Hi everyone! After reading the article assigned, I am extremely excited about our workshop. ANYTHING that will ease the load of grading- and at the same time make it more effective- sounds fabulous to me.
I am really interested in learning more about how blogs are being used with students and families in Parkway. So, all of you who have experimented, please share. Okay...who I am as a writer: I keep a journal and have done since I was 11, a looooooong time ago!! Lately, I've mostly been writing the program evaluation, so report writing, and legal summaries for a class I'm taking, so more report writing. In my 20s I did write a bit of poetry at a time of major transition, but haven't since.
I go by Scott and I'm a North High third-year teacher.
I love creative writing, but I can't write unless it's work I have to do. Otherwise, I can think of a thousand other things I need to do and therefore I can't sit down to get anything done.
Oh, forgot me as a writer. I have been an avid writer, as well as a reader, all of my life. I especially enjoy writing poetry and realistic fiction. I am a STICKLER when it comes to grammar and punctuation. I was very excited to study Mechanically Inclined and Jeff's other work. I dabbled in Moodle this year- what an amazing help when it came to grading and collecting work! I also have done a bit of work in blogging.
I invite you to read my "Who I Am as a Writer" on my blog site called Writing and Teaching Writing...you can navigate there through my profile on this blogspot.
Some questions/comments regarding chapter two of Because Digital Writing Matters (which would go in the “open” category) –
1. I agree with the authors that one of the many benefits of digital writing is that students are able to recognize their growth as writers be critically examining their revisions.
2. As stated in class, blogging networks and social networking sites provide the writer with a sense of audience (as opposed to simply writing for their teacher). Hopefully, students will become more invested in their final product.
3. I appreciated the authors’ tips regarding “blank screen anxiety” (51). Who would have thought that turning off the monitor would have such an immediate impact on student writing?
4. The text states, “Through the process of teaching and learning from each other and sharing experiences as writers, students will learn to make knowledge from their experiences in digital environments and transfer that knowledge to new problems and challenges.” I very much like the idea that, through technology, students will have a more active role in the classroom. I’ve always thought that the person doing the talking is the one doing the learning. I guess that statement should be revised - the person who is doing the blogging is doing the learning.
1. I'm intrigued by the idea of having multiple audiences and purposes for writing, but when I have set up assignments like this using UBD it has felt very forced and "cheesy" in my mind. Has anyone successfully thought of a market for multiple audiences?
2. Moege's classroom where the class put together a group summary demonstrates part of my fear for this overly collaborative mentality: sure the final product will always be impressive because multiple students have done it, but won't this activity still probably leave the struggling students disengaged? I feel like we wouldn't be holding all students equally accountable for their own learning.
This final idea is more a comment to Mark's above post. I really love Peter Elbow's work, especially in terms of freewriting. I think a new problem that digital writing also creates for students is that they feel like every sentence they write should be perfect off the bat, which slows them down more than a just freewriting + structure + revision would. When they can't see a discreet first and second draft, it makes the revision process harder in some ways, I think.
One idea in the chapter that resonated with me was the idea that teachers do not need to wait until we fully understand a tehnology to introduce it to our students. Often, the students will be able to teach us many features as they descover them. Any classroom is comprised of a wide range of comfort levels with technology, and there is no harm in learning from each other. I did a project that I learned during my experience with Gateway called "Illuminated Poetry" that involved doing some pretty fancy things with PowerPoint. I did this project with my class before I had mastered many of the features, and during the past two years, the students have taught me and each other so much about the program.
In thinking about Mark's statement in point #4, "the person ...doing the blogging is ...doing the learning," I'm wondering about the person reading the blog as a silent "follower" and quietly digesting it, analyzing it, stewing about it. We do discover what we think as we write, so maybe it's the whole collaborative nature of dialogue that moves our thinking forward. It is powerful stuff, this digital discourse.
SK, you pose important questions that I'm anxious to see teased out here in blogger-land and in tomorrow's seminar about Ch. 2. I'm particularly interested in the "discreet first and second draft" issues. With the ongoing nature of digital revisions, I am curious what your students say. This could easily be the focus of graduate research in the teaching of writing. When I examine my own multiple draft process, I know that the recursive nature of re-visioning a piece gets extraordinarily noodly, yet it continues to move a piece forward, rather reminding me of a slinky tumbling down a set of stairs at times.
