writing activities. According to the students’ descriptions, digital writing made all texts readable, regardless of which student wrote the text. That could mean that when writing digitally, it was not possible to see if someone had spelling difficulties or knew when to use punctuation, as the texts look the same. One comment related to accessibility, where students that have concentration difficulties could focus better when writing digitally:

It's easier to sit still and focus, you can sit on the couch and have headphones on.

Also, if a student had problems due to weak motor skills, they could write as much as the other students if they wanted to, according to the students. A few students also said that writing digitally could result in less help being needed from the teacher, for example help with spelling.

5.4 Constraints for writing stories through the use of digital tools

In the beginning of this section, students mostly expressed the possibilities of digital writing, the loss being the opportunity to write in a personal style. The use of digital tools made all texts look the same, regardless of which student wrote the text. Another constraint described was that digital writing demanded less bodily activity, which was perceived as a negative constraint.

In summary, the empirical findings of the affordance analysis provide insights on action possibilities, as well as the constraints which digital writing tools create for students. An extended analysis in relation to the concept of student agency is presented in Table 2 . The results in relation to the concept of agency will be discussed in the next section.

6 Discussion and conclusion

The overall research question in this study was to investigate how access to digital writing tools and the affordances of writing tools could be understood in relation to student agency. The ways in which digital access and the affordances offered by digital tools can be understood, according to students’ perceptions, will be discussed in the following section.

6.1 Student agency in relation to digital access

The relationship between students’ access to digital tools for writing and student agency will be discussed in this section. Most of the students in this study shared digital tools with their family members at home. In relation to student agency, this implies that some students have fewer opportunities to achieve agency than others. How these aspects are related is explained by Samuelsson ( 2014 ) as an inequity. The fact that digital tools at home are often shared with other family members can result in low use of digital tools for this group of students. A prerequisite for being able to use the potential of digital writing tools is the accessibility of those tools. In the present study, a small number of students did not have access to digital tools at home at all.

Access to digital tools, as well as the possibilities of practising with the digital tools, differs in Swedish students’ homes with reference to socio-economic background and the parents’ educational level (Medierådet, 2017). Therefore schools have an important role, as proposed by van Deursen and van Dijk ( 2014 ) and Samuelsson ( 2014 ), of bridging this inequity. In the study at hand, the most common writing tool when writing stories in the classroom, was shown to be the pen. Some students described how digital writing tools were never used in writing activities, even though the school had them. Not allowing students to use digital writing tools in education can be seen as denying the students agency. With the changes made in the Swedish curriculum regarding digitalisation, with the aim of equal digital access and digital competence for everyone in the school system, (Swedish Ministry of Education 2017a ) Swedish schools should provide a writing education that enables students to develop their digital writing.

In order to create opportunities for students to achieve agency when writing, one requirement seems to be that students should have the possibility of taking advantage of the affordances offered by digital writing tools in school. One consequence of students’ unequal preconditions, is that different students perceive different affordances (cf. Björkvall and Karlsson 2011 ). In this study, some of the students who had low levels of access to digital tools at home, expressed the need for practice. One example of this was the need to easily find the letters on the tablets, before they were given tasks involving writing stories. This is in line with Simpson and Walsh ( 2014 ) who reported that there was a lack of focus on scaffolding about the use of the technology in the educational writing context. Some affordances need to be practised. Although all students may be able to discover an affordance, all students may not be able to exploit these affordances (Danielsson and Selander 2016 ; Hutchby 2001 ). The tools available for the students, and the teaching designed by the teacher, affects the choices that can be made by students. Allowing students to make independent choices in meaning making is to allow student agency (Baynham 2006 ; Selander and Kress 2010 ). The activity of producing a text, using a word processing program, requires the user being able to both view and utilise the affordances offered by the program. Giving students these possibilities, is about enabling student agency. One adaption in the writing education environment to increase student agency, could be to give students the opportunity to choose different tools for writing, as well as giving them opportunities to practise, in order to achieve the affordances offered (Selander and Kress 2010 ).

6.2 Student agency in relation to the affordances perceived

How the relationship between students’ perceived affordances and agency can be understood, is presented in this section. In relation to student agency, the affordance of write-ability can mean an increased capacity to communicate because of the possibility of creating readable texts. When students in this study knew that the letters they produced became standardised, they could write more, and write more freely because they knew that their text would be readable for everyone. This can be understood as improved write-ability, and can increase students’ possibilities of being designers as well as giving them the opportunity to act more independently (cf. Selander and Kress 2010 ). The affordance of write-ability in relation to students’ increased agency can also be understood as students being enabled to develop their language. This is because of the possibility of varying their word usage, and not just using words that they are sure about spelling correctly.

Students in this study, as in the study of Taipale ( 2014 ), expressed that the affordance of edit-ability, afforded them the possibility to edit the text easily, if the teacher told them to make changes. When editing digitally students need not be afraid of having to erase by hand, and rewrite everything. The digital writing process includes a great deal of editing while writing, instead of the linear writing process when writing by hand. When writing in a linear process by hand it is harder to make changes (Kress 2003 ; Stapleton 2012 ; Åkerfeldt 2014 ). Accordingly, the affordance of edit-ability can be understood as the possibility for increased agency to write more freely, and for students to become designers of their own text. Having to erase by hand was a great obstacle to many students, because it made the paper grey and messy. Students in this study perceived that they could produce more text, and that the opportunities to communicate increased when using digital tools (cf. Taipale 2014 ). In relation to student agency, according to the results, the affordance of story-telling-ability can imply increased opportunity for the students involved to imagine, and to create stories. The students perception of becoming inspired to create stories can be related to being designers of their own text. In turn, being designers of the text can imply more independence in text creation.

The affordance of accessibility in relation to student agency can be understood as being due to increased accessibility, students can expand their possibilities of participating in writing activities. According to the students, digital writing tools can make it easier to produce letters, which can reduce the physical difficulties of writing as well as affecting the way students compose their writing. Thereby, the possibilities for writing are changed in favour of student agency (cf. Barton 2007 ). If digital writing tools can be used as an extended opportunity to participate on more equal terms, regardless of the difficulties of spelling or letter formation, the learning environment can be seen to be designed to accommodate the students. This was also seen in other Swedish studies (Agélii Genlott and Grönlund 2013 ; Hultin and Westman 2014 ; Liberg 2014 ). Students in this study also expressed feeling freer to use words that fit the intention they had in their writing, when writing digitally. One reason for this was that they could choose words based on their intentions because of being able to use the word processing program including digital access to spelling scaffolding. The tools can be seen as means of mediating the purposes the student has (Björkvall and Karlsson 2011 ). When students are regarded as agents, able to make choices according to the resources available, and according to their intentions for the text, they can be regarded as independent writers, something that can also be seen as a step in the direction of educational equity. From choice, and with the resources available, teachers design their teaching, based on educational interest. Then, the student creates his or her own learning from the resources given by the teacher. How different students respond to what is offered, depends on interest and previous experience concerning the resources offered to them (Kress 2010 ). When students are given the resources needed in order to express their intentions, the meaning making process can be seen as a part of the change in communication, where knowledge can be created by everyone (Kress 2010 ).

The students in this study provide examples of how the affordances of digital writing can contribute to equity in writing activities. Some students stated that even if they did discover an affordance, in order to take advantage of its full potential it was necessary to have the chance to practise (cf. Danielsson and Selander 2016 ; Hutchby 2001 ). Design involves how a learner is given opportunities to make his or her own choices, based on the semiotic resources available, and in accordance with the purpose and aim of the representation (Kress 2010 ; Rostvall and Selander 2008 ). Kress ( 2010 ) states that being familiar with the affordances provided by different modes and media is crucial for making choices. In order to be able to become familiar with the affordances offered, students need to have digital access. As has been shown in this study, as well as in the studies by Samuelsson ( 2014 ) and Statens medieråd ( 2017 ), home access to digital tools differs among primary school students. Because of students’ different pre-conditions, students should have the opportunity to utilise the affordances offered by digital writing in the classroom (cf Samuelsson 2014 ). The main conclusion in this study is that given the conditions of digital access and opportunities for practice, the affordances of digital writing can increase student agency. In turn, this suggests that a writing education focusing on student agency can contribute to equity in writing activities. Allowing student agency can mean a shift in power in education. It is important to take this shift into consideration when teachers are designing their teaching (Leijon and Lindstrand 2012 ).

7 Limitations and future research

As contemporary digital meaning making includes the use of various resources, such as images, music and speech, it would be advantageous to have a multimodal approach in future research on affordances and agency in young people’s creation of stories. As this study only includes students’ perceptions on making meaning while writing, this could be seen as a limitation in the study.

Agélii Genlott, A., & Grönlund, Å. (2013). Improving literacy skills through learning by writing: The iWTR method presented and tested. Computers & Education, 67 , 98–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.03.007 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Agélii Genlott, A., & Grönlund, Å. (2016). Closing the gaps: Improving literacy and mathematics by ict- enhanced collaboration. Computers & Education, 99 , 68–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.04.004 .

Åkerfeldt, A. (2014). Re-shaping of writing in the digital age – A study of pupils’ writing with different resources. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 9 (3), 172–193.

Google Scholar  

Barton. (2007). Literacy: An introduction to the ecology of written language . Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Baynham, M. (2006). Agency and contingency in the language learning of refugees and asylum seekers. Linguistics and Education, 17 , 24–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2006.08.008 .

Bezemer, J., & Kress, G. (2016). Multimodality, learning and communication, a social semiotic frame . Oxon and New York: Routledge.

Biesta, G. J. J., & Tedder, M. (2006). How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement (working paper 5) . Exeter: The Learning Lives Project.

Björkvall, A., & Jacquet, E. (2014). Skrivande och textskapande med datorer i högstadiet : Ett ekologiskt perspektiv på möjligheter och utmaningar med “en-till-en”-projekt. Viden om Læsning, 16 , 18–27 Retrieved from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-55570 .

Björkvall, A., & Karlsson, A.-M. (2011). The materiality of discourses and the semiotics of materials : A social perspective on the meaning potentials of written texts and furniture. Semiotica, 187 (1–4), 141–165. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2011.068 .

Clarke, B., & Svanaes, S. (2012). One-to-one tablets in secondary schools. An evaluation study. Stage 1: 2011- 2012 . London: Family, Kids & Youth.

Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Dahlström, H. & Boström, L. (2017). Pros and Cons : Handwriting versus digital writing. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 12 (4), 143–161.

Danielsson, K., & Selander, S. (2016). Se texten! Multimodala texter i ämnesdidaktiskt arbete . Stockholm: Natur och Kultur.

Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 103 (4), 962–1023.

Erixon, P. O. (2016). Punctuated equilibrium—Digital Technology in Schools’ teaching of the mother tongue (Swedish). Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 60 (3), 337–358. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2015.1066425 .

Fortunati, L., & Vincent, J. (2014). Sociological insights on the comparison of writing/reading on paper with writing/reading digitally. Telematics and Informatics, 31 (1), 39–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2013.02.005 .

Ghandoura, W. A. (2012). A qualitative study of ESL college students’ attitudes about computer-assisted writing classes. English language teaching, 5 (4), 57–64. https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n4p57 .

Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception . Hillsdale: Erlbaum.

Graneheim, U., & Lundman, B. (2004). Qualitative content analysis in nursing research: Concepts, procedures and measures to achieve trustworthiness. Nurse Education Today, 24 (2), 105–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2003.10.001 .

Grey, D. E. (2013). Doing research in the real world (3rd ed.) . London: Sage.

Håkansson Lindqvist, M. (2013). Possibilities and challenges for TEL from a student perspective through the uptake and use of digital technologies in a 1:1 initiative. Education Inquiry, 4 (4), 629–647. https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v4i4.23223 .

Håkansson Lindqvist, M. (2015). Gaining and sustaining TEL in a 1:1 laptop initiative: Possibilities and challenges for teachers and students. Computers in the Schools, 32 (1), 35–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/07380569.2015.1004274 .

