Online Tools Past and Present. Let's start with a Web search for writing tools from mid May, 2001:

Google searched the Web for writing tools and found about 1,600,000. Search took 0.11 seconds.

First, that's just plain amazing. Second, there is something weird going on with the "google searched" construction. I thought I was the one doing the searching. And that's not all. The first hit displayed by google is Research-It!, sponsored by iTools. It's alive: "Research-It! has a new brother . . . ."

It may just be coincidence that all this human agency shows up in a simple search for writing tools. Google is not alive. Research-It! doesn't really have a little brother. These are just static resources. Right?

But, just to be sure, we should probably explore a few questions about agency, resources, and electronic writing tools. Actually I can think of many questions, but will concentrate on three.

The first question: What is the role of instructor agency within online tools?

In 1999 I used a peer review tool that allowed an instructor to create prompts to guide readings of papers:

These prompts are incorporated into the tool as part of a review form that readers use to offer critiques of paper drafts. The presence of the instructor is actualized in the online tool in the form of the review prompts. Students submit papers, then readers respond to the prompts while reviewing the drafts. However, reader response consists only of side-comments composed in response to the instructor prompts; there is no surface-level interaction with the papers being reviewed.

Compare that model with the tool that is seeing widespread use for peer review, Microsoft Word:

We could imagine an instructor opening every paper to be reviewed and inserting comment prompts to guide reviewers, but in general we can say that the instructor does not influence the configuration of the environment in the same way as she does with the Web review tool. Readers, however, interact much more closely with papers under review in this model, inserting comments with sentence-level precision. In the Web review environment, the instructor influence is more directly integrated into the tool itself. In Microsoft word the instructor's influence exists outside of the tool

Now, second question: What is the role of instructor agency in the context that exists outside of the tool?

Whether using Microsoft Word or the Web-based peer review tool, context matters. Building instructor influence into an online peer review tool, for instance, is not necessarily a great idea, if instructors aren't aware of issues involved in reading and responding to writing in the first place. They may integrate influential prompts into the environment that hamper rather than promote successful peer review. Conversely, the instructor using Microsoft Word could conduct terrific peer reviews by exerting her influence to create an overall environment that promotes successful reviews.

In both of these cases the teaching context influences the tool use as much as the tool itself. This context is likely to include the experience of instructors, the kinds of training they have been provided, even the readings and models they have used to develop their understanding of what it means to teach writing.

So, final question: What happens when that teaching context is incorporated into the tool?

To get an idea of this possibility, consider the "resources" button on the latest edition of blackboard's courseinfo tool which offers instructors and students support materials. In terms of resources, it seems like a logical step. But what about agency? The resources are packaged so that they appear in some ways to come from the instructor. Resource selection is determined in large part by commercial partnerships. Instructors cannot remove the button. When google searches the Web, or Research-It! personifies itself, we get a sense of simple poetic license. But when the teaching environment itself raises these questions of agency, I wonder: Just what we are to make of this new brother?