How is the process of writing enhanced/affected by use of technology?

According to Gaining a New, Wider Audience: Publishing Student Work on the Internet by Rachel A. Karchmer, writing can be enhanced through technology for several reasons. For one, writers can experiement and publish pieces using different formats and multimedia. In turn, this can encourage and enhance creativity and individuality from authors. Technology can enhance the writer's motivation to write and publish using technology. The audience can be the entire world rather than just the teacher or the classmates. Grandparents, friends, and anyone with access to the internet can potentially find one's piece. My students are always excited to think that someone in Alaska can find our website or blog and see what we are doing and thinking. Lastly, Karchmer writes that students can sometimes revise easily with technology. I found this to be especially true with using the Carnegie Library's Storymaker. Storymaker gives writers prompts and even complete sentences. Previously I found writing with technology difficult to revise using stronger word choices or figurative languate. Programs like Storymaker help writers start with their ideas already typed out for them, so changes to enhance the writing are a lot easier.

However, if a writer isn't as familiar using the technology, he or she may be concentrating on the new medium more than focusing on the words or other content to include. I found that to be true for myself when we were creating the digital stories. In the article Beginning to Write with Word Processing: Integrating Writing Process and Technology in a Primary Classroom followed a classroom with different results. One teacher was amazed at how quickly technology know-how became evident. Learning technology while learning the writing process didn't seem to be too much for these students. However, learning keyboarding in addition to thinking of the words to write proved frustrating for writers. Rereading for clarity seemed to be happening more when students were using technology, but rereading for content seemed to happen more often with paper and pencil. Falling back on what one is used to is common. I wonder how much of an issue this will be in the future when technology becomes more common in classroom settings and more common to learners.