Hultin, E., & Westman, M. (Eds.). (2014). Att skriva sig till läsning: Erfarenheter och analyser av det digitaliserade klassrummet . Malmö: Gleerup.

Hutchby, I. (2001). Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology, 35 (2), 441–456. https://doi.org/10.1177/S0038038501000219 .

Kiss, T., & Mizusawa, K. (2018). Revisiting the pedagogy of multiliteracies: Writing instruction in a multicultural context. Changing English, 25 (1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2017.1403283 .

Klerfelt, A. (2007). Barns multimediala berättande: En länk mellan mediakultur och pedagogisk praktik. (Doktorsavhandling). Göteborg Studies in Educational Sciences 256. Göteborg.

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age . London: Routledge.

Book   Google Scholar  

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication . London: Routledge.

Kress, G. (2017). Semiotic work: Design, transformation, transduction. In E. Insulander, S. Kjällander, F. Lindstrand, A. Åkerfeldt (Eds.), Didaktik I omvandlingens tid. Text, representation, design. (pp. 39-52).

Kvale, S. (2007). Doing interviews . London: SAGE Publications AB.

Leijon, M., & Lindstrand, F. (2012). Socialsemiotik och design för lärande. Två multimodala teorier om lärande, representation och teckenskapande. Pedagogisk Forskning I Sverige 2012, 17 (3-4), 171–192 http://journals.lub.lu.se/index.php/pfs/article/view/9412/8174 .

Liberg, C. (2014). Att använda dator i tidig läs- och skrivundervisning 2011–2014 , Uppsala Kommun. Report from ALS-projektet. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet.

Mangen, A., & Balsvik, L. (2016). Pen or keyboard in beginning writing instruction? Some perspectives from embodied cognitions. Trends in Neuroscience and Education. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2016.06.003 .

Merchant, G. (2007). Writing the future in the digital age. Literacy, 41 , 118–128. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9345.2007.00469.

Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study applications in education . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M., & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook (3rd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage.

Norman, D. A. (1990). The design of everyday things . New York: Doubleday.

Olofsson, A., Lindberg, O., & Fransson, G. (2017). State of the art technology? Mapping students’ talk about information and communication technology in upper secondary schools. The International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education (ICICTE 2017) Proceedings Southampton Solent University, United Kingdom.

Park, S., & Jae Kim, G. (2014). Lessons from South Korea’s digital divide index (DDI). Journal of Policy, Regulation and Strategy for Telecommunications, Information and Media, 16 (3), 84–72.

Rostvall, A. & Selander, S. (red.) (2008). Design för lärande. Stockholm: Norstedts akademiska förlag.

Samuelsson, U. (2014). Digital (o) jämlikhet? IKT-användning i skolan och elevers tekniska Kapital. (Avhandling). Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation, Högskolan i Jönköping.

Selander, S., & Kress, G. (2010). Design för lärande – ett multimodalt perspektiv . Stockholm: Norstedts.

Simpson, A., & Walsh, M. (2014). Pedagogic conceptualisations for touch pad technologies. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 37 (2), 128–138.

Stapleton, P. (2012). Shifting cognitive processes while composing in an electronic environment: A study of L2 graduate writing. Applied Linguistics Review., 3 (1), 151–171. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2012-0007 .

Statens Medieråd. (2017). Ungar & medier 2017: Demografi . Stockholm: Kulturdepartementet.

Swedish Ministry of Education. (2017a). Nationell digitaliseringsstrategi för skolväsendet U2017/04119/S.

Swedish Ministry of Education. (2017b). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2011: Reviderad 2017 . Stockholm: Skolverket.

Taipale, S. (2014). The affordances of reading/writing on paper and digitally in Finland. Telematics and Informatics, 31 (4), 532–542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2013.11.003 .

van Deursen, A. J., & van Dijk, J. A. (2014). The digital divide shifts to differences in usage. New Media & Society, 16 (3), 507–526. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813487959 .

van Leeuwen, T. (2005). Introducing social semiotics . London: Routledge.

Vetenskapsrådet. (2017). God forskningssed . Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Education, Mid-Sweden University, 851 70, Sundsvall, Sweden

Helene Dahlström

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Helene Dahlström .

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Dahlström, H. Digital writing tools from the student perspective. Educ Inf Technol 24 , 1563–1581 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-018-9844-x

Download citation

Received : 21 June 2018

Accepted : 27 November 2018

Published : 04 December 2018

Issue Date : 16 March 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-018-9844-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Affordances
• Digital tools
• Students’ views
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• The Student Experience
• Financial Aid
• Degree Finder
• Undergraduate Arts & Sciences
• Departments and Programs
• Research, Scholarship & Creativity
• Centers & Institutes
• Geisel School of Medicine
• Guarini School of Graduate & Advanced Studies
• Thayer School of Engineering
• Tuck School of Business

Campus Life

• Diversity & Inclusion
• Athletics & Recreation
• Student Groups & Activities
• Residential Life

DartWrite Digital Portfolio Project

Dartmouth's home for digital writing portfolios

Digital Essay Project (Assignment Example)

Tina Van Kley has asked her Writing 5 students to re-mediate a research essay as what she calls (borrowing from Dan Cohen) a "digital essay." Students radically reshape and rewrite their projects for a public, online audience. They work toward the early drafts by exploring public writing on the web, noticing how the conventions of academic writing are both harnessed and changed in public online writing.  Students draft and complete the project as a single page on their portfolio sites. You can see an example of student work from winter 2019: https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/rayhcrist22/digital-essay/

Tina has shared a copy of the assignment text as it appeared in a recent class:

Project 3: Digital Essay

Your final project is to adapt your topic and research for Project 2 for a new, broad audience and digital medium, using your Dartmouth WordPress site.

Historian and New Media scholar Dan Cohen defines the digital essay (or – more controversially – “blessay”) as “a manifestation of the convergence of journalism and scholarship in mid-length forms online.” He cites the kind of thoughtful, informed writing found at places like The Atlantic’s website (Links to an external site.), Longform.org (Links to an external site.), and The New Yorker (Links to an external site.), or hear on NPR shows and podcasts like the investigative pieces on This American Life (Links to an external site.). We will read and listen to examples of such work to discuss the genre and its features. Some characteristics of the digital essay, as developed by Cohen (Links to an external site.):

• Mid-length: more ambitious than a blog post, less comprehensive than an academic article. Written to the length that is necessary, but no more. If we need to put a number on it, generally 1,000-3,000 words.
• Informed by academic knowledge and analysis, but doesn’t rub your nose in it.
• Uses the apparatus of the web more than the apparatus of the academic journal, e.g., links rather than footnotes. Where helpful, uses supplementary evidence from images, audio, and video—elements that are often missing or flattened in print.
• Expresses expertise but also curiosity. Conclusive, but also suggestive.
• Written for both specialists and an intelligent general audience. Avoids academic jargon—not to be populist, but rather out of a feeling that avoiding jargon is part of writing well.

Additional characteristics:

• The writer is often "present" in the piece, via use of first-person pronouns and/or anecdotes.
• Digital essays look different from traditional academic essays. Rather than titles, they have headlines and sub-headlines that give the motive and/or thesis. Paragraphs are often much shorter, and spacing is used strategically for online consumption, which prioritizes speed, efficiency, and high degree of skim-ability.

As with Projects 1 and 2, Project 3 is argumentative, but the approach taken should be exploratory and questioning, as implied by Cohen’s phrase “conclusive but also suggestive.” The imagined audience is anyone who might find your site in a search related to your topic, i.e., general but willing to read something that would take 45 minutes to an hour to read.

Basic Requirements:

• Use WordPress site
• 1,000-3,000 words in length
• Includes both visual and/or aural content that is integrated with the writing
• Includes at least 2 primary and at least 3 secondary sources (at least 2 of which should be scholarly)
•  Is the essay clearly addressed to a broad audience?
• Does the essay make appropriate use of the digital medium (e.g., includes a/v content, hyperlinks, etc.), or does it look like a typical academic essay copied and pasted onto a web page?
• Are digital elements (such as video, audio, images, etc.) incorporated effectively into the writing, and captioned, cited, or linked to appropriately?
• Does the essay identify the most appropriate source materials and methods for researching the topic?
• Is the essay’s thesis persuasive? Is it supported with convincing evidence and analysis?
• Is the essay organized, and does it include sufficient background for audiences unfamiliar with the topic?

10 Digital Writing Tools to Enhance Student Efficiency

Students spend most of their college years writing papers. From the admission essay to the final year dissertation, knowing how to write is crucial to education.

As important as penning is, no one says it has to be boring. The world is changing, and technology is revolutionizing education . There is an overwhelming number of resources on the internet that students leverage to improve educational outcomes. These digital studying tools save time and increase efficiency.

The problem is that there are a myriad of them. So much so that picking the best apps to write becomes daunting. Not to worry, we have sorted through an endless list of online education tools to find the best online writing services . Take a look at them below:

10 Writing Tools Every Student Should Know About

Below are the 10 most popular tools to improve productivity:

1. PapersOwl Students Writing Assignment Helper

PapersOwl is a leading online assignment website to help undergraduates manage their schedules. College goers often find balancing studying with social life and extracurriculars daunting.

Not only this, but insufficient skills make assignments difficult.To help struggling learners with their request to write my assignment in a short time, PapersOwl offers the services of subject-matter experts in different fields of education.

Their professional writers produce plagiarism -free and high-quality content and submit it on deadline. Likewise, they provide guarantees like free revision, confidentiality, and more. Beyond customized writing help, PapersOwl offers various self-help tools to help college students write clearly. They include:

Plagiarism checker.

Citation generators.

Thesis generator.

Conclusion generator.

Title page maker.

Essay title generator.

Paraphrasing tool.

Read More:  10 Digital Writing Tools to Enhance Student Efficiency

2. Grammarly

Grammarly cleans up assignments by detecting grammar mistakes. It then provides real-time feedback to avoid errors and improve skills over time. The application suggests tone, checks plagiarism, and accelerates typing. A unique generative AI suggests new versions to consider improving clarity. Likewise, a customizable profile option refines tone, formality, and professional relevance. College students can include the app’s extension in their browser for on-the-go correction in their editor. The common ways Grammarly helps undergraduates are:

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation correction.

Rewrite sentences for clarity.

Tone suggestions.

Read More:  The Psychology Of Instagram Likes: Understanding What ...

3. Evernote

Do you struggle to organize and keep tabs on assignments? If yes, then this is the app for you. Evernote helps undergraduates tame their work and organize their education. The app keeps notes, tasks, and schedules in a single place. As a result, it becomes easier to remember and tackle projects .

Evernote has a scan feature that allows users to go paperless. Undergraduates save web pages and mark them with arrows, highlights, and text to increase their usefulness. Plus, the app connects with Google Calendar, so nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

Read More:  7 Technologies Shaping The Future of Fintech

4. Insight Timer

Insight Timer is a free meditation app for sleep and relaxation. It is handy for taking breaks during assignments to improve focus. Undergraduates browse music in different languages, including for yoga and meditation.

Apart from this, there are guides and courses on how to sleep better and meditate. If you need music to drown out background noise, plug in headphones and listen to your curated playlist.

5. ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid is an AI assistant software for teams and individuals. It combines human expertise and AI-powered analysis to help struggling students. The app suggests thousands of grammar and style improvements at the touch of a button. Advice from experts further makes it easier to refine articles.

ProWritingAid delivers suggestions in all major apps, and its free version is enough to get by. Plus, a plagiarism checker ensures 100% uniqueness when you write.

6. Hemingway

Hemingway Editor is among the best writing apps online to improve a paper’s readability. The tool highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors. It displays them in different colors.

Hence, it is easy to spot mistakes and correct them. Hemingway grades readability by the number of adverbs and passive words and recommends alternative phrases. With this, users determine if their article is hard to read.

