Why write?

dIn the middle of the first year of operation of a multi-site afterschool computer program, children were invited to write stories about activities at their sites. The stories were circulated via e-mail and published at the program website. The failure-to-complete rate was surprisingly high, and when the children wrote, they wrote formal, fairly controlled prose that lacked descriptive detail. We conclude that the mostly adult audience was too nonspecific and unmotivating for the children. We consider changes that we might make for Year 2. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.