Low-Tech Writing Tools

For this assignment I decided to see what Target had in the way of low tech writing tools. I expected to find many options for colored pens, stickers, pencil grips and possibly even some stamps. I doubted that I'd find a paper perforation tool and I was right, I didn't see one. And I was disappointed that there were no stamps that included letters, only a small bundle with pictures, and these I disregarded although they might be used to indicate starting points, ending points and draw attention to other items on a page. But for this, I thought tape flags and colored stickers would be more effective. There were many options for colored pens and pencils, and I selected one pack, inexpensive, which contains seven colors and one black. Personally, I use colored pens when I take notes and make to-do lists at work. I also find them helpful when I'm auditing transcripts as I'll use different colors for different purposes, and I have my own little system. The pack pictured below would allow for a lot of creativity in that way and the colors are especially vibrant. I also chose a small pack of highlighters, four different colors. I use these in a similar way to the colored pens, but a teacher might use highlighters to indicate certain points on a student's paper or even highlight the lines to help students follow them, which might be helpful for a student with low vision. I think tape flags are very helpful to mark important spots since they stick out from the edge of the page,so that even if you have papers in a stack you can see how the important places might be layered. In addition to these simple and inexpensive tools, I also chose to include junior legal pads. The soft yellow color is easy on the eye and the lines are surprisingly far apart, wide-ruled, also known in the print industry as leading. It's better quality paper than the newspapery brown stuff I used in elementary school but wide enough to allow some room to move for the beginning writer. and the junior size of the pads makes them easy to handle and shift around on the desk to find a comfortable writing position. The images of these items with their prices are below.