Citations are crucial to most academic articles , as they help college students avoid plagiarism. But with so many referencing styles out there, undergraduates run into problems.

BibMe is a free bibliography and citation maker. Chegg powers the online education center. It helps undergraduates start new citations or manage existing bibliographies.

Users choose between APA, MLA, and over 6,000 other styles. Apart from this, a guide provides a walk-through for undergraduates who need to brush up on citation basics. BibMe further checks unintentional plagiarism and grammar for a perfect essay.

Ulysses is the ultimate app for Macs, iPads, and iPhones. The tool offers a more streamlined experience with powerful features for people who love to write. Ulysses features a distraction-free interface that boosts productivity. Besides a minimalist design, a built-in proofreader and editing assistant give suggestions in over 20 languages.

Undergraduates use it to correct semantics, redundancy, and punctuation mistakes. Ulysses turns texts into PDFs, word documents, e-books, and blog posts for immediate publishing.

9. Thesaurus

The world’s largest online thesaurus is suitable for finding word synonyms and antonyms. A search bar allows users to locate words with ease. Apart from this, games let you improve your English.

They include word puzzles, a daily crossword, and a word finder. The studying tips segment grants access to a grammar coach, education hub, and commonly confused words.

10. Purdue OWL

Purdue Owl wraps up our list of the best writing websites for students. The online lab offers online reference materials and services. College students use it to create citations, cover letters, and general essay advice.

Purdue University owns the Purdue Owl. Hence, a physical learning facility on the college campus provides a community of learners and faculty for anyone interested in studying online.

Benefits of Using Online Writing Tools for Students

Digital tools for students improve output in various ways. The common ones are:

Tools, like Grammarly help college students, write by identifying errors and improving articles for a more professional appearance.

Real-time suggestions save effort by reducing the need for time-consuming editing.

Evernote and other management apps improve organization, which boosts productivity.

Citation managers make it easier to write and manage references.

Thesaurus tools expand vocabulary.

Feedback helps undergraduates understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Online tools to help with writing encourage regular penning and studying. They are cost-effective and boost confidence.

Digital Writing Tools for Learners

Penning is demanding and boring, especially if you are not skilled or have too much on your plate. But like a necessary evil, you have to write. The best approach is to leverage digital education tools to write, edit, and cite sources.

The apps save time, reduce stress, and improve overall studying efficiency. Some are versatile for multiple applications .

Hence, you don’t need to download more than one app. The ultimate choice depends on your preference. But bear in mind that tools for writing should complement efforts, not replace them. Use any tool above to streamline your drafting process, improve your assignment quality, and manage research.

RECENT POSTS

If you enjoy our content here then you’ll love the stuff we share on LinkedIn

Apply For Job

Exploring Digital Tools for Teaching Essay Writing Course in Higher Education: Padlet, Kahoot, Youtube, Essaybot, Grammarly

Article sidebar, main article content.

Enormous digital tools can assist teachers or students in the teaching and learning process in face-to-face meetings and virtual environments. During Pandemic Covid-19, government policy forced educators to decide and design online learning for all education levels from kindergarten, elementary, junior high school, senior high school, and university. Nevertheless, many free digital tools intended free access for educators that could be utilized as synchronous or asynchronous learning. This article explores utilizing five digital tools for online learning such as Padlet, Kahoot, YouTube, Essaybot, and Grammarly due to teaching Essay Writing course. It is descriptively explained how the researchers used a learning collaboration tool, a content creation tool, a content sharing tool to engage students’ interaction in Essay Writing course. This article was considered sharing information and recommendation for other teachers to implement free digital tools to increase their learning process and achieve learning outcomes. The teachers and instructional designers may explore these digital tools, adopt relevant tools to their discipline, and do further research

Article Details

Most read articles by the same author(s).

• Yusra Yusra, Arawati Agus, Online Food Delivery Service Quality: Does Personal Innovativeness Matter? , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 2 No. 3 (2018): Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences
• NOOR AZLI, AINI AKMAR, IMPLEMENTATION OF CEFR-ALIGNED ASSESSMENT TOOLS IN MALAYSIAN ESL CLASSROOM , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 4 No. 2 (2019): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Aza Azlina Md Kassim, Fazilah Tamsir, Zainal Azhar Zainal Azim, Juliza Mohamed, Hairin Nisa Meor Nordin, Determinants of Saving Behavior: An Empirical Study among Private Universities Students in Selangor , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 2 No. 2 (2018): Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Azwina Wati Abdull Manaf, Norazuan binti Amiruddin, Fintech and the Challenge of Digital Disruption in Takaful Operation , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 4 No. 1 (2019): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Vincent Ming-Wei Woo, Kee-Jiar Yeo, - THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARENTING STYLES AND PROCRATINATION BEHAVIOURS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 3 No. 1 (2019): Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Mohd Khairi Ismail, Vikniswari Vija Kumaran, Siti Nurul Munawwarah, COVID-19 Outbreak: An Analysis of Malaysian Household Income Class During Movement Control Orders (MCO) , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 7 No. 1 (2021): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Naveed Sultana, How Does Politics Affect Higher Education In Pakistan , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 2 No. 4 (2018): Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Thesa Adi Purwanto, A Theoretical Framework for Supporting The Internationalization of SMEs , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 2 No. 4 (2018): Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Mujennah Mujennah, Budi Artinah, Safriansyah Safriansyah, PERFORMANCE-BASED BUDGETING AS SURVEILLANCE FOR THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 4 No. 3 (2019): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Andi Wiliam, Sasmoko Sasmoko, Harjanto Prabowo, mohammad hamsal, elfindah princes, yasinta indrianti, ANALYSIS OF E-SERVICE CHATBOT AND SATISFACTION OF BANKING CUSTOMERS IN INDONESIA , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 4 No. 3 (2019): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences

Similar Articles

• YASMINE LIONG PUI KWAN ABDULLAH, MELOR MD YUNUS, HARWATI HASHIM, Error Analysis in ESL Writing , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 4 No. 1 (2019): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Fauzul Etfita, Students’ Preferences for the use of Padlet in Synchronous Learning , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Sarala Thulasi Palpanadan, The Scope of Product Approach and Process Approach Practised by ESL Pre-Service Teachers as Writing Instructions , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Setyabudhi Rahardjo Situmorang, Julsfred Ngilawana , Rachmat Kurniawan, Motivation in Holding a Virtual Music Concert: A Case Study on Local Musicians in the Maluku Region , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 11 No. 1 (2023): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Nanda Bening Ayu, Fergyanto E. Gunawan , The Influence of Beauty Vlogger on Purchase Intention of Netizens in Social Media , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• MOHAMAD AZHARI ABU BAKAR, DOES REFLECTIVE PRACTICE AND PERSONALISED FEEDBACK FOSTER LEARNING? , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 5 No. 1 (2020): AIC 2019
• Rustam Effendi, Robinson Situmorang, Jhoni Lagun Siang, Development Of The Blended Learning Model Of The Data System Of Data Basis In Faculty Of Computer Science, Banten Jaya University , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 4 No. 2 (2019): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Jhoni Lagun Siang, Lambertus J. Lokollo, Rasmin Simbolon, DEVELOPMENT OF A PACKAGE PRINT MODULES FOR CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 4 No. 1 (2019): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Wai Wai Lim, A Systematic Review of Literature on Learning Application for Dyslexia Children , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 3 No. 1 (2019): Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences
• Rachel Suet Kay Chan, Cities and Culture: , Asia Proceedings of Social Sciences: Vol. 4 No. 1 (2019): ASIA Proceedings of Social Sciences

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

The Stories Digital Tools Tell

2003, Everett and Caldwell, eds. New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality

Related Papers

Technology in Society

Omar V. Rosas

Brian D. Earp , Charla Griffy-Brown , Omar V. Rosas

One of the great ongoing debates of the 21st century is whether technology—broadly construed—has proven itself to be on balance beneficial or detrimental to, among other aspects, the moral dimensions of civil society. Technology permeates all aspects of modern life, transforming the way we live, communicate, interact, and work. Does it foster or detract from a good society? How can we determine what a “good” society is? “Technophobes” and “technophiles” will give different answers, but so will scholars and individuals who fall between those extremes. Because technologies engender promise and potential as well as uncertainties and risk, we must critically evaluate how technological advancements are shaping or eroding a “Good Society.”

Canadian Journal of Communication

Merlyna Lim

International Journal of Science, Technology and Society

Taye Birhanu

Charalampos Kokkinos

Mashhad Al-Allaf

Do we have Moral Obligation toward Future Generations? Modern technology brought us not to the end but to the edge of our fate and unless we have a good vision about where we are going, then we will neither be able to save ourselves nor our future generations. In this paper, I argue that technology is increasingly intruding into our philosophical questions about the very meaning of life and mortality. Technology is intervening into our conceptual scheme by redefining concepts such as happiness, intelligence, beauty, life, and death. For example, death, is no longer a part of nature itself instead it belongs to technological advancements of tools and equipments; with technology death can be delayed (with the dream to be avoided). If this occurred then we will be similar to Tithonus in Greek mythology as will be discussed in this paper. I bring attention here that we should not adapt any ‘techno-pessimist” approach against technology such as that of Kaczynski, nor that of the “techno-optimist” of Kurzweil. I argue, that both are -to some extent- unrealistic. This paper carefully analyzes the ethics of responsibility approach that is presented by Hans Jonas, who thinks that traditional ethics is no longer sufficient for modern technology. I end this paper by offering a supportive approach to the ethics of responsibility, which I call preventive ethics in order to guide technology to the right path.

Proceedings of the tenth conference on Computers, freedom and privacy challenging the assumptions - CFP '00

Patrick Feng

Jose Carlos Cañizares-Gaztelu

This essay addresses the question whether artifacts have politics, which raises, at least, two other questions: what is an artifact and what must count as political. In the following pages, three alternative responses to these questions —the main one and its corollaries —, are sketched, and their implications discussed: these are the humanistic view, Foucault’s critical stance and technological determinism. However, this enquiry does not present any case study for these views, nor does it aim at refuting them. In fact, these positions can, at least in principle, be deemed perfectly complementary to one another; but to see this, one must first be able to distinguish what each of them is talking about.

Alhassanain English

Modern technology brought us not to the end but to the edge of our fate and unless we have a good vision about where we are going, then we will neither be able to save ourselves nor our future generations. In this paper, I argue that technology is increasingly intruding into our philosophical questions about the very meaning of life and mortality. Technology is intervening into our conceptual scheme by redefining concepts such as happiness, intelligence, beauty, life, and death. For example, death, is no longer a part of nature itself instead it belongs to technological advancements of tools and equipments; with technology death can be delayed (with the dream to be avoided). If this occurred then we will be similar to Tithonus in Greek mythology as will be discussed in this paper. I bring attention here that we should not adapt any ‘techno-pessimist” approach against technology such as that of Kaczynski, nor that of the “techno-optimist” of Kurzweil. I argue, that both are -to some extent- unrealistic. This paper carefully analyzes the ethics of responsibility approach that is presented by Hans Jonas, who thinks that traditional ethics is no longer sufficient for modern technology. I end this paper by offering a supportive approach to the ethics of responsibility, which I call preventive ethics in order to guide technology to the right path. Keywords: Ethics, Technology, Bhilosophy.

Geoffrey Whitehall

No, the masses were not innocent dupes; at a certain point, under a certain set of conditions, they wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of desire of the masses that needs to be accounted for. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (29) The likelihood that someone in a western leadership position (i.e., George W. Bush, Barak Obama, Stephen Harper, Nicolas Sarkozy or Silvio Berlusconi) will be called a fascist today has increased (and perhaps for good reason). Underlying this trend is an abandonment of the exceptionalism of historical fascism and Nazism and either 1) the generalization of fascism as if it were a logic of politics or 2) the mobilization of fascism as an axiological marker. In this paper, I am uninterested in the second (but very likely) explanation and am more sympathetic to the possibility of the former. In fact, the desire to find another way to call someone or something bad, evil or alien seems to lie within the domain of an ever-proliferating logic o...