Marcy, you are on target...that business of side-by-side learning is more than a "wave of the future"; it is, in fact, absolutely necessary given the speed of tech change, information explosion, rampant sources online that appear valid and are not... I love that you recognize your students are, in fact, marvelous learning leaders in your classroom. It does not take away from the teacher to acknowledge you, too, are an active learner, not someone who had her bucket filled at university and remained static. Amen! That's not to say you aren't the lead learner in the classroom; you are...and that means you are open to gaining more and newer understandings.
I like the way Word can accelerate language acquisition in students who are ESOL by taking advantage of audible pronunciation guides, embedded dictionaries, self-correction of language errors. (p. 47) Do we exploit the full range of tools within this environment to support the needs of this group of learners?
Thinking about peer review (p. 48), I am interested in how to empower students to be highly intentional peer reviewers through the use of very carefully designed feedback scaffolds. Anybody have some examples?
This quote struck me from high school librarian Joyce Valenza: "If I can own a tiny piece of real estate on their home screen, which is now igoogle, and I can do that just through a bookmark, that is space enough for me." (p. 55) That could be pretty powerful ... to be a 'go to' place on students' home computers.
I would like to piggyback on a few of the posts about the collaborative learning when the students were writing the summaries about the novels. I fully believe in the idea that it is a totally different mind frame if they are not doing it on their own, they are not learning-to the idea that they can collaborate and they are still learning the same skills. The concerns arise when not all engage- and then the green-eyed monster at the end of it all- grading when there has been group work. Has anyone used something they feel has been a fair and equitable sort of grading tool when grading collaborative work? I am not trying to say that the almighty grade is the most important consideration here- but, I do see that the children enjoy and engage more when both technology and collaboration are in the equation.
I definitely see the blogging process as a dynamic, reciprocal learning tool. Just reading my colleagues' posts here have given me much food for thought, expanded my thinking parameters about our reading, and have hooked me into using this method this year in my classroom.
The authors' suggestions to start small and the idea that the task is less daunting if you allow students to teach you throughout the process also resonates with me. Baby steps are good when one feels overwhelmed, as I often do, by technology or any new task.
I also am excited about the prospect of making the learning more relevant (by having real audiences and purposes),engaging, social and/or collaborative, and with potential for multi-media formats through the use of technology.
I like that the authors seem to caution against "throwing out the baby with the bath water," and I loved the idea of the "Need and Deed" project in which students engaged in service learning, tehn documented their experiences using voice recorders and cameras. What a cool way to blend social action, technology and communication arts.
One of my favorite quotes from the article was, "Instead of writing cryptic scribbles for which students rarely seek a translation, or abandoning feedback altogether, the markup and automation tools offered in Word 2007 permit you to review papers in less time and with less confusion for students" (Dunford 71). This quote sort of provides a justification for using technology to provide feedback for students' writing.
This wasn't in the article, but I liked the idea of having a real audience available for students when they are required to produce a piece of writing. I wonder, will this idea make students more passionate writers?
1. I agree with the quote, "we have the responsibility to teach students how to swim in the sea of information and media." I think we assume a lot as educators and one of the assumptions I have had in the past is that students know how to search their topics and understand the importance of keeping track of where they get information. Unfortunately, my assumptions were wrong and I quickly realized that "I" need to teach them to narrow their focus when using search engines and teach them how to cite their electronic sources. Remember: don't assume anything.
2. The word "organization" pops up in the text often and I don't think we spend enough time showing our students how to keep their digital lives organized. Maybe this should be a topic of conversation so that we have a common way to teach this crucial skill?
3. Question: On page 55 of the text, Valenza describes her thinking about the "personal information portal" and it made me think about what Scotty said today in regard to the electronic portfolio. If the electronic portfolio is where we are heading then we should encourage our students to be creative, organized, and utilize the correct technology. If this is the case for the future, should 8th graders create a personal iGoogle page in order to keep track of their writing topics, calendars, and to-do lists for all projects? Should we use google docs for editing and revision? We need to make some decisions and make sure to let all teachers know the preferred choice.
Based upon what I have read, I would really like to have the conversation about whether or not we will adopt the idea that students should have an eportfolio. Do we want the students to start saving all their writing at a certain grade level?
