The power of visualising writing

Draftback is a highly useful chrome extension.

Writing is a secret process. The audience can’t see how a writer writes, they just see finished product.

Draftback turns all the edits of a google doc into a movie. Turning the video on led to interesting discoveries about the writing process.

Lots of edits, deletions are planning. However the kids can ‘see’ the point where a writer goes from planing to drafting as the inputs move from staccato inputs to more flowing verse.

A number of my writers are still ‘stop and start’ writers.  They immediately saw the power of getting ideas out rather than trying to get everything right first time.

The service also useful to look at who is actually going back and editing their writing as again you can ‘see’ a child editing as they come to the end of their writing.

It will be interesting to see how the children respond to this new piece of data.