RELATED PAPERS

Carlos Pérez Moreno

International journal of experimental pathology

Kyung-tae Lee

Anuario Calderoniano, 16 (2023), pp. 271-289.

Education Engineering (EDUCON), 2010 IEEE

Jose Figueiredo

Rosalina Alves Nantes

Biophysical Journal

Denise Greathouse

Eduardo Alvarado Espina

Health Psychology

Alan Christensen

Solar Compass Journal

Revue pro právo a technologie

John A. Gealfow

Christine Cuvelier

Marine Ecology Progress Series

Angeles Aguilera

The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law

David Langenberg

Interactive Learning Experiences

Burcu Olgen

Nucleic Acids Research

Cheng-chung Chang

World neurosurgery

Syed usama haider

RajaGrafindo Persada eBooks

Hotma Pardomuan Sibuea

Maria TOMOAIA-COTISEL

Plant Disease

Journal of the American College of Cardiology

Pernille Hermann

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• BSW Scholarships
• How to Transition to a Social Work Career
• Social Worker Salary and Jobs in Social Work
• Is a Master of Social Work MSW Really Worth It?
• Social Worker Resource Guide
• Doctor of Social Work Salary and Careers
• How to Become a School Superintendent
• Faculty Interview: Dr. Lee Nabb, Morehead State University
• Scholarships for Doctor of Education (EdD) Students
• What is a Terminal Degree?
• Is It Worth Getting a Doctorate in Education (EdD)?
• Faculty Interview: Tracy Caddell, Ball State University
• Doctor of Education EdD Salary and Career Outlook
• EdD vs. PhD
• What is Organizational Change?
• Faculty Interview: Michael Poe, Northwest Nazarene University
• How to Transition to a Teaching Career
• Applying for Your Master’s
• Preparing for Your Interview
• Crafting Your Resume
• How to Write a Personal Statement
• How to Get the Right References
• Is a Master of Teaching Worth It?
• The Ultimate Guide to the Praxis® Tests
• Finance your Teaching Education
• Online Master of Arts in Teaching – TESOL Programs
• HBCU Undergraduate Scholarships Guide
• Librarian Resource Guide
• Explore Librarian Salary, Jobs, and Careers in Library Science
• Online Master of Science in Teaching
• Online Master of Education Programs
• Our Guide to Entry-Level Nursing
• What Type of Nurse Should You Be?
• Guide to Transitioning RN to MSN Programs
• What Can You Do With a Bachelor’s in Public Health?
• Bachelor of Public Health Scholarships and Grants
• Kinesiology and Exercise Science Salaries
• How to Make a Career Change from Teaching to Speech Pathology
• Speech Pathology School Scholarships
• How to Get into Speech Pathology School
• ASHA Certification for Speech-Language Pathologists
• Is a Master’s in Speech Pathology Really Worth It?
• Professional Development Guide for Speech Pathologists
• What Speech Pathology Students Should Do Before Graduating
• Speech-Language Pathologist Resume Guide
• Speech-Language Pathology Job Interview Guide
• Speech Pathologist Resource Guide
• Speech Pathologist Salary and Career Outlook
• What Is an AGACNP?
• What Is a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner
• Guide to Making a Career Change to Nursing
• How To Get Into Nursing School
• Is Nursing School Really Worth It?
• Nursing Salary by State
• Nursing Resources
• Which Nursing Degree Is Right for Me?
• Types of Nursing Degrees
• Nursing School Scholarships
• Explore Midwife Salary, Jobs, and Careers in Midwifery
• What is a Midwife
• The 2022 Guide to Online Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Programs
• Nursing Careers Infographic
• Nurse Practitioner Career & Salary
• Our Guide to APRN License and Certification
• NP vs DNP: Nurse Practitioner vs Doctor of Nursing Practice
• Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP)
• Registered Nurse vs. Nurse Practitioner
• Acute Care Nurse Practitioner ACNP Salary and Careers
• Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner WHNP Salary and Careers
• Online Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Programs (PMHNP)
• Occupational Therapy Salary and Career Outlook
• Scholarships for Occupational Therapy Students
• How to Get into Occupational Therapy School
• Is a Doctor of Occupational Therapy Worth It?
• What is Occupational Therapy?
• What Is the Difference Between Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy?
• What Is Physical Therapy?
• How to Get Into Physical Therapy School
• Is a Doctor of Physical Therapy DPT Really Worth It?
• Physical Therapy Careers and Salaries
• How to Make a Career Transition to Physical Therapy
• Chiropractor vs. Physical Therapist
• Physical Therapy Scholarships
• What’s the Difference Between a Physician Assistant and a Doctor?
• Scholarships for Physician Assistant PA Students
• Physician Assistant vs. Nurse Practitioner: What Are the Differences?
• Physician Assistant Salary, Jobs and Career Path
• How to Become a Physician Assistant
• How to Get Into PA School
• Is a Physician Assistant PA Degree Really Worth It?
• Physician Assistant Certification Guide
• Pharmacy Doctorate Salary and Career Outlook
• How to Get into Pharmacy (PharmD) School
• Master of Health Informatics Career and Salary
• Master of Public Health Salary and Career Outlook
• Online Master’s in Health Administration Programs (MHA)
• Top Paying Healthcare Careers
• Bachelor of Psychology Scholarships
• Digital Resources for Students with Autism – Helpful for Teachers and Parents
• What is a Functional Behavior Assessment?
• What is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)?
• Applied Behavior Analysis ABA Scholarships
• Psychologist Salary and Career Outlook
• Types of Psychology Degrees
• Clinical Psychologist Careers and Salary
• Marriage and Family Therapist Salary and Jobs for MFT Careers
• Behavioral Psychology
• Counseling Skills and Techniques
• Is a Master’s in Counseling Worth It?
• 25 Counseling Scholarships for Graduate Students
• School Psychologist vs School Counselor
• Bullying Resources for Educators and Parents
• The Comprehensive College Planning Resource
• School Counselor Certification Guide
• Resources for School Counselors
• School Counselor Salary and Career Outlook
• LMHC vs. LCSW
• How to Become a Counselor
• Mental Health Counselor Salary and Career Outlook
• MPA vs MPH: Which Degree is Best for You?
• MPA vs. International Relations
• MPA vs. MPP
• Masters in Business Administration (MBA) vs. Masters of Public Administration (MPA)
• Is an MPA Degree Really Worth It?
• MPA Careers and Salaries
• Master of Public Administration MPA Scholarships
• Online Masters in Urban Planning Programs
• What Can I Do With an International Relations Degree?
• International Relations Salary and Career Paths
• How to Make a Career Transition to Financial Planner
• Can You Change Careers with an MBA
• MBA Concentrations Guide
• Online MBA in Financial Planning Programs
• Find Online MBA in Entrepreneurship Programs
• Find Online MBA in Marketing Programs
• Find Online MBA in Business Analytics Programs
• Find Online MBA in Finance Programs
• MBA or CFA: Which Is Better for a Finance Career
• How to Get Into Business School
• MBA or JD: Which Is the Better Career Path?
• Is an MBA Degree Really Worth It? Decide Here
• Explore MBA Salary, Jobs, and Careers in Business
• MBA Scholarships
• Bachelor’s of Business Scholarships
• What Can You Do With a Bachelor’s in Business and Management?
• What Can You Do with a Bachelor’s in Marketing?
• Bachelor of Marketing Scholarships
• Is a Master of Accounting Worth It?
• Accountant Salary and Career Outlook
• Guide to Transition into an Accounting Career
• Master’s in HR Salary and Career Outlook
• How to Break into Supply Chain Management
• Supply Chain Management Salary and Career Outlook
• Online Master’s in Management and Leadership
• Online Master’s in Finance Programs
• Explore Our LSAT Study Guide
• How to Get into Law School
• How to Study for the Bar Exam
• Is a JD Really Worth It?
• MPA vs JD: Which Is Better?
• Is a Master of Legal Studies Worth It?
• Online Master’s in Taxation Law Programs
• Online Master of Laws LLM Programs
• Online Master of Legal Studies in Compliance Programs
• What You Can Do with a Bachelor’s in Communications
• Bachelor of Communications Scholarships
• Online Master of Communication Management Programs
• Master’s in Communications Salary and Careers
• Is a Communications Degree Worth It?
• How to Become a Communications Director
• How to Become an Architect
• Guide to Online Economics Certificates and Courses
• How to Become a Public Policy Analyst
• Public Policy Analyst Salary and Job Outlook
• Guide to Online Sustainability Certificates and Short Courses
• Data Science Salary and Career Outlook
• Is a Data Science Degree Worth It?
• Online Business Management Courses
• How to Become a Finance Manager
• Finance Salary and Careers
• Web Developer Salary and Career Paths
• How to Become a Cyber Security Specialist
• Guide to Cybersecurity Salaries and Careers
• AI Engineer Salary and Career Outlook
• How to Become an AI Engineer
• How to Become a Blockchain Developer
• Systems and IT Salary and Career Outlook
• Online Human Resources HR Courses
• How to Become a Project Manager
• Project Manager Salary and Career Outlook
• Become a Marketing Manager
• Is a Marketing Degree Worth It?
• Marketing Salary and Careers
• Online Healthcare Courses
• Online Nutrition Courses
• Online Education Courses
• Online Business Negotiations Courses
• Online Leadership Courses
• Online Conflict Resolution Courses
• Become a Data Analyst
• Online Real Estate Courses
• What is an HBCU?
• Reasons to Choose a Degree From an HBCU
• Teaching Methods
• Learning Styles
• Testing Effect
• School Media
• Motivating Students
• Dropout Prevention
• Teachers Care
• Grants for Teachers
• Teacher Appreciation
• Debra Rose Howell
• Dr. David Lazerson
• Dr. Penny Ferguson
• Genein Letford
• Lynne Kesselman
• Susan Evans
• Valerie Kibler
• How To Become a Lawyer Online
• How to Become a Principal
• Guide to Becoming a Doctor of Social Work
• Masters Degree Program Accreditation
• Teacher Certification Tests (The Praxis and Beyond)
• Teacher Salary, Career and Benefits Guide
• Summer Vacation for Teachers
• Teaching STEM
• Teaching Art
• Teaching Music
• Teaching Gifted Education
• Teaching Social Studies
• Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL)
• Teaching English and Language Arts
• Teaching Special Education
• Teacher Shortage Areas by State
• How To Become an Online Teacher
• Become a Licensed Mental Health Counselor
• How to Become a School Counselor
• LMHC Licensure Guide for Mental Health Counselors
• What does an LMHC do?
• Become a Psychologist
• How to Become a Clinical Psychologist
• What Does a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT) Do?
• Become a Behavior Analyst
• How to Become a Pediatric Nurse
• Become a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner
• How to Become a Pharmacist
• Become a Speech Pathologist
• Become a Physical Therapist
• How to Become an Occupational Therapist
• Become a Registered Nurse (RN)
• Become a Nurse Practitioner
• Become a Nurse Midwife
• Become an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner
• Become a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner
• Become an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse APRN
• How to Become a Business Consultant
• Become an Accountant
• Become a Human Resources Specialist
• Become a Public Administrator
• Become a Librarian

Teach.com / Resources

8 EdTech Tools for Essay Writing All Teachers Should Know About

October 15, 2015 

You were a student once, so you understand how overwhelming an essay assignment can be. If you’re like most teachers, you’ve forgotten all about the moments of frustration and anticipation related to a writing assignment. You think it’s easier for today’s students because they have access to online materials. However, you should keep in mind that all other teachers ask students to complete papers for their courses as well. You may want to find a way to make these projects less of a burden for students. 