Anne -- whether students collect their work in portfolio styles of the past or in eportfolios, it is important that students see themselves as building a body of work. In that body...saved in a portfolio...(or even preserved in student writing notebooks/enotebooks/files) students can go back to pieces and examine their own growth, teachers can examine writing growth over time, and old pieces can become launching points for new ones.
What we too often did in the past was save stuff and forget to mess with it...or be overwhelmed by the volume of it. Students need to preserve their own portfolios, owning it and owning their own sense of themselves as growing in the writing process.
Seeking a systemic way to allow portfolios to stay with students over the long haul will become a way of things, as there are so many different places for sorting and storing student writing online.
Also, Anne, your #2 point regarding organization is important. With so much at a student's fingertips, we do need to help them learn to sift, sort, pitch, keep, authenticate, and prioritize information. This has been a skill we've tackled since who knows when, and it is probably more important now than ever. To pursue a "common way" to do this might be tricky. The reason I say this is that organization has a certain degree of individual need attached to it...i.e. the traditional outline comes to mind. Shoot me in the eyeball if I be forced to use this organizational tool...it rarely works for me. I think about all the graphic organizers, as well, and recognize that some work for the individual and some just don't. That's not to say we don't provide skill building for online organization. it just isn't going to be a tidy endeavor that we will be able to blanket over our learners. You are so right that we must explore this with our colleagues...discourse is a must!
It was an important two days together, digging into best practices for the teaching of writing. Thank you to each of you for launching a new and vibrant community of writing educators. Keep sharing, keep questioning, keep exploring!
Pretty much the only thing between now and our next meeting days, August 3 and 4, is RAGBRAI. As I'm pedaling my spokes across Iowa, I'll be looking forward to seeing all of you soon! We are going to have a great two days of writing and conversation and thinking on the 3rd and 4th. Enjoy these hot days as best you can!
Hello there, checking in and excited for the writing workshop. I will be a 4th year teacher at Parkway North.
ReplyDeleteHey! That's "too cool"...LOL!
ReplyDeleteHi everyone! After reading the article assigned, I am extremely excited about our workshop. ANYTHING that will ease the load of grading- and at the same time make it more effective- sounds fabulous to me.
ReplyDeleteJust to let you know- I go by Lisa. This is powered by a blog I set up for my classroom- therefore the Mrs. Hensley!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI am really interested in learning more about how blogs are being used with students and families in Parkway. So, all of you who have experimented, please share. Okay...who I am as a writer: I keep a journal and have done since I was 11, a looooooong time ago!! Lately, I've mostly been writing the program evaluation, so report writing, and legal summaries for a class I'm taking, so more report writing. In my 20s I did write a bit of poetry at a time of major transition, but haven't since.
ReplyDeleteI go by Scott and I'm a North High third-year teacher.
ReplyDeleteI love creative writing, but I can't write unless it's work I have to do. Otherwise, I can think of a thousand other things I need to do and therefore I can't sit down to get anything done.
Oh, forgot me as a writer. I have been an avid writer, as well as a reader, all of my life. I especially enjoy writing poetry and realistic fiction. I am a STICKLER when it comes to grammar and punctuation. I was very excited to study Mechanically Inclined and Jeff's other work. I dabbled in Moodle this year- what an amazing help when it came to grading and collecting work! I also have done a bit of work in blogging.
ReplyDeleteI invite you to read my "Who I Am as a Writer" on my blog site called Writing and Teaching Writing...you can navigate there through my profile on this blogspot.
ReplyDeleteSome questions/comments regarding chapter two of Because Digital Writing Matters (which would go in the “open” category) –
ReplyDelete1. I agree with the authors that one of the many benefits of digital writing is that students are able to recognize their growth as writers be critically examining their revisions.
2. As stated in class, blogging networks and social networking sites provide the writer with a sense of audience (as opposed to simply writing for their teacher). Hopefully, students will become more invested in their final product.
3. I appreciated the authors’ tips regarding “blank screen anxiety” (51). Who would have thought that turning off the monitor would have such an immediate impact on student writing?
4. The text states, “Through the process of teaching and learning from each other and sharing experiences as writers, students will learn to make knowledge from their experiences in digital environments and transfer that knowledge to new problems and challenges.” I very much like the idea that, through technology, students will have a more active role in the classroom. I’ve always thought that the person doing the talking is the one doing the learning. I guess that statement should be revised - the person who is doing the blogging is doing the learning.
