Writing Trek

I chose to look into the program, The Writing Trek. The Writing Trek allows students to learn about different types of writing, through a computer program. There is a poetry component, one about writing essays and a piece about writing paragraphs with correct grammar and punctuation. I'm sure that in 1995 the program was groundbreaking but now, it seems pretty archaic. The menus are confusing and there is no tutorial nor are there directions. That makes The Writing Trek pretty difficult to figure out. It's layout could easy be redone with power point, making it a lot more functional, current and specific to an individual classroom. I think that the program is a good idea to help a student who needs extra writing support. A teacher could send the student to work on the Writing Trek while the rest of the class works on other tasks. That's nice because in theory the student would not need the teachers assistance and could still be catching up. I don't think I would use this in my classroom though. After quite some time just trying to figure the menus all out, I was still a little confused. The graphics are not very good and I think that there are more effective ways to do what this software is attempting.