There are many online tools that can help your students improve their essay writing skills. You’ll notice the difference as soon as they start relying on technology. Check out the following 10 tools!

1.  Read-Able

Although the quality and effectiveness of the essay’s argument are somewhat subjective, you still need specific grading standards that enable you to grade it as objectively as possible. One of the most important criteria is readability. This website offers an automated tool that enables you to test the readability level of your students’ work.

Show them the results and explain that complex sentence structures are not always the right choice. Advise them to make the content as readable as possible before submitting it for final grading.

2. Quillpad

It’s not easy to make students enthusiastic about essay writing. Many of them perceive these projects as the most boring thing in the world. Quillpad changes that! The website includes awesome online resources and books that make writing fun, as well as cool new words that boost students’ vocabulary.

With Quillpad, your students will be able to identify content that’s illogical or incomplete. They will also discover writing techniques that will boost the quality of their content.

3.  The Grammar Gorillas

Do your students think you’re weird when you try to explain how fun grammar can be? This awesome game will show them that grammar is actually fun. The Grammar Gorillas are in trouble; they need your students to help them get bananas by identifying certain parts of speech. Who would want a gorilla to starve?

The players intuitively learn the grammar rules as they continue playing. You can recommend that your students play this game at home, but you can also organize a competition during class.

4.  Essay Punch

You can’t pay equal attention to each and every student in class no matter how hard you try. Your students need in-depth support and individual treatment, which is why you need to rely on technology. Essay Punch will guide them through every stage of the essay writing process. This site also offers writing prompts that will help your students practice their skills and overcome writer’s block. The best part is that you can track the work of your students and offer focused comments that will push them forward.

5.  Thesis Generator

Your students know that the thesis statement is the most important part of the essay, and that’s exactly why it’s hard for them to make it perfect. Instead of explaining how they can develop a thesis statement with a complex lecture on the matter, you can simply use this tool that provides the guiding points.

The users should state the topic, the opinion, the main idea about that topic, the strongest reason that supports their opinion, two more reasons for support, an opposing viewpoint and a possible title. Basically, your students will end up with a complete outline when they use the Thesis Generator. However, they will also get a thesis statement that will enable them to understand how all these aspects of the paper can be combined into a single statement.

6.  PlagTracker

There is no bigger sin in essay writing than plagiarism. PlagTracker is plagiarism detection engine that will help you reveal academic dishonesty.

7.  Purdue Online Writing Lab: Essay Writing

This website contains full instructions on each stage of the essay writing process, as well as definitions for different types of essays, for students to peruse on their own time. In addition, your students will find the formatting guidelines for the citation style you want.

8. Vocaboly

This vocabulary-building online program offers five books that will help your students learn new words and understand their meaning. Rich vocabulary is an essential aspect of essay writing. You want your students to avoid repetition, so don’t hesitate to recommend Vocaboly as a tool that will help them replace their habit words with other terms.

Julie Petersen is a tutor, writer, and a blogger who specializes in the latest career and educational trends. She runs an essay writing blog  AskPetersen.com  and is writing her first ebook dedicated to online learning. You can see Julie’s professional experience and contact her via  Linkedin .

• October 26, 2022

What Is Digital Literacy And Why Is It Important?

UOTP Marketing

Ever since the innovation of computers and the internet, literacy has gained new meanings as opposed to the traditional one of being able to read, write and comprehend written text. These last few decades, we’ve been introduced to literacy concepts such as computer literacy, media literacy, information literacy, and digital literacy. Although these concepts overlap, digital literacy takes elements from each of them and sums them into a broad concept.

Because of the overflowing abundance of media and information in the digital world, digital literacy has become more than necessary. It ensures users protect their privacy, critically analyze digital data and information, ethically use digital platforms, and communicate with others eloquently. 

If you’re interested in learning more about digital literacy, why it is important, and what skills you need to boost your digital literacy, read on.

Paraphrasing the American Library Association (ALA), digital literacy is the ability to use technologies to find, evaluate, create and communicate information. Furthermore, ALA defines a digitally literate person as one who:

• Possesses technical and cognitive skills to process information in various formats,
• Can use different technologies effectively, 
• Utilizes digital features to collaborate with others and participate actively in civic society and improve communities. 

But also optimizes digital literacy skills and abilities to:

• Curate data and media,
• Consume safe and credible online information,
• Create relevant content,
• Create forums of like-minded people for various subjects.

As a mental exercise, think about how many devices or digital platforms you use daily and if you can still live a fulfilling life off the grid. For most of the population, independence from technology is a thing of the past. Technology has become a permanent addition to our daily lives in the last few decades. With devices offering countless features and accessibility to everyone and making their lives easier, we can say that the world has developed into a digital world. 

Therefore it is crucial to be digitally literate, as it allows users to operate digital platforms to find, produce and share media to their specific needs or preferences.

What Are the Principles of Digital Literacy?

Digital literacy learning and development is based on four main principles, such as:

• Comprehension: This principle applies to the ability to understand digital content.
• Interdependence: A key component of developing digital literacy is understanding how all media forms are interconnected and how users can consume content more easily.
• Social Factors: Age, education, gender, income, and household type help understand how particular media is perceived or what content is more successful. So, it’s no wonder these factors play a huge role in creating an organic ecosystem of creating, sharing, and storing media or content and long-term success.
• Curation: This principle allows users to find, organize and save digital content to their preferences.

Why Digital Literacy Is More Than Reading Online

Although being able to find and read content online displays a level of digital literacy, it’s not that much different from reading print. Digital literacy encompasses a vast collection of skills that help users utilize digital tools to the fullest through finding, creating, sharing, and evaluating information. But also create a unique experience for all users. 

Digital Literacy Skills And Their Importance

Digital literacy skills have become necessary for navigating the ever-digitalizing world. Some of these skills are:

• General computer skills: These skills are the first step to being able to apply digital media for everyday use.
• Researching: Being able to find relevant information in a vast amount of media is a crucial skill in operating different digital platforms.
• Adapting to technological innovations: New technological advancements are presented daily, which is why being able to adapt to changes is an integral part of working with digital platforms.
• Collaborating well with others on different digital platforms: Since a large portion of work and education is being performed digitally, it’s important to be able to navigate various digital media that help collaborate with others.
• A level of understanding of terms and familiarity with common digital media: This skill allows users to utilize the digital feature to their full potential. 

Nonetheless, these skills can be collected into three main piles:

Interested in pursuing a degree?

Fill out the form and get all admission information you need regarding your chosen program.

This will only take a moment.

Message Received!

Thank you for reaching out to us. we will review your message and get right back to you within 24 hours. if there is an urgent matter and you need to speak to someone immediately you can call at the following phone number:.

By clicking the Send me more information button above, I represent that I am 18+ years of age, that I have read and agreed to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy , and agree to receive email marketing and phone calls from UOTP. I understand that my consent is not required to apply for online degree enrollment. To speak with a representative without providing consent, please call +1 (202) 274-2300

• We value your privacy.
• Finding-and-consuming skills: Knowing how to find reliable information and utilizing sources for consumption.
• Creating digital content: This includes uploading original content or ideas on digital platforms (Instagram, YouTube, etc.).
• Communicating or sharing digital media: Utilizing digital tools to connect with others and attract consumers with your content.

How to Develop Digital Literacy Skills

Developing your abilities to learn, share, and organize media using digital technology opens a whole new world for you. Some handy tips that’ll help you develop and boost digital literacy skills are:

• Try experimenting with digital tools;
• Keep up-to-date with new technological advancements;
• Focus on the technologies and digital platforms that benefit you most;
• Adopt the mindset of life-long learning,
• Take online courses about different digital technologies and how to use them;
• Ask for help when using new technologies.

When developing digital literacy skills, it’s important to focus on some competency areas:

• General knowledge;
• Legal practices;
• Seamless integration;
• Knowledge of appropriate digital technologies;
• Processing information;
• Balanced attitude, etc.

FREE RESOURCE

Download Our Free eBook: How To Get the Most Out of Your Geospatial Information Technology Degree

Uncover the insight you need to maximize your career potential.

The Bottom Line

Digital literacy has become crucial in functioning critically and effectively in the now-digital world, which is why we should encourage teaching and learning digital skills for all ages. The lifelong skills you will develop mean that you will use digital platforms thoughtfully and responsibly, will be able to apply skills across different media and applications and be able to manage your digital footprint in a positive manner.

So, we can conclude that digital literacy does not only benefit individuals but societies as well, as digital literacy skills help countries’ development in economy and security. 

Share it with your friends!

Explore more.

Accounting vs. Finance Degree: Which Major to Choose?

12 Important Bookkeeping Skills You Need for a Successful Career

Recent resources.

What Can You Do With a Hospitality Management Degree? Best Hospitality Careers

What Can You Do with an International Studies Degree [2024]

9 Benefits of Learning a Second Language

Associate’s vs. Bachelor’s: Which One To Choose?

INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE?

Chat with an Admissions Officer Now!

• Associates Degree
• Bachelors Degrees
• Masters Degrees
• Doctoral Degrees
• Faculty & Staff
• Accreditation
• Student Experience

QUICK LINKS

• Admission Requirements
• Military Students
• Financial Aid

Request More Information

You are using an outdated browser. Upgrade your browser today or install Google Chrome Frame to better experience this site.

• Professional learning

Teach. Learn. Grow.

Teach. learn. grow. the education blog.

75 digital tools and apps teachers can use to support formative assessment in the classroom

There is no shortage of  formative assessment strategies, techniques, and tools  available to teachers who use formative instructional practice in their classrooms. Here is an extensive list of 75 digital tools, apps, and platforms that can help you and your students use formative assessment to elicit evidence of learning. We didn’t just add any old tool to this list. Here are the criteria we used for those that made the cut:

• Supports formative instructional strategies and ways to activate learners to be resources for themselves and peers
• Is free or awful close to it (under $10 per year, where possible)
• Allows both students and teachers to take the activator role when possible (sometimes teachers need to get things started)

Before you dig into the tools, I encourage you to spend some time thinking about exactly what you want to accomplish with your students.  “How to pick the right digital tool: Start with your learning goal” by Erin Beard can help you wrap your head around goals and guide you in choosing the best tool for the task. “27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning” can help you decide what strategies work best for you and your students.

Record audio and video

• Animoto  Gives students the ability to make a 30-second video of what they learned in a lesson.
• AudioNote  A combination of a voice recorder and notepad, it captures both audio and notes for student collaboration.
• Edpuzzle  Helps you use video (your own, or one from Khan Academy, YouTube, and more) to track student understanding.
• Flip  Lets students use 15-second to 5-minute videos to respond to prompts. Teachers and peers can provide feedback.
• QuickVoice Recorder  Allows you to record classes, discussions, or audio for projects. Sync your recordings to your computer easily for use in presentations.
• Vocaroo  Creates audio recordings without the need for software. Embed the recording into slideshows, presentations, or websites.
• WeVideo Lets you use video creatively to engage students in learning. Teachers and students alike can make videos.

