Brain Storm

Organize

Sequence

Rough Draft

Publish

Research and Standards


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System Information—Macintosh
• System 9.2 or higher
• System 10.1 or higher
• 64 MB min,
128 Recommended

System Information—Windows
• Windows 98/2000/XP
• 64 MB of RAM
• 160 MB of free space
• 6 MB of constant free space recommended.

Checkout Writer's Companion's listing on the California Learning Resource Network!

What is Writer’s Companion™? Program Features

Designed to be the ONE program that you need to implement the writing process, this program was developed based on years of experience in working with students who struggled with the writing. All children and for that matter all adults have an innate need to communicate with other humans. It is part of what defines us as human beings. However, for many people writing is a mode of communication that often painful and difficult.

In creating Writer’s Companion™ we wanted to give the user the tools that would assist them to communicate in a cogent and organized matter. Much of the structure of Writer’s Companion is based on a compendium of different styles of process writing. We take the user through the entire process from brainstorming ideas to publishing their final draft.

Writer’s Companion™ is designed to engage even your most reluctant writers in a process that will fill your classroom with sights and sounds of communication as we have come to know it in this age of multimedia communication. Students can use text to speech, include graphics, e-mail their stories directly from the program and even automatically create web pages.

Writer’s Companion™ could be your students everyday word processor. We feel that having your students go through the entire writing process every time they write will help them to internalize the writing process.

We have designed Writer’s Companion™ to be progressively sophisticated depending on the age of the user. You can use it as a simple single-page graphic writing program, appropriate for a six-year-old or as a sophisticated writing program capable of creating term papers in college.
Writer’s Companion™ has five distinct sections:

1. Brainstorm: In this mode the user simply creates text boxes and writes any idea they have related to the theme of their story or essay.

2. Organize: In this mode the user can chose from any of three ways of organizing their ideas:
Clustering
Timeline
Venn Diagram
Each of these graphic organizers is used for different types of writing. Clustering can be used for any type of story or essay. Timeline can be used any type of writing that is sequential in nature, like recipes or directions. Venn Diagram is great for compare and contrast.

3. Sequence: This part of the program allows you put the ideas you have related in the proper sequence and ready to create a rough draft.

4. Rough Draft: Once you have your ideas and have organized them, this part of the program, puts them together as one document and allows you to start the editing process. In Rough Draft you can choose between seeing your document as an outline or in paragraph form.

5. Publish: Once you have edited your document, you are ready to put on the finishing touches like formatting your document, adding fonts, and adding graphics. It is in this part of the program you will either print your document or publish it digitally as an email or web page.

     
 
 
       
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