Invited Commentary: New Tools for Teaching Writing

Mark Warschauer University of California, Irvine Less than two decades ago, new forms of socially constructed multimedia were believed to be devaluing writing, marginalizing the essay, and contributing to a postmodern death of the author (e.g., Faigley, 1997; Landow, 1992). But today, writing is more important than ever before (National Commission on Writing, 2003), mastery of the essay remains critical to academic success (Intersegmental Committee of the Academic Senates, 2002), and, as Chesher (2005, para. 1) has noted, “the author is alive and well, and has a blog.”