Create quizzes, polls, and surveys

• Crowdsignal  Lets you create online polls, quizzes, and questions. Students can use smartphones, tablets, and computers to provide their answers, and information can be culled for reports.
• Edulastic  Allows you to make standards-aligned assessments and get instant feedback.
• FreeOnlineSurveys  Helps you create surveys, quizzes, forms, and polls.
• Gimkit  Lets you write real-time quizzes. And it was designed by a high school student!
• Kahoot!  A game-based classroom response system that lets you create quizzes using internet content.
• MicroPoll  Helps you create polls, embed them into websites, and analyze responses.
• Naiku  Lets you write quizzes students can answer using their mobile devices.
• Obsurvey  Designed to make surveys, polls, and questionnaires.
• Poll Everywhere  Lets you create a feedback poll or ask questions and see results in real time. Allows students to respond in various ways. With open-ended questions, you can capture data and spin up tag clouds to aggregate responses.
• Poll Maker  Offers unique features, like allowing multiple answers to one question.
• ProProfs  Helps you make quizzes, polls, and surveys.
• Quia  Lets you create games, quizzes, surveys, and more. Access a database of existing quizzes from other educators.
• Quizalize  Helps you create quizzes and homework.
• Quizizz  Guides you through designing quizzes and lets you include students in the quiz-writing process.
• Quizlet  Lets you make flashcards, tests, quizzes, and study games that are mobile friendly.
• Survey Hero  Designed to build questionnaires and surveys.
• SurveyMonkey  Helpful for online polls and surveys.
• SurveyPlanet  Also helpful for online polls and surveys.
• Triventy  Lets you create quizzes students take in real time using individual devices.
• Yacapaca  Helps you write and assign quizzes.
• Zoho Survey  Allows you to make mobile-friendly surveys and see results in real time.

Brainstorm, mind map, and collaborate

• AnswerGarden  A tool for online brainstorming and collaboration.
• Coggle  A mind-mapping tool designed to help you understand student thinking.
• Conceptboard  Software that facilitates team collaboration in a visual format, similar to mind mapping but using visual and text inputs.
• Dotstorming  A whiteboard app that allows digital sticky notes to be posted and voted on. This tool is best for generating class discussion and brainstorming on different topics and questions.
• Educreations Whiteboard  A whiteboard app that lets students share what they know.
• iBrainstorm  Lets students collaborate on projects using a stylus or their finger.
• Miro  Allows whole-class collaboration in real time.
• Padlet  Provides a blank canvas for students to create and design collaborative projects.
• ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard  Another whiteboard tool to check understanding.
• XMind  Mind-mapping software for use on desktop computers and laptops.

Present, engage, and inspire

• BrainPOP Lets you use prerecorded videos on countless topics to shape your lesson plan, then use quizzes to see what stuck.
• Buncee  Helps students and teachers visualize, communicate, and engage with classroom concepts.
• Five Card Flickr  Uses the tag feature from photos in Flickr to foster visual thinking.
• PlayPosit  Allows you to add formative assessment features to a video from a library or popular sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo, to survey what students know about a topic.
• RabbleBrowser  Allows a leader to facilitate a collaborative browsing experience.
• Random Name/Word Picker  Facilitates random name picking. You can also add a list of keywords and use the tool to prompt students to guess words by providing definitions.
• Socrative  Uses exercises and games to engage students with a topic.
• Adobe Express  Lets you add graphics and visuals to exit tickets.
• Typeform  Helps you add graphical elements to polls.

Generate word or tag clouds

• EdWordle Generates word clouds from any entered text to help aggregate responses and facilitate discussion. Word clouds are pictures composed of a cloud of smaller words that form a clue to the topic.
• Tagxedo Allows you to examine student consensus and facilitate dialogues.
• Wordables Helps you elicit evidence of learning or determine background knowledge about a topic.
• WordArt Includes a feature that allows the user to make each word an active link to connect to websites, including YouTube.

Get real-time feedback

• Formative Lets you assign activities, receive results in real time, and provide immediate feedback.
• GoSoapBox Works with the bring-your-own-device model and includes an especially intriguing feature: a confusion meter.
• IXL Breaks down options by grade level and content area.
• Kaizena Gives students real-time feedback on work they upload. You can use a highlighter or give verbal feedback. You can also attach resources.
• Mentimeter Allows you to use mobile phones or tablets to vote on any question a teacher asks, increasing student engagement.
• Pear Deck Lets you plan and build interactive presentations that students can participate in via their smart device. It also offers unique question types.
• Plickers Allows you to collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices.
• Quick Key Helps you with accurate marking, instant grading, and immediate feedback.

Foster family communication  

• Remind Lets you text students and stay in touch with families.
• Seesaw Helps you improve family communication and makes formative assessment easy, while students can use the platform to document their learning.
• Voxer Lets you send recordings so families can hear how their students are doing, students can chat about their work, and you can provide feedback.

Strengthen teacher-to-student or student-to-student communication

• Biblionasium Lets you view books students have read, create reading challenges, and track progress. Students can also review and recommend books to their peers.
• Classkick Helps you post assignments for students, and both you and your students’ peers can provide feedback. Students can also monitor their progress and work.
• ForAllRubrics Lets you import, create, and score rubrics on your tablet or smartphone. Collect data offline, compute scores automatically, and print or save the rubrics as a PDF or spreadsheet.
• Lino A virtual cork board of sticky notes, it lets students ask questions or make comments on their learning.
• Online Stopwatch Provides dozens of themed digital classroom timers to use during small- and whole-group discussions.
• Peergrade Helps you create assignments and upload rubrics. You can also anonymously assign peer review work. Students can upload and review work using the corresponding rubric.
• Spiral Gives you access to formative assessment feedback.
• Verso Lets you set up learning using a URL. Space is provided for directions. Students can add their assignment, post comments, and respond to comments. You can group responses and check engagement levels.
• VoiceThread Allows you to create and share conversations on documents, diagrams, videos, pictures, and more.

Keep the conversation going with live chats

• Yo Teach A backchannel site great for keeping the conversation going with students.
• Chatzy Supports live, online chats in a private setting.

Create and store documents or assignments

• Google Forms A Google Drive app that allows you to create documents students can collaborate on in real time using smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
• Piazza Lets you upload lectures, assignments, and homework; pose and respond to student questions; and poll students about class content. This tool is better suited for older students as it mimics post-secondary class instructional formats.

There are several resources for learning more about formative assessment and responsive instruction strategies. Consider our  formative practices workshops , where school and district teams can gain a better understanding of the role formative practice plays in instruction and the four foundational practices to use in the classroom. Or for a quick start, download our eBook  “Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice.”

Jump in, try new tools and methods, and have fun!

Recommended for you

27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning

What are classroom assessment standards, and how do they impact student learning?

3 tips for using data to drive instruction

Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice

Formative assessment isn’t new. But as our education system changes, our approaches to any instructional strategy must evolve. Learn how to put formative assessment to work in your classroom.

View the eBook

STAY CURRENT by subscribing to our newsletter

You are now signed up to receive our newsletter containing the latest news, blogs, and resources from nwea..

Free Online Writing Tools

Best writing tools, creative writing tools, gpt essay generator, automatic notes generator, hook examples generator, research title generator, key points maker, online alphabetizer, poem analyzer, quote explanation generator, random word generator, rhetorical analysis generator, word counter, words to minutes calculator, words to pages converter, personal statement maker, discussion response maker, article critique maker, literary analysis maker, topic sentence generator, research tools, abstract generator for research papers, analytical thesis statement generator, compare and contrast thesis statement generator, hypothesis maker, informative essay thesis generator, thesis statement generator, introduction to research generator, research paper keyword generator, research paper outline generator, research question generator, problem statement generator, statement of purpose generator, essay writing tools, gpt essay checker, grammar and punctuation checker, case converter, conclusion maker for essays, conclusion sentence maker, essay extender, essay reader, essay rewriter, question generator from text, summarizing tool, title page generator, paraphrasing tool, plagiarism checker, speech makers, entertainment speech maker, informative speech maker, persuasive speech generator, debate speech maker, extemporaneous speech maker, citation generator, grade and gpa calculators, final grade calculator, gpa calculator, weighted and unweighted gpa calculator, ielts band score calculator, semester grade calculator, test score calculator, business tools, business analysis tools, swot analysis generator, free pestle analysis template, soar template, vrio analysis template, marketing analysis, 4ps marketing mix analysis template, 7ps of marketing mix template, stp chart maker, vision statement generator, organization management, mckinsey 7s template for students, smart goals generator, most business analysis template, business mission statement generator, environmental analysis, 5 forces analysis template, destep analysis template, steep analysis template, why using writing tools is good for you.

The whole purpose of writing tools is to make monotonous, tedious, and routine tasks obsolete.

Why do the same thing over and over again when you can easily automate the whole process, giving you tons of free time, less stress, and notably better results? After all, it’s not like you’re learning anything new by doing the same time-consuming tasks!

Writing tools allow students to spend their time focusing on things that really matter.

Hours Upon Hours of Saved Time

Have you ever thought to yourself that you could’ve done so much more if it weren’t for a certain writing assignment and all the many subtasks required to complete it?

With the help of writing tools, these thoughts will be gone forever. You’ll be able to:

• Spend more time on your hobby or other things you love
• Learn something new and broaden your knowledge base
• Be more involved in your family’s life
• Stay longer with friends
• Find a part-time job

And that’s just to name a few things! The actual possibilities are endless.

Significantly Less Stress

Writing assignments tend to pile up, along with many other tasks. And unfortunately there’s no way to add more hours to the day to complete everything on time.

An approaching deadline brings nothing but stress, resulting in even lower productivity, which can make your mental state even worse. Not to mention the feeling of failure after receiving a bad grade.

With the help of writing tools, this nightmare is easy to avoid. You’ll be able to deal with all your routines more effectively and even meet multiple deadlines at once.

Improved Academic Performance

Needless to say, no matter how much time you’ve devoted to completing your writing assignment, if it contains mistakes — you won’t receive the grade you were hoping for.

With writing tools, mistakes are simply impossible. You’re completely covered: you can check your grammar, see if there’s any plagiarism in your text, create a summary, generate a topic and thesis statement, and so much more.

Long story short—these writing tools are here to make your academic life easier and your studying smarter. It’s worthwhile to try them at least once. After seeing the results, you’ll surely come back for more!

• Free Essays
• Writing Tools
• Lit. Guides
• Donate a Paper
• Referencing Guides
• Free Textbooks
• Tongue Twisters
• Job Openings
• Expert Application
• Video Contest
• Writing Scholarship
• Discount Codes
• IvyPanda Shop
• Terms and Conditions
• Privacy Policy
• Cookies Policy
• Copyright Principles
• DMCA Request
• Service Notice

IvyPanda® is a student success hub designed to improve the educational outcomes and learning capabilities of students around the world by connecting them with academic experts and by providing highly-efficient self-study services and online tools.

Here, students can find fresh ideas and inspiration, ask questions to experienced tutors, study detailed how-to guides, and much more. IvyPanda strives to change the perception of studying - it should be smarter, not harder.

Main Navigation

• Contact NeurIPS
• Code of Ethics
• Code of Conduct
• Create Profile
• Journal To Conference Track
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Proceedings
• Future Meetings
• Exhibitor Information
• Privacy Policy

NeurIPS 2024

Conference Dates: (In person) 9 December - 15 December, 2024

Homepage: https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2024/

Call For Papers 

Abstract submission deadline: May 15, 2024

Full paper submission deadline, including technical appendices and supplemental material (all authors must have an OpenReview profile when submitting): May 22, 2024

Author notification: Sep 25, 2024

Camera-ready, poster, and video submission: Oct 30, 2024 AOE

Submit at: https://openreview.net/group?id=NeurIPS.cc/2024/Conference  

The site will start accepting submissions on Apr 22, 2024 

Subscribe to these and other dates on the 2024 dates page .

The Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024) is an interdisciplinary conference that brings together researchers in machine learning, neuroscience, statistics, optimization, computer vision, natural language processing, life sciences, natural sciences, social sciences, and other adjacent fields. We invite submissions presenting new and original research on topics including but not limited to the following:

• Applications (e.g., vision, language, speech and audio, Creative AI)
• Deep learning (e.g., architectures, generative models, optimization for deep networks, foundation models, LLMs)
• Evaluation (e.g., methodology, meta studies, replicability and validity, human-in-the-loop)
• General machine learning (supervised, unsupervised, online, active, etc.)
• Infrastructure (e.g., libraries, improved implementation and scalability, distributed solutions)
• Machine learning for sciences (e.g. climate, health, life sciences, physics, social sciences)
• Neuroscience and cognitive science (e.g., neural coding, brain-computer interfaces)
• Optimization (e.g., convex and non-convex, stochastic, robust)
• Probabilistic methods (e.g., variational inference, causal inference, Gaussian processes)
• Reinforcement learning (e.g., decision and control, planning, hierarchical RL, robotics)
• Social and economic aspects of machine learning (e.g., fairness, interpretability, human-AI interaction, privacy, safety, strategic behavior)
• Theory (e.g., control theory, learning theory, algorithmic game theory)

Machine learning is a rapidly evolving field, and so we welcome interdisciplinary submissions that do not fit neatly into existing categories.

