Using E-Mail and Web Pages to Develop Writing Skills of Elementary Students: An Experence with Fifth Graders

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to design and test a teaching program to develop both individual and collaborative writing skills in primary school students, thus creating a more real, significant, and stimulating classroom environment for written communication, supported by electronic mail and other computerized tools. In this study participated forty fifth grade students from four co-ed schools in different sectors of the metropolitan area of Medellín, Colombia. The results show that electronic mail and Internet are effective devices to support a classroom atmosphere that stimulate collaborative writing activities between students of various schools. As a whole, the findings of this research show evidence that these technologies are powerful tools to support educational strategies that promote in children a better relationship with writing and a greater capacity to produce expository, poetic, narrative, and epistolary texts.

This paper is derived from a research approved and financed by COLCIENCIAS and Universidad de Antioquia.