The Bard's Notebook costs $49.95. To order The Bard's Note book call 1-800-866-6464. If you have any additional questions or comments on the product or this page feel free to e-mail me at DMCNEILL@IX.NETCOM.COM.
Thank you and enjoy!
Dennis McNeill, President
The Brass Ring
PREWRITING,DRAFTING, AND EDITING
Prewriting, Drafting, and Editing
USING EXAMPLES
Using Examples
DEFINING TERMS AND KEY ERRORS
Defining Key Terms and Key Errors
CONTENT HELP AND TUTORIALS
Content Help and Tutorials
OTHER ENGLISH WRITING WWW RESOURCES
Other English Writing WWW Resources
Selecting an idea for a paper and organizing and developing the thoughts that lead to a successful essay are difficult skills to acquire. All writing requires practice, some creativity, and a reliable process to assure that performance is continally high.
The Bard's Notebook is designed to help you with the process of writing essays. Writing an effective paper is a difficult task for even the experienced author, and the struggle is made more difficult for the students because they must usually complete the classroom learning alone and under time pressures. Nothing can remove the work necessary for effective writing, but everyone could benefit from having an expert available to help with the process and to overcome problems when the writer lacks experience. Ideally everyone would have an on-call tutor or teacher present to coach them through the difficult moments, but teachers are overburdened and the cost of a tutor is an option for but a few students.
The goal of The Bard's Notebook is to bridge the gap between the classroom and homework. The software will reinforce the classroom teaching and provide implementation guidance to the steps and solutions experienced writers use to write effectively. These processes will give a road map to take you from the assignment through completion and allow more time to effectively develop and refine the idea for the paper. The software is designed to get quickly to the step for which help is needed, get guidance and information, and get back to the writing process without wasting time. In addition, the software is designed to show how the various steps in the process work together toward a successful completion of an assignment.
You will appreciate the care and attention given to the design of the software and the content of The Bard's Notebook. There are several ways to gain access to any of the content, and the product more accurately reflects the way you think than a textbook can allow. The content provides advice on steps that can be used in the writing process. These solutions are illustrated through a variety of examples. These examples come in many forms: "pop-up" examples in the text; step-by-step examples illustrating the recommendations of each stage of the writing process; and overall process examples showing an essay being written along with the author's thoughts on the same screen. You chose the solutions and methods that best help with your assignment. Go to the Help section for answers to questions when using the product.
Use The Bard's Notebook as the on-call any-time tutor for answers to your questions and for guidance in your writing assignments. The Bard's Notebook is designed so that not only students, but parents and teachers too, will enjoy and benefit from this product. Using this product can improve performance in writing classes, other classes that require writing and problem-solving skills, college admission tests and essay courses, and eventually professional life.
Prewriting, Drafting, and Editing
The writing process has three primary stages: prewriting; drafting; and editing. Each of these stages is itself a process represented by a number of steps:
PREWRITING STEPS
These steps will likely correspond to information you have received from your teacher in class. Any of these steps can present an implementation challenge, but there are techniques that can help you navigate through the steps of the writing process. You access this information from either the top bar of the main menu or from the side tool bar. Included in your choices will be the guide for prewriting, drafting, and editing; the rationale for the steps for each stage; and the individual steps for each stage.
When you need a detailed explanation of a step in the process for prewriting, drafting or editing, access that step from the top bar or side tool bar of the Main Menu. Each step provides a discussion organized in categories. The first category describes the Goal of the step in the process, the second category presents the process Problems you will encounter at this step, the third category presents a description of the Solutions to use in essay writing, and the final category is an Example of the techniques implemented in a real essay. Just click on the category and the information you seek will be displayed. While reading the information in a section, you will see some words highlighted in green. These words contain definitions of key terms, descriptions or examples of common errors, or other general material of interest. Just click on any of these highlighted items and the additional information will be presented.
Using Examples
Each step in the writing process has recommended solutions for problems and procedures to use composing an essay. The examples are all from the same essay making it possible to watch the essay being developed using the different examples at each step in the process. Any information in The Bard's Notebook can be printed for further study or the information can be viewed on the screen. The examples can be played like a VCR or viewed manually by stepping through the steps in the example.
In addition to the examples in the guide, for each step in the overall process, and throughout the text, The Bard's Notebook presents other completed essays. Under the Example icon you can view graded papers, other completed essays, and two essays showing the entire writing process from drafting to editing. The latter also present the writer's thoughts while proceeding through the steps and implementation solutions presented in The Bard's Notebook.
Defining Terms and Key Errors
Throughout The Bard's Notebook examples and definitions have been used to present and illustrate the writing process. The Glossay on the top bar of the Main Menu summarizes all the key terms and common errors. Just click on the Glossary icon and select either the key terms or common errors. A complete listing will appear on the screen and a discussion will appear when you click on any term. Once you have finished studying a key term or common error, close the "pop-up" window, select any other term you wish to review, or return to any topic.
Content Help and Tutorials
The Bard's Notebook has extensive help available on-line. The help includes a glossay of terms and instructions on the mechanics of using the software. Additionally, under the help icon on the main menu ia tutorial that shows how to use the different features of The Bards's Notebook to your advantage. The software has been designed to give flexibility to the user. There are examples and information presenting the various goals, problems, solutions, and examples in the writing process. The location of the answers and assistance you seek when using The Bard's Notebook is summarized as follows:
WWW English Writing Resources
Here is a list of other sites on the WWW oriented to English writing topics. This list is updated as new resources are found, so you may want to check back periodically.
(Perform a keyword search of "English" and note those addresses that seem appropriate... Additionally, get those pages to list SYNDICATE.COM on their lists. NCTE.
COLLEGE ENGLISH PAGES
THE WRITING PROJECT