Authors are asked to confirm that their submissions accord with the NeurIPS code of conduct .

Formatting instructions:   All submissions must be in PDF format, and in a single PDF file include, in this order:

• The submitted paper
• Technical appendices that support the paper with additional proofs, derivations, or results 
• The NeurIPS paper checklist  

Other supplementary materials such as data and code can be uploaded as a ZIP file

The main text of a submitted paper is limited to nine content pages , including all figures and tables. Additional pages containing references don’t count as content pages. If your submission is accepted, you will be allowed an additional content page for the camera-ready version.

The main text and references may be followed by technical appendices, for which there is no page limit.

The maximum file size for a full submission, which includes technical appendices, is 50MB.

Authors are encouraged to submit a separate ZIP file that contains further supplementary material like data or source code, when applicable.

You must format your submission using the NeurIPS 2024 LaTeX style file which includes a “preprint” option for non-anonymous preprints posted online. Submissions that violate the NeurIPS style (e.g., by decreasing margins or font sizes) or page limits may be rejected without further review. Papers may be rejected without consideration of their merits if they fail to meet the submission requirements, as described in this document. 

Paper checklist: In order to improve the rigor and transparency of research submitted to and published at NeurIPS, authors are required to complete a paper checklist . The paper checklist is intended to help authors reflect on a wide variety of issues relating to responsible machine learning research, including reproducibility, transparency, research ethics, and societal impact. The checklist forms part of the paper submission, but does not count towards the page limit.

Please join the NeurIPS 2024 Checklist Assistant Study that will provide you with free verification of your checklist performed by an LLM here . Please see details in our  blog

Supplementary material: While all technical appendices should be included as part of the main paper submission PDF, authors may submit up to 100MB of supplementary material, such as data, or source code in a ZIP format. Supplementary material should be material created by the authors that directly supports the submission content. Like submissions, supplementary material must be anonymized. Looking at supplementary material is at the discretion of the reviewers.

We encourage authors to upload their code and data as part of their supplementary material in order to help reviewers assess the quality of the work. Check the policy as well as code submission guidelines and templates for further details.

Use of Large Language Models (LLMs): We welcome authors to use any tool that is suitable for preparing high-quality papers and research. However, we ask authors to keep in mind two important criteria. First, we expect papers to fully describe their methodology, and any tool that is important to that methodology, including the use of LLMs, should be described also. For example, authors should mention tools (including LLMs) that were used for data processing or filtering, visualization, facilitating or running experiments, and proving theorems. It may also be advisable to describe the use of LLMs in implementing the method (if this corresponds to an important, original, or non-standard component of the approach). Second, authors are responsible for the entire content of the paper, including all text and figures, so while authors are welcome to use any tool they wish for writing the paper, they must ensure that all text is correct and original.

Double-blind reviewing:   All submissions must be anonymized and may not contain any identifying information that may violate the double-blind reviewing policy.  This policy applies to any supplementary or linked material as well, including code.  If you are including links to any external material, it is your responsibility to guarantee anonymous browsing.  Please do not include acknowledgements at submission time. If you need to cite one of your own papers, you should do so with adequate anonymization to preserve double-blind reviewing.  For instance, write “In the previous work of Smith et al. [1]…” rather than “In our previous work [1]...”). If you need to cite one of your own papers that is in submission to NeurIPS and not available as a non-anonymous preprint, then include a copy of the cited anonymized submission in the supplementary material and write “Anonymous et al. [1] concurrently show...”). Any papers found to be violating this policy will be rejected.

OpenReview: We are using OpenReview to manage submissions. The reviews and author responses will not be public initially (but may be made public later, see below). As in previous years, submissions under review will be visible only to their assigned program committee. We will not be soliciting comments from the general public during the reviewing process. Anyone who plans to submit a paper as an author or a co-author will need to create (or update) their OpenReview profile by the full paper submission deadline. Your OpenReview profile can be edited by logging in and clicking on your name in https://openreview.net/ . This takes you to a URL "https://openreview.net/profile?id=~[Firstname]_[Lastname][n]" where the last part is your profile name, e.g., ~Wei_Zhang1. The OpenReview profiles must be up to date, with all publications by the authors, and their current affiliations. The easiest way to import publications is through DBLP but it is not required, see FAQ . Submissions without updated OpenReview profiles will be desk rejected. The information entered in the profile is critical for ensuring that conflicts of interest and reviewer matching are handled properly. Because of the rapid growth of NeurIPS, we request that all authors help with reviewing papers, if asked to do so. We need everyone’s help in maintaining the high scientific quality of NeurIPS.  

Please be aware that OpenReview has a moderation policy for newly created profiles: New profiles created without an institutional email will go through a moderation process that can take up to two weeks. New profiles created with an institutional email will be activated automatically.

Venue home page: https://openreview.net/group?id=NeurIPS.cc/2024/Conference

If you have any questions, please refer to the FAQ: https://openreview.net/faq

Abstract Submission: There is a mandatory abstract submission deadline on May 15, 2024, six days before full paper submissions are due. While it will be possible to edit the title and abstract until the full paper submission deadline, submissions with “placeholder” abstracts that are rewritten for the full submission risk being removed without consideration. This includes titles and abstracts that either provide little or no semantic information (e.g., "We provide a new semi-supervised learning method.") or describe a substantively different claimed contribution.  The author list cannot be changed after the abstract deadline. After that, authors may be reordered, but any additions or removals must be justified in writing and approved on a case-by-case basis by the program chairs only in exceptional circumstances. 

Ethics review: Reviewers and ACs may flag submissions for ethics review . Flagged submissions will be sent to an ethics review committee for comments. Comments from ethics reviewers will be considered by the primary reviewers and AC as part of their deliberation. They will also be visible to authors, who will have an opportunity to respond.  Ethics reviewers do not have the authority to reject papers, but in extreme cases papers may be rejected by the program chairs on ethical grounds, regardless of scientific quality or contribution.  

Preprints: The existence of non-anonymous preprints (on arXiv or other online repositories, personal websites, social media) will not result in rejection. If you choose to use the NeurIPS style for the preprint version, you must use the “preprint” option rather than the “final” option. Reviewers will be instructed not to actively look for such preprints, but encountering them will not constitute a conflict of interest. Authors may submit anonymized work to NeurIPS that is already available as a preprint (e.g., on arXiv) without citing it. Note that public versions of the submission should not say "Under review at NeurIPS" or similar.

Dual submissions: Submissions that are substantially similar to papers that the authors have previously published or submitted in parallel to other peer-reviewed venues with proceedings or journals may not be submitted to NeurIPS. Papers previously presented at workshops are permitted, so long as they did not appear in a conference proceedings (e.g., CVPRW proceedings), a journal or a book.  NeurIPS coordinates with other conferences to identify dual submissions.  The NeurIPS policy on dual submissions applies for the entire duration of the reviewing process.  Slicing contributions too thinly is discouraged.  The reviewing process will treat any other submission by an overlapping set of authors as prior work. If publishing one would render the other too incremental, both may be rejected.

Anti-collusion: NeurIPS does not tolerate any collusion whereby authors secretly cooperate with reviewers, ACs or SACs to obtain favorable reviews. 

Author responses:   Authors will have one week to view and respond to initial reviews. Author responses may not contain any identifying information that may violate the double-blind reviewing policy. Authors may not submit revisions of their paper or supplemental material, but may post their responses as a discussion in OpenReview. This is to reduce the burden on authors to have to revise their paper in a rush during the short rebuttal period.

After the initial response period, authors will be able to respond to any further reviewer/AC questions and comments by posting on the submission’s forum page. The program chairs reserve the right to solicit additional reviews after the initial author response period.  These reviews will become visible to the authors as they are added to OpenReview, and authors will have a chance to respond to them.

After the notification deadline, accepted and opted-in rejected papers will be made public and open for non-anonymous public commenting. Their anonymous reviews, meta-reviews, author responses and reviewer responses will also be made public. Authors of rejected papers will have two weeks after the notification deadline to opt in to make their deanonymized rejected papers public in OpenReview.  These papers are not counted as NeurIPS publications and will be shown as rejected in OpenReview.

Publication of accepted submissions:   Reviews, meta-reviews, and any discussion with the authors will be made public for accepted papers (but reviewer, area chair, and senior area chair identities will remain anonymous). Camera-ready papers will be due in advance of the conference. All camera-ready papers must include a funding disclosure . We strongly encourage accompanying code and data to be submitted with accepted papers when appropriate, as per the code submission policy . Authors will be allowed to make minor changes for a short period of time after the conference.

Contemporaneous Work: For the purpose of the reviewing process, papers that appeared online within two months of a submission will generally be considered "contemporaneous" in the sense that the submission will not be rejected on the basis of the comparison to contemporaneous work. Authors are still expected to cite and discuss contemporaneous work and perform empirical comparisons to the degree feasible. Any paper that influenced the submission is considered prior work and must be cited and discussed as such. Submissions that are very similar to contemporaneous work will undergo additional scrutiny to prevent cases of plagiarism and missing credit to prior work.

Plagiarism is prohibited by the NeurIPS Code of Conduct .

Other Tracks: Similarly to earlier years, we will host multiple tracks, such as datasets, competitions, tutorials as well as workshops, in addition to the main track for which this call for papers is intended. See the conference homepage for updates and calls for participation in these tracks. 

Experiments: As in past years, the program chairs will be measuring the quality and effectiveness of the review process via randomized controlled experiments. All experiments are independently reviewed and approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Financial Aid: Each paper may designate up to one (1) NeurIPS.cc account email address of a corresponding student author who confirms that they would need the support to attend the conference, and agrees to volunteer if they get selected. To be considered for Financial the student will also need to fill out the Financial Aid application when it becomes available.

Civil Disobedience: a Powerful Tool for Social Change

This essay is about civil disobedience, defined as the intentional act of breaking or refusing to comply with laws to bring about social or political change. Popularized by Henry David Thoreau, civil disobedience is rooted in moral conviction and nonviolent protest. The essay highlights historical examples, such as the American Civil Rights Movement and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, to illustrate how civil disobedience has been used effectively to challenge injustice. It also addresses the criticisms and risks associated with this form of protest but emphasizes its importance as a tool for mobilizing public opinion and achieving social change.

How it works

Rebellious action, a notion popularized by Henry David Thoreau in his 1849 treatise “Civil Disobedience,” denotes the deliberate defiance or rejection of statutes, ordinances, or decrees enacted by a governance body or occupying authority in order to instigate societal or political transformation. This mode of resistance typically shuns violence and seeks to spotlight the perceived inequity of certain statutes or governmental edicts. Civil disobedience has been a pivotal instrument in myriad social movements throughout the annals, emerging as a potent conduit for marginalized factions to articulate their dissent and advocate for change.

At its nucleus, civil disobedience is an act propelled by conscience. Practitioners of civil disobedience believe that the statutes or policies they oppose are ethically flawed or unjust. By declining compliance with these statutes, they endeavor to attract public scrutiny to the issue at hand and foment dialogue and discourse. This mode of dissent rests on the premise that individuals harbor a moral obligation to act in accordance with their conscience, even at the expense of contravening legal statutes. Thoreau himself embraced civil disobedience by withholding tax payments in protest against slavery and the Mexican-American War, both of which he deemed morally reprehensible.

