WriteMonkey

Educators know a perennial problem in classrooms where students are using computers to write is the vast collection of tools that distract students (and the educators who blog about them). Anyone who has tried to have middle school students write anything on screen know what I am describing. We have tools to minimize those distractions, but, unfortunately, we don't seem to use them.

WriteMonkey is one of them. A small zip file to download and extract. When the application is launched, the screen is black with a blinking cursor and text that is green when one begins typing. Give the CTRL-S keyboard shortcut to save, and a dialogue box opens allowing the writer to save a .txt file (no other options) into any directory.

This is a great tool for getting ideas into words without distractions. Once the ideas are in .txt, the file can be opened in any word processing program and final edits and formatting changes made.

Nice.