My questions box for chapter two.
ReplyDelete1. I'm intrigued by the idea of having multiple audiences and purposes for writing, but when I have set up assignments like this using UBD it has felt very forced and "cheesy" in my mind. Has anyone successfully thought of a market for multiple audiences?
2. Moege's classroom where the class put together a group summary demonstrates part of my fear for this overly collaborative mentality: sure the final product will always be impressive because multiple students have done it, but won't this activity still probably leave the struggling students disengaged? I feel like we wouldn't be holding all students equally accountable for their own learning.
This final idea is more a comment to Mark's above post. I really love Peter Elbow's work, especially in terms of freewriting. I think a new problem that digital writing also creates for students is that they feel like every sentence they write should be perfect off the bat, which slows them down more than a just freewriting + structure + revision would. When they can't see a discreet first and second draft, it makes the revision process harder in some ways, I think.
One idea in the chapter that resonated with me was the idea that teachers do not need to wait until we fully understand a tehnology to introduce it to our students. Often, the students will be able to teach us many features as they descover them. Any classroom is comprised of a wide range of comfort levels with technology, and there is no harm in learning from each other. I did a project that I learned during my experience with Gateway called "Illuminated Poetry" that involved doing some pretty fancy things with PowerPoint. I did this project with my class before I had mastered many of the features, and during the past two years, the students have taught me and each other so much about the program.
ReplyDeleteIn thinking about Mark's statement in point #4, "the person ...doing the blogging is ...doing the learning," I'm wondering about the person reading the blog as a silent "follower" and quietly digesting it, analyzing it, stewing about it. We do discover what we think as we write, so maybe it's the whole collaborative nature of dialogue that moves our thinking forward. It is powerful stuff, this digital discourse.
ReplyDeleteSK, you pose important questions that I'm anxious to see teased out here in blogger-land and in tomorrow's seminar about Ch. 2. I'm particularly interested in the "discreet first and second draft" issues. With the ongoing nature of digital revisions, I am curious what your students say. This could easily be the focus of graduate research in the teaching of writing. When I examine my own multiple draft process, I know that the recursive nature of re-visioning a piece gets extraordinarily noodly, yet it continues to move a piece forward, rather reminding me of a slinky tumbling down a set of stairs at times.
Marcy, you are on target...that business of side-by-side learning is more than a "wave of the future"; it is, in fact, absolutely necessary given the speed of tech change, information explosion, rampant sources online that appear valid and are not... I love that you recognize your students are, in fact, marvelous learning leaders in your classroom. It does not take away from the teacher to acknowledge you, too, are an active learner, not someone who had her bucket filled at university and remained static. Amen! That's not to say you aren't the lead learner in the classroom; you are...and that means you are open to gaining more and newer understandings.
ReplyDeleteI like the way Word can accelerate language acquisition in students who are ESOL by taking advantage of audible pronunciation guides, embedded dictionaries, self-correction of language errors. (p. 47) Do we exploit the full range of tools within this environment to support the needs of this group of learners?
ReplyDeleteThinking about peer review (p. 48), I am interested in how to empower students to be highly intentional peer reviewers through the use of very carefully designed feedback scaffolds. Anybody have some examples?
This quote struck me from high school librarian Joyce Valenza: "If I can own a tiny piece of real estate on their home screen, which is now igoogle, and I can do that just through a bookmark, that is space enough for me." (p. 55) That could be pretty powerful ... to be a 'go to' place on students' home computers.
I would like to piggyback on a few of the posts about the collaborative learning when the students were writing the summaries about the novels. I fully believe in the idea that it is a totally different mind frame if they are not doing it on their own, they are not learning-to the idea that they can collaborate and they are still learning the same skills. The concerns arise when not all engage- and then the green-eyed monster at the end of it all- grading when there has been group work. Has anyone used something they feel has been a fair and equitable sort of grading tool when grading collaborative work? I am not trying to say that the almighty grade is the most important consideration here- but, I do see that the children enjoy and engage more when both technology and collaboration are in the equation.
ReplyDeleteI definitely see the blogging process as a dynamic, reciprocal learning tool. Just reading my colleagues' posts here have given me much food for thought, expanded my thinking parameters about our reading, and have hooked me into using this method this year in my classroom.