Among the most renowned exemplars of civil disobedience is the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. championed nonviolent resistance against segregation and discrimination. King’s ethos drew profound inspiration from Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi, both of whom adeptly wielded civil disobedience in the quest for Indian emancipation from British dominion. Through orchestrated sit-ins, boycotts, and marches, civil rights advocates endeavored to lay bare the inherent injustice of segregationist statutes and incite legislative reform. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Selma to Montgomery marches epitomize how civil disobedience can catalyze public sentiment and precipitate substantive policy revisions.

Another salient facet of civil disobedience is its tactical deployment to precipitate a crisis scenario that compels authorities to respond. When a substantial contingent engages in nonviolent resistance, it can disrupt the prevailing order and render it arduous for the government to disregard the entreaties of the protesters. This phenomenon was palpable in the anti-apartheid crusade in South Africa, where civil disobedience assumed a pivotal role in contesting and eventually dismantling the system of racial segregation and subjugation. Through the serene defiance of apartheid statutes, activists succeeded in attracting international attention and exerting pressure on the South African administration.

Nevertheless, civil disobedience is not devoid of censure and hazards. Critics posit that it undermines the sanctity of the legal framework and can precipitate anarchy and turmoil. Moreover, there exists the prospect of coercive reprisal by authorities, as evidenced by myriad historical episodes wherein peaceful demonstrators were met with force. Additionally, adherents of civil disobedience must be prepared to confront the legal repercussions of their actions, which may entail apprehension, incarceration, and monetary penalties. This readiness to endure retribution is oft regarded as a testament to the genuineness and moral steadfastness of the demonstrators.

Despite these exigencies, civil disobedience endures as a indispensable means of articulating dissent and advocating for societal transformation. It emboldens individuals to repudiate injustice and holds governance entities answerable for their deeds. The efficacy of civil disobedience lies in its capacity to mobilize public sentiment and instill a sense of exigency surrounding pressing societal dilemmas. By underscoring the ethical dimensions of political and societal quandaries, civil disobedience can engender a more equitable and righteous social order.

In summation, civil disobedience constitutes a deliberate and principled form of protest against statutes or policies deemed unjust. Rooted in moral conviction and nonviolent action, it has emerged as a propulsive force behind numerous momentous societal and political upheavals throughout history. Albeit fraught with certain perils and challenges, its efficacy in mobilizing public opinion and effecting change renders it an indispensable instrument in the protracted endeavor for justice and human rights.

Remember, this treatise serves as a catalyst for reflection and further exploration. For tailored guidance and assurance of adherence to academic standards, contemplate engaging with professionals at EduBirdie.

Cite this page

Civil Disobedience: A Powerful Tool for Social Change. (2024, May 28). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/civil-disobedience-a-powerful-tool-for-social-change/

"Civil Disobedience: A Powerful Tool for Social Change." PapersOwl.com , 28 May 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/civil-disobedience-a-powerful-tool-for-social-change/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Civil Disobedience: A Powerful Tool for Social Change . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/civil-disobedience-a-powerful-tool-for-social-change/ [Accessed: 28 May. 2024]

"Civil Disobedience: A Powerful Tool for Social Change." PapersOwl.com, May 28, 2024. Accessed May 28, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/civil-disobedience-a-powerful-tool-for-social-change/

"Civil Disobedience: A Powerful Tool for Social Change," PapersOwl.com , 28-May-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/civil-disobedience-a-powerful-tool-for-social-change/. [Accessed: 28-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Civil Disobedience: A Powerful Tool for Social Change . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/civil-disobedience-a-powerful-tool-for-social-change/ [Accessed: 28-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

I am looking for…

I need support for…

• Login or other general help
• Paycheck Protection Program

Insights to help ignite the power of your people

Search SPARK

A Digital Evolution — Meeting Workforce Trends with the Right Technology

Part of a series  |  2024 HR Trends Series

• Share Spark Article on LinkedIn
• Share Spark Article on Facebook
• Share Spark Article on Twitter
• Share Spark Article via Email
• Print Spark Article

Leaders know the world of work is changing. Some might say that new technologies are disruptive, but embracing chance and finding ways to move forward is a great way for leaders to stay ahead of the curve.

Employers should educate themselves on the following nine workforce trends:

• Generative artificial intelligence (AI)
• Global expansion
• Wellness, rewards and recognition
• Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I)
• Employee experience prioritization
• Earned wage access
• 1099 legislation and compliance

View the full infographic shown below to learn more about these trends and the technology that can help you navigate them.

The wrap up

ADP Marketplace is a digital HR storefront that enables you to connect and share data across all your HR solutions. Simplify your HR processes, reduce data errors and drive your business forward.

Find your solution on ADP Marketplace

Up Next In This Series

The People Effect: How Will Workforce Trends Impact Your People?

Data Privacy Trends for 2024

Leaders, Keep Track of These 5 DE&I Trends in 2024

3 Trends in HR Technology for 2024 and How to Prepare

Compliance Trends on the Horizon for 2024

AI in HR: 3 Trends Leaders Should Monitor in 2024

5 Workforce Talent Trends for 2024

[Infographic] HR Trends Shaping the World of Work in 2024

10 HR Trends to Follow in 2024

Recommended for You

Tools & resources.

Take your organization to the next level with practical tools and resources that can help you work smarter.

Recommend a Topic

Is there a topic or business challenge you would like to see covered on SPARK?

Subscribe to SPARK

Stay in the know on the latest workforce trends and insights.

Your privacy is assured.

Is there a topic or business challenge you would like to see covered on SPARK? Please let us know by completing this form.

All submissions will be reviewed and considered for use in future SPARK articles.

Important: If you need ADP service or support, visit ADP.com/contact-us/customer-service  or call 1-844-227-5237.

New Jersey's entrepreneurs need Congress to protect digital tools they rely on

3-minute read.

This month is National Small Business Month and there is no better time to uplift the voices of and honor the local businesses that make us proud to call the Garden State home.

In May, we honor the tenacity, creativity and sheer hustle of entrepreneurs who dare to dream big while operating on a small scale. The past several years have been tough on small business owners as we navigated the COVID pandemic, labor shortages and now, we’re dealing with rising inflation. Many of us are struggling to survive, let alone thrive in the current economy. To save on costs, many small businesses owners have pivoted to digital marketing due to the plethora of free and accessible tools available on social media platforms. We want to use this month to  shine a light on the behind the scenes tools  that small business owners use to help grow their business and reach new customers.

In the digital age, reaching the right audience is no longer a shot in the dark with hundreds of digital tools at our disposal. Unfortunately, as concerns over data privacy continue to swirl in Washington, lawmakers are considering legislation that  would severely impact how many small businesses do business .

Tools like targeted advertising on social media are a great equalizer, allowing local businesses like ours to compete with more prominent national brands. We're here to remind lawmakers that small business owners are front-line innovators and early adopters of digital technologies, and we need to protect access to these tools in order to succeed.

Research from the Data Catalyst Institute  shows that digital advertising offers small businesses more opportunities than ever. Small business advertisers report a 39% growth in the past two years due to digital advertising. 82% find digital ads more effective than traditional media, and 80% say it helps them compete against larger companies. So, while big corporations grapple with billboards and TV spots, our fellow small business owners are embracing algorithms, analyzing click rates, and turning browsers into buyers.

We are owners of small, women minority-owned businesses in New Jersey — a boutique cosmetic company and a sports athletic apparel brand. Our passions are unique, but we have one thing in common: we harness social media to help create and grow our businesses. We've seen success and scaled our businesses by leveraging digital platforms and using the targeted advertising tools on Instagram and Facebook. At Hue Harmony Brand , a sports athletic apparel and life coaching brand, targeted advertising was a game changer. Our Facebook targeted ad campaign had around 100,000 clicks that resulted in more followers, potential business leads, and even helped to feed children for the Brand’s Powerful Energy Has Arrived Foundation. Targeted ads allow small business owners like us to find customers precisely where they are — online, scrolling through Instagram, at an affordable price.

As for  LaMonique Cosmetics , our vita-mineral aromatherapy cosmetics line is now featured on eco-conscious customers' Facebook feeds. We utilize third-party data to create more effective ad campaigns that reach customers looking for socially responsible beauty solutions. The data provides valuable insight into customer preferences and market trends, helping our business understand its audience.

Though our objectives are different, it’s clear that targeted ads and social media have transformed both of our businesses’ reach, connected us with customers, and fueled our growth. Sadly, we fear that potential regulations might stifle our digital lifeline.

What if the tools we rely on became unusable? What if privacy concerns overshadow our ability to connect with our audience? We have had to adapt to many challenges over the last few years, but restricting our use of digital marketing tools is an obstacle that we as small business owners are not suited to overcome.

Let’s preserve the agility that allows us to pivot, tweak and thrive. We urge our policymakers to consult the entrepreneurs in their districts. Listen to the coffee shop owner who runs Instagram giveaways, the vintage store owner who live-streams sales, and the food truck chef who tags their location. Let’s regulate wisely, fostering innovation while safeguarding our digital village because when small businesses prosper, communities flourish.

Vanessa Daniels is the owner of Hue Harmony Brand, a sports/athletic apparel company that offers life coaching and sports leads for athletes. Monique Glover is the owner of LaMonique Cosmetics, a trendsetting online cosmetics store that offers mineral-based cosmetics.

• Chat with NCPA

Unlocking your digital health strategy

NCPA May 28, 2024

Join the next Business Booster webinar on June 11, “Unlocking Digital Health: Strategies for iCare+ Commercialization,” presented by IPC, and delve into the realm of digital health by exploring the innovative strategies for commercializing iCare+, a cutting-edge virtual healthcare solution. Why? In today’s rapidly evolving health care landscape, you can’t afford to ignore the warning signs of danger, but also entertain new tools to keep your digital life secure. This webinar’s panelists will share valuable insights into their commercialization journeys, highlighting key strategies for success in integrating iCare+ into your business. Learn more and register today !

ICYMI: New FDA campaign offers help for OUD treatment

Shortened ltc workshop available online, enroll in this course by june 5 to get a leg up on your pharmacogenomics studies, diabetes playbooks will help you (and your patients).

Tye Sheridan’s Wonder Dynamics AI-Based 3D Animation and VFX Tools Company Acquired by Autodesk

By Todd Spangler

Todd Spangler

NY Digital Editor

• Dog That Inspired ‘Doge’ Meme Dies at 18 2 days ago
• Disney, Fox and WBD’s Venu Sports Streaming JV Taps Ex-Apple Exec Tony Billetter as SVP of Strategy and Planning 2 days ago
• NBCUniversal Sells $10.1 Million Worth of BuzzFeed Stock After Vivek Ramaswamy’s Ownership Disclosure Boosts Share Price; NBCU Sold $28.3 Million in Stock Last Year 3 days ago

Autodesk has acquired Wonder Dynamics , a developer of cloud-based 3D animation and VFX tools co-founded by actor and producer Tye Sheridan .

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Investors in Wonder Dynamics included Epic Games and Samsung Next, with an advisory board that included Steven Spielberg and director-producer Joe Russo .

Popular on Variety

“As an artist myself, I’m extremely grateful to make movies for a living, and we’ve always wanted to help other artists realize the same dream — regardless of their location, social status or budget,” Sheridan said in a statement. “With Autodesk’s support and commitment to innovation, we now have the perfect partnership to continue this mission and redefine the narrative of what’s achievable in the realm of storytelling.”

Wonder Studio currently offers a plug-in that connects with professional 3D tools such as Autodesk Maya and Blender to provide character workflows.

Watch the Wonder Studio sizzle reel:

More From Our Brands

State election officials speak about rising threats: ‘this is domestic terrorism’, dodgers star shohei ohtani scores a socal estate for $7.8 million, pac-12 games end but ncaa uncertainty keeps it going, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, evil bosses tease the hitch in leland’s diabolical plan that ‘never once crossed his mind’, verify it's you, please log in.