[Simtrainer-l] 1:1 Schools & the Sentence Writing Pretest

[Woodruff Susan]

Hello …
I am working with a district that is going 1:1 this fall.  They also have a major district goal focusing on writing.  We’ve made the decision to start with Sentence Writing.

SO … my question is … should the kids do their writing pretest in their own handwriting or should they let the students use their technology?  I know there is a lot of debate about the thinking processes being different when handwriting versus keyboarding.  

Have any of you struggled with this decision?  I can see teachers wanting to put kids on computers, but how would we know the difference between real sentence writing issues or keyboarding issues?  

Please share your thoughts with me.  We have to be prepared to talk with the teachers about this in August.

Thanks so much.
Sue Woodruff