The authors' suggestions to start small and the idea that the task is less daunting if you allow students to teach you throughout the process also resonates with me. Baby steps are good when one feels overwhelmed, as I often do, by technology or any new task.
ReplyDeleteI also am excited about the prospect of making the learning more relevant (by having real audiences and purposes),engaging, social and/or collaborative, and with potential for multi-media formats through the use of technology.
I like that the authors seem to caution against "throwing out the baby with the bath water," and I loved the idea of the "Need and Deed" project in which students engaged in service learning, tehn documented their experiences using voice recorders and cameras. What a cool way to blend social action, technology and communication arts.
Creating "portals" for online activities (p. 58) really drew my interest.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite quotes from the article was, "Instead of writing cryptic scribbles for which students rarely seek a translation, or abandoning feedback altogether, the markup and automation tools offered in Word 2007 permit you to review papers in less time and with less confusion for students" (Dunford 71). This quote sort of provides a justification for using technology to provide feedback for students' writing.
ReplyDeleteThis wasn't in the article, but I liked the idea of having a real audience available for students when they are required to produce a piece of writing. I wonder, will this idea make students more passionate writers?
1. I agree with the quote, "we have the responsibility to teach students how to swim in the sea of information and media." I think we assume a lot as educators and one of the assumptions I have had in the past is that students know how to search their topics and understand the importance of keeping track of where they get information. Unfortunately, my assumptions were wrong and I quickly realized that "I" need to teach them to narrow their focus when using search engines and teach them how to cite their electronic sources. Remember: don't assume anything.
ReplyDelete2. The word "organization" pops up in the text often and I don't think we spend enough time showing our students how to keep their digital lives organized. Maybe this should be a topic of conversation so that we have a common way to teach this crucial skill?
3. Question: On page 55 of the text, Valenza describes her thinking about the "personal information portal" and it made me think about what Scotty said today in regard to the electronic portfolio. If the electronic portfolio is where we are heading then we should encourage our students to be creative, organized, and utilize the correct technology. If this is the case for the future, should 8th graders create a personal iGoogle page in order to keep track of their writing topics, calendars, and to-do lists for all projects? Should we use google docs for editing and revision? We need to make some decisions and make sure to let all teachers know the preferred choice.
Based upon what I have read, I would really like to have the conversation about whether or not we will adopt the idea that students should have an eportfolio. Do we want the students to start saving all their writing at a certain grade level?
ReplyDeleteAnne -- whether students collect their work in portfolio styles of the past or in eportfolios, it is important that students see themselves as building a body of work. In that body...saved in a portfolio...(or even preserved in student writing notebooks/enotebooks/files) students can go back to pieces and examine their own growth, teachers can examine writing growth over time, and old pieces can become launching points for new ones.
ReplyDeleteWhat we too often did in the past was save stuff and forget to mess with it...or be overwhelmed by the volume of it. Students need to preserve their own portfolios, owning it and owning their own sense of themselves as growing in the writing process.
Seeking a systemic way to allow portfolios to stay with students over the long haul will become a way of things, as there are so many different places for sorting and storing student writing online.
Also, Anne, your #2 point regarding organization is important. With so much at a student's fingertips, we do need to help them learn to sift, sort, pitch, keep, authenticate, and prioritize information. This has been a skill we've tackled since who knows when, and it is probably more important now than ever. To pursue a "common way" to do this might be tricky. The reason I say this is that organization has a certain degree of individual need attached to it...i.e. the traditional outline comes to mind. Shoot me in the eyeball if I be forced to use this organizational tool...it rarely works for me. I think about all the graphic organizers, as well, and recognize that some work for the individual and some just don't. That's not to say we don't provide skill building for online organization. it just isn't going to be a tidy endeavor that we will be able to blanket over our learners. You are so right that we must explore this with our colleagues...discourse is a must!
It was an important two days together, digging into best practices for the teaching of writing. Thank you to each of you for launching a new and vibrant community of writing educators. Keep sharing, keep questioning, keep exploring!
ReplyDeletePretty much the only thing between now and our next meeting days, August 3 and 4, is RAGBRAI. As I'm pedaling my spokes across Iowa, I'll be looking forward to seeing all of you soon! We are going to have a great two days of writing and conversation and thinking on the 3rd and 4th. Enjoy these hot days as best you can!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete