This week I would like your final response to be to your weekly reading (which is all about technology) and/or anything else you wish to comment on. What still needs to be said about teaching writing? What are you thinking now about teaching writing, online professional development, the structure of the class, future directions for ASWC? Also feel free to email me ideas for improving the class next year. I value all suggestions.Thanks so much for all your contributions. The thing I love about the Virtual is I always go away feeling we have learned so much from each other just by framing and discussing on the blog. The class is truly a collaborative effort, and you have shaped it well.
(Post final response here!)
I just read "How the Internet Changed Writing" and then followed up with all the comments that other readers had responded with. My first thought was how amazing to have that kind of feedback. We have seen that here on our own blog but I hadn't really made that connection. All that instantaneous feedback in such a short amount of time.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts are that children have turned into scanners and skimmers. Their writing shows it. I disagree with the author that the more you write, the better you are. The quality has to count too. Posting to facebook or tweeting is not writing! And don't even get me started on punctuation and grammer.
It is amazing how digital age has changed writing and what a wealth of opportunities it presented for writes! Self-publishing, for example, is one of them.
ReplyDeleteI agree, immediate feedback is critical for developing writes and we must support our students with thorough and constructive, feedback.
I do not completely agree with the author saying the more you write, the better writer you become. It is not making students write more, but giving them “a rich and diverse array of writing experiences” –as the authors of “Writing Matters” point out, strikes the cord with me. Giving students interesting, authentic writing tasks, daily and across content areas, is what will give them practice to be proficient writers.
I feel inspired learning about all the possibilities modern technology brings to the classroom.
ReplyDeleteReflecting on the aspect of student creativity, particularly, makes me think of Daniel Pink's idea ("The Whole New Mind"), that Design, as an essential element of new, Conceptual Age, becomes a critical part of modern existence. I view the digital revolution as a "new Renaissance" in terms of human ingenuity and self-expression.
There is such a wealth of resources to be used in the classroom and with the colleagues.
I am climbing my steep learning curve by exploring amazing instructional possibilities of Discovery Education: I found the visual for the lesson, created the writing prompt, and assigned it to "my students".
I made a Moodle request to set up the collaborative group for the ESL teachers with whom I am planning to continue networking instead of the Ning because it is no longer free in our district.
Everyone knows that educational games are a great learning tool. But what I discovered about the potential of modern "virtual reality" games for classroom application and curricula integration simply blows mind! Students can learn in a fun, engaging, and authentic way while exercising their creativity, collaborating, and solving real problems.
The three (free!) Web 2.0 tools that I would recommend to any ESL teacher are - Storyjumper, Glogster, and Voicethread. They have an incredible potential for Ells in developing oral language, writing skills, and boost student motivation. Content connection and creativity are abound with the use of these amazing tools. Can't wait till summer to explore and play with them more.
I love using the document camera. I can trace any picture to the chart paper for vocabulary development (pre-teaching) activity and then, just before their very wide eyes, I am an “artist”, and I can later use this colorful chart as a visual reference for vocabulary reinforcement or review.
I am in a quandary here.
ReplyDeleteI am an efficient person; I appreciate concise communication. Yet I cannot fully agree with Kelleher’s rosy take on the growth of “web writing.”
Yes, I like bullets in my news stories. Yes, I appreciate a short article in my busy life. But do I agree with him that it has not affected the writing of our youth? No! I see my students as unable to gauge the appropriateness of length of writing. They either go the way of the “text writing” and actually slip up and write “U R” in their drafts, or they gush and vomit large quantities of useless drivel onto the page.
So, is “web writing” the death knell of formal writing? That’s the question. Depending on my day, how much coffee I’ve had, whether I got enough sleep… that determines how I answer that question.
Right now, I’ll say no (no caffeine yet). I think there will always be a place for the beauty of the written formal word. There will always be a place for flow, ideas, comparison, literary devices that make us think and ponder on the world.
Tomorrow I may feel differently. Tomorrow I may realize that my students live in such a quick-paced, electronic world that they have the attention span of strobe lights, and they want to be entertained and “tricked” into learning. They are irritated with thorough, hard-working people and want the flash and pop of their Call of Duty, special effects worlds.
Today, though, I will think about the haiku poems that my students wrote the other day. Here is an example from a 7th grader named Anna:
The frosty grass sits
the wind ripples in my ears
warm air spikes on my skin
I feel very much the way that Amy does about this issue. Some days I am really excited about all the possibilities available because of technology. I think about starting a blog, the work my classes do on our Moodle, my new and so far successful use of Google Docs, the writing my students do on My Access, etc. and I see the positive aspects of technology and online writing.
ReplyDeleteOn other days, I lament the loss of deep thought I see happening with many forms of online writing. To me, much of online writing seems to be about finding the “pithy saying” or scoring points off of others. It is glib and snarky and superficial and mostly about entertainment, not about taking a thoughtful look at an issue and exploring what you actually think about that issue.
So, while I would totally agree with Kevin Kelleher when he states in his article that “excellent writing is a matter of good thinking,” I question the credibility of connecting that phrase with “emails, tweets, updates, text messages, chat sessions, etc.” Most of what I see of that kind of writing does not support “good thinking.” In fact, it often supports little or no thinking. I wonder, sometimes, what that is doing to our abilities to recognize coherent, thoughtful, meaningful arguments, both in our own, and in others’, writing.
I liked this comment from the Internet writing article about bloggers:
ReplyDelete"But most eventually learned that writing with snark is like cooking with salt — a little goes a long way."
I wonder, though, if we, as a society, have learned that or not. It seems like snark is all around us, even on the supposedly "serious" news. I myself am guilty of snarkiness on a daily basis (after all, I'm a high school teacher, it's a defense mechanism), but I fear that an excess of sarcasm and a dearth of sincerity may be the undoing of us all. Remember after 9/11 how the media all backed waaaaay off of being sarcastic and returned to a kinder, gentler tone? There was even a time magazine headline that was something like, "Is Irony Dead?" Of course, it only took a few months for the snark to return. I find myself responding to sincerity in writing more and more. I enjoy John Stewart as the next person, but I believe Jim Lehrer.
On another point, I agree with the previous writers that texting, email, etc., definitely have affected how kids write. I finally got fed up with it and did a project with my seniors where I had them pull out a particularly personally meaningful piece of writing. Could be a poem, a bible passage, part of a novel, a love letter, etc. I had them write what it meant, and what it meant to them. Then I had them try to get across the same depth of meaning and emotion in a summary of 140 characters or less, the max lenght a tweet can be. It led to some great class discussions. To get better at anything you have to do it a lot. It takes a talented writer to get across ideas simply and concisely. It doesn't take anything to say, "This youtube video sux."
I think that many of the new types of internet communication and other technologies can have both positive and negative effects on writing. It seems to me that often they are really useful in getting young writers interested and providing them with tools that make it easier for them to edit at a young age (or maybe not young but in the earlier stages of writing development). I myself have had a lot of success practicing editing with my kindergarten students using word processing programs. It is a less daunting task when they learn to correct on the computer rather than have to rewrite to correct their errors.
ReplyDeleteI also think that many new technologies give older students many more opportunities and incentive to write but I'm afraid that they are also encouraging poor writing habits. I’m not sure that the quantity of writing can be of great benefit unless there is also some quality to the writing. A lot of communication is now done in quick “written” form by texting, Facebook, etc. but that is no substitute for thoughtful, planned writing.
As teachers I think we need to incorporate technology in our classrooms. Using technology appropriately can be motivating and educational but we also need to take a critical look at our technology use to be sure we are actually challenging our students and not merely entertaining them.
Several years ago, I was part of a team that received a grant from NWP to explore appropriate uses of technology in the teaching of writing. The topic was huge even in 2006. I think now that what we discovered is more true than ever. Teachers need to embrace technology but not for technology's sake. We need to use it augment what we know are effective practices AND we need to allow students to explore technology in our classrooms. The huge elephant in the room is that with everything changing so quickly, as soon as we master and utilize a tool, a better one is created. We are not given enough training or time to learn new technology. That is an enormous problem. Most of us don't even know about all the possibilities. Many of you have written to me that you have learned about using blogs because you are taking this class. Schools need to give us more opportunities and encourage us. Some teachers will never chose to change what they are doing while others are early adopters. What a difference!
ReplyDeleteI AM POSTING FOR
ReplyDeleteSuzie F. Posting for 4/2/2011
Response to “How the Internet Changed Writing in the 2000s.”
I really like this article, agree with the position of the author. Some statement rang particularly true for me.
But it’s been said that excellent writing is a matter of good thinking – if you’ve got the thinking part down, that’s most of the battle.
I so agree with this. The people that are polluting the internet with inane and stupid comments on blogs and tweets are simply showing the level of their intelligence. People who are great thinkers write well in whatever media they are presented with.
I also loved the details on how to write well on the web.
- highlight keywords (often using hypertext links)
- use straight, clear headlines and subheads -
deliver one idea per paragraph
- cut word count to half that of conventional writing - employ bulleted lists.
It is so true that most of us scan everything on the web very quickly. It is the nature of the beast. I have several friends who, unless I put the meat of my email in the subject line, will not read it.
PART II FOR SUZIE FEUER
ReplyDelete“The informal writing we do on the web doesn’t supplant formal writing, it complements and influences it — and is influenced in return.”
This statement really speaks to me. I have found as years go by that the only way to connect with some reluctant literates is to sneak in through a back door. I have allowed my kids to read comic books for their 20 minutes of silent reading that I require. I will allow them to cut and paste information off of the web as long as they understand it. I think in this digital age to not do so is to guarantee failure. Students are surrounded with technology and qwe have to accept technology as a way fro students to express their literacy.
On a more personal note, I have just assigned a state report to my students. I have been doing this for years. And one of the criteria for this report is the sources. They must use one book from our library, one from the internet, and one from the PUBLIC LIBRARY! I have been doing this as a way to ensure that each of my students gets a library card, visits their local library and becomes familiar with it a s a resource for reading and information over the summer. This year, I’m having minor misgivings about this, because I realize that whatever is in the library is available on-line in one form or another, although most comes with a cost. I’m wondering if I’m not being somewhat archaic in this requirement, but at the same time I am so worried that in the next decade or so, public libraries will all but disappear. And is that a bad thing? This is a constant argument I have with myself.
In summary, I’m a firm believer in taking advantage of whatever works. If the only way to get my reluctant writers to write is through blogs, facebook, or twitter, then let’s start there. The important thing is that they write.
And Suzie also writes on
ReplyDelete“Using Multiple Technologies to Teach Writing”
This article again confirms my belief that it is important to reach reluctant writers through any means possible.
In my classroom we have several curricular areas where students demonstrate their mastery of the material through keynote presentations, or comic life, or some other web based program.
This article did address the problem that so often the students are more comfortable and experienced with the present technology than teachers are. I find it helpful to encourage students to share their ideas and “ways of doing things” with their peers and me as well. More often than not, they know the technology better than I do. This makes for the most positive teaching environment I can think of. One where not only am I guiding and directing the students learning, but they are teaching me things as well.
I agree that a teacher must just use technology for technology's sake. This is a trap that is so easy to fall into, especially when teachers have technology dropped in their laps without any training or professional development on how to use it to enhance learning.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHere is my final draft of my personal narratvie. Becuase of its length I have to do it in two posts.
ReplyDeletePart one:
Author’s note: From 1987 to 1994 My husband and I traveled rural Alaska as a classic rock and roll band. This is a story from Sand Point, one of our many stops.
Halibut Dancing
“Bang! Bang! Bang,” at the front door. I think, “Why is someone pounding on the door at this hour?”
As I got up and went to the door, it gradually came to me.
I began to seriously regret our accepting Dan the crab fisherman’s invitation the night before. He’d said, “Hey guys, I’ m off tomorrow. Wanna go halibut fishing with me?’ (Yes, this is what commercial fishermen do in between openings, they fish!) The night before, it had seemed like such a great idea. However, now, at 5:30 in the morning, (having gone to bed at 2), I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of our decision.
Regardless , driving me forward, always, is the desire to do, to go.
So we went.
It was an incredibly beautiful day in Sand Point; the sun was out, the sky almost clear, and the water was flat like a mirror. Birds circled overhead in the gentlest of breezes; the temperature was about 50.
We dragged ourselves out of the hotel and walked down with Dan to the cannery dock, where employees keep their skiffs and equipment in lockers and freezers.
Dan walked up to a particularly worn and aged boat and said, “Climb aboard!” It was a 12-foot wooden skiff, with a motor and rudder, benches to sit on, and a car battery. The battery was in the far aft section of the boat, and right next to it were a pair of wires with alligator clips on them. The other end of the wires was attached to what I recognized as a sump pump. Upon seeing this I began to have even more reservations about this excursion.
We loaded onto the boat and as we’re motoring out of the harbor, Dan says, “Oh, by the way, this boat tends to take on water, that’s what the battery’s for.” OK, I tell myself, leaky boat. Great. We’re now definitely out too far to swim back, so it appears we’re stuck. Dan continues, “ When the water gets too deep just attach those two leads to the battery and the pump will come on and get rid of the water.” OK, Now we’re far enough out to where I hardly know where the shore is and my survival is in question.
Thus begins the Halibut Adventure.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHere is part two:
ReplyDeleteWe motored about and Dan, because he was a local fisherman, knew exactly where the shelves were, which is where halibut hang out. There wasn’t another boat around. It was all incredibly peaceful, and awe inspiring. We dropped anchor, dropped our lines, and waited.
The gear on this boat was primitive and functional. The line was wrapped in giant restaurant mayonnaise tubs. The circle hooks tied at the end. We had a small length of dowel rod that we coiled the line on. We had to file the rust off the circle hooks before we tied them to the line. Bait was a salmon that Dan had caught on a small fishing rod he’d put out as we were leaving the dock. Actually, once we’d been out a while, I kind of developed a rhythm with the battery and all, and soon didn’t even give it a second thought.
It wasn’t more than 15 minutes, and I had a tug on my line. Halibut are kind of dead weight until they hit shallow water. Then this one fought. Dan helped me to not lose the fish and eventually it was lying in the back of the skiff. All 89 pounds of it.
The day was getting warmer and even more beautiful, and I only had to hook the battery up about every ten minutes. Things were good! So we continued fishing.
Again it was less then 15 minutes and “BAM!”. It’s a good thing we weren’t using rods, because this fish would have yanked one right down into the water. The fish struck my husband’s line like a freight train. I watched as my husband and Dan fought to get this fish up. When it got close to the surface it jumped out of the water like a salmon, and splashed so big it almost capsized our boat. Battery cables. Pump on.
Finally, they were able to bring the new member of our crew aboard. All 127 pounds of him.
It’s not even noon yet.
Later, after a bit of sight seeing, we turned for home. We cruised along, enjoying the moment, when all of a sudden Mr. Big, (as we had named the second halibut) decides to get up and dance. This is a 127 pound halibut, up on it’s tail and thrashing, in the back of an old, leaky, wooden boat. I must admit I began to hope for the existence of a higher power.
I was filming with our giant VCR at the time, but the camera immediately goes to looking straight down at the deck and stays there throughout all the chaos. You can hear us all shouting and the clanks and thunks of things being tossed around the boat. When the fish finally stopped dancing, Dan started looking for something to bludgeon the fish with. (this would be the short-sighted enthusiasm of a commercial fisherman on his day off having it’s effect.) All we had were the 6-inch long, 1-½ inch dowel rods we’d been winding the line on. We were valiantly hitting the fish in the head with them, certainly annoying the fish more than anything else, causing him to thrash around even more. Fortuitously, another skiff came into the area, and saw the trouble we were having. We flagged them down and they came over. Thankfully, they had a gun.
With the fish finally, permanently settled down, we continued on our way home. Once at the cannery dock, Dan showed us how to filet the halibut, and wrapped it up for us and stored it in his freezer/locker until we flew to our next town. We didn’t buy fish for over a year.
I learned a lot that day:
Skill and perseverance, not equipment, make for a successful day of fishing.
A beautiful day of fishing can change your perspective like nothing else.
Just because a boat leaks, doesn’t mean you can’t fish from it.
Dangerous and unsafe are relative terms.
And, there is nothing like a beautiful day of fishing in the Aleutians.
Suzie Feuer
All the reading about using technology has been an eye opener for me. Many of the teachers in my school use smart boards. They are a waste of money in my room so I have not learned the technology. I need expensive changing tables, new standers, new walkers, a contraption to hold a bowl on a stander so one of my students can stir something or mash potatoes on his own without a electric button to run a mixer.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I do have four students that can write. One needs an interpreter and scribe, but he has good ideas for stories and the other three can all use a computer to type their stories. The stories are easily read by the students and sometimes can be read by others with understanding. My class is different in so many ways that sometimes the ideas expressed in the readings for this writing class seem irrelevant but once in a while I can see exactly how technology can relate to my very special needs students.
On Friday, I requested and had a “Blog” class with a technology staff member that was visiting my school. It was quick (30 minutes) but totally worthwhile. We set up a writing blog to publish my students writing. On Tuesday, he will return and give a talk about blogs to my class and introduce what we are going to do this quarter. I would never have understood what this was if I hadn’t taken Virtual Writing. I am so glad that I did. I now realized how fast technology is becoming very important in education. Smart boards don’t fit yet for me but blogs do.
Online writing has changed many of the ways people write. I know that through my own online writing I definitely add very little detail and keep it as to the point as possible. The article on how the internet has changed writing is very much something that we all need to consider when teaching writing. I think that many of my students believe writing should contain the text abbreviations and emotion symbols. Many of my student throw these in on a regular basis. This effects the intended meaning of the writing as well as the meaning of the word used or spelling of the words. My students have horrendous spelling and it all starts with the use of text language. They can spell in text but not in normal as I say it.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the article when it says that most people on scan the material. I for one got through many of my undergraduate classes by scanning the texts and not actually reading them. I still have to remind myself when I am reading a book for fun that I should not scan through to read only the dialogue or the beginning and end of each page. This is not a bad skill to have especially if you are college bound and are going to be in a field were scanning the material is considered okay. However, what if our doctors or lawyers and other important figures scanned their documents? We would be in a world of hurt.
As for the article on “Using Multiple Technologies to Teach,” I think that technology can be used as a means of engaging students in their learning if it is used appropriately. I know that often time teachers are given technology and they are not using it in a way that thoroughly engages their students. I have been one of these teachers in the past and I have worked towards using the technology available to make it more worthwhile of a learning and teaching experience. Many of my students are shut down if their is not some type of technology being used. As soon as I turn on my projector they are all ears and eyes. It definitely shows the difference in generations, and technically I am part of their generation. Technology is such a huge part of our lives that many students know about it before the teacher has even heard about it. This is important to consider because teachers need to have the appropriate tools to reach their students. I agree with Meghan, often time we are just given the technology and told to run with it. We don’t have the necessary professional development or training to use it. So we hence struggle to use it and are spending more time playing around trying to get it to work than we are teaching.
Classroom-Tested Tech Tools Used to Boost Literacy
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the honest reflection on the cost-effective creative ways to use what one has for technological infusion. Indeed, we sometimes get marginally useful programs with a behemoth of a price tag that are being pushed “top down”. Let the teachers do it! Teacher ingenuity comes handy when the budget gets cut.
I have described in my Power Point classroom tour how I use one laptop with a CD textbook recording loaded into iTunes and a portable mike for the classroom sound system to read stories aloud. It looks a little crude with a mike on the keyboard pointed at the speakers, but as a nomadic educator in a building that is consistent in audio system availability, I am able to control my teaching environment, not relying on the built-in MacMini in each room, not using extra cords to connect the laptop to the sound system. I agree with the teacher in the article, an adult reads a book better than any computer, so I broadcast the book recording and read along with the students.
We’ve also had issues with our internet connection and the bandwidth being overloaded, so technology must always have a “Plan B”.
There was an article not too long ago, in Newsweek I think, about “information overload” and how it forces people to actually tune out or be physically/mentally unable to wade through the sheer amount of written and visual information available to make decisions with in the 21st century. The “How the Internet Changed Writing Article. . .” alluded I think to the same problem when it said that, “having a clear voice has grown more important on the web…”. While there is an insurmountable amount of written information available, I think I lose track of it because the “voice” often feels unsubstantiated, vitriolic, or biased. At this point, I think students must be able to not only express their conversation in a clear, strong voice, but also learn to manage how their voice is interpreted. If that’s even possible.
ReplyDeleteMy Final Narrative part 1
ReplyDeleteWhat a Year!
Follow the Guy in the Wheelchair
We were ready to go out close to midnight in Waikiki. New Year’s eve was mildly humid with pleasant trade winds. There were many wild parties going on, so we just watched from our lanai and listened to the cacophony of exploding illegal fireworks. Bella watched cartoons. Earlier that evening we dined potluck style poolside with the others in our family-run hotel with an old-fashioned gathering place in the lobby. Everyone brought a dish to share, and it turned out fantastic, people sang accompanied by ukuleles and a piano.
Now we were ready for the big bang, and the crowds were getting thicker and thicker.
“Follow the Guy in the Wheelchair!” my husband said, “He lives here and knows the best spot on the beach.” We walked behind the quiet friendly old man on electric scooter that was usually parked by the pool right outside the door to his efficiency apartment. He picked an unobstructed viewing spot right on the edge of the sand. Soon people were standing shoulder to shoulder watching the holographic show on the beach. Then the big beautiful blasts lit the sky above the dark Pacific Ocean. Colors and shapes appeared, grew, blossomed, and fell out of the sky. Just as quickly as the crowd gathered, it began to disperse in groups big and small. I began thinking about cold Alaska and that my happy sixth Winter break in Hawaii was about over.
My Socks Are Wet
We flew back the next day, collapsed and slept entire Sunday afternoon. Thinking about school, I didn’t quite pay attention to my husband’s comment that his socks were wet after walking downstairs. The downstairs is our nine-year-old’s domain with water frequently spilled near the bathroom. This time the room carpet was wet, and the room was next to hers. Upon investigation, we’ve discovered that our hot water maker cracked and kept trying to refill itself. By Wednesday we had the new appliance installed and called insurance company. They suggested a contractor who pulled the curtains and moved furniture to discover mold behind every item that was against the wall. We went from back-home-from-the-beach mood to Lunar Module 1 in a blink of an eye. It was Orthodox Christmas day.
Turn off the Blender
It took weeks for anyone to even begin the work because of the cost involved. Our entire downstairs was wrapped in plastic with warning signs while we listened to the air filters pumping our heat out of the house while we huddled around the fireplace upstairs trying to stay warm. In the meantime, my Writing class had the audio conference during which I had to walk downstairs to open the door for the construction men. Sondra asked the person with the loud blender to turn it off. That was our air filter pump, that couldn’t be turned off, so I walked outside and listened to the rest of the audio in the car. We had construction crews coming and going for two months, and luckily insurance picked up the tab. We were looking forward to a peaceful and quiet Spring Break in Hawaii, just the two of us.
My Final Narrative Part 2
ReplyDeleteDa Tsunami
The sirens were loud and persistent, shattering the dark peace of the cool Hawaiian night. In the light breeze through screened windows I could make out the silhouettes of the trees laden with nuts and fruit. The dogs were trained not to bark at the distant noise, but something was still wrong. I pulled the laptop from under my pillow with the image of our boarding passes still open on the screen and clicked on the red CNN tab.
That was just the beginning of our exhausting 36-hour journey home.
The earthquake images and the feeling of pain and sorrow for the dead followed, with the menace of the tsunami predicted to hit the perimeter of every island in the chain within two hours. At one thousand foot elevation, what do I do? Above us, the only physician in the fifty-mile radius, haven’t even turned the lights on. If the doctor has not been summoned, do I just go back to sleep and save my energy?
At dawn I woke up and read that there was minimal damage in the low areas in Hawaii, we packed our scarlet jeep covered in splattered insects and brown dust. An uneventful beautiful drive along the Kona coast didn’t prepare us for a surprise at the airport. Our flight was delayed by eight hours because by law the plane crew had to have uninterrupted sleep after the tsunami evacuation. We had a great porch to stay on if they would have only told us! I offered my services to fly the jet, and stranded passengers in line were willing to serve the drinks, but they didn’t let us. The next eight hours we spent sitting in broken plastic lawn chairs I scouted in the smoking section of the parking lot. We sat under the big monkey pod tree, stomping our feet in the dusty ground, my husband smoked, and I fired up the MiFi wireless hot spot and uploaded the green sunny picture onto the Writing blog while finally getting a suntan in my flowy dress.
Words were not coming to write on the blog, we kept monitoring the situation, encouraging every mad smoker to fight for the standby seats. We managed to create quite a support group that kept together like a small tribe, rerouted with us to Seattle, slept on benches, giving each other thumbs up along the way. I went through the TSA in Kona and brought an outrageously priced burger, a sandwich, and two giant iced drinks back under the tree. A man attempted to do yoga stretches and tied a rope high around a palm trunk. My husband yelled, “Hey, man, don’t do it, her plane will land eventually!” and made the parking lot laugh, including the man with the rope. That was our only laugh all day.
On the second plane my husband got sick right after take-off from the coffee and pastry he had. He kept going to the bathroom to vomit, and I was exhausted myself in a sleep-wake state, my feet swelling up, ears pounded by the turbulence. Our checked bag arrived many hours later, and we had to go to the airport to collect it the next day. Just a day later, sitting in my Anchorage living room in a business-class red leather armchair in front of the TV, I counted my blessings in clean clothes, content in my choice of the old travel destinations and dreamed up a few new ones.
My Missing Post about rubrics
ReplyDeleteI am restoring these comments from memory.
Rubrics are important, and I use the ultimate one this month - straight from the SBA test practice booklet. Students usually are quite tired by the time they are done writing their first draft, and some never read it. I had analyzed SBA from last year, and the three parts of Writing score include proofreading as a separate score. A few of my students scored above 300, which is passing, in the first two categories, and scored in the vicinity of 180 for editing, that averaged total Writing around 240.
I projected the SBA checklist that guides scoring rubric on the big classroom screen and many students took it to heart and edited their papers.
http://www.eed.state.ak.us/tls/Assessment/sba/2007PracticeTests/7A0107ABPT.pdf
Writing Skills Checklist
Have you written complete sentences?
Have you written well-developed paragraphs?
Have you supported your writing with specific details?
Does your writing stay on the topic and maintain a focus?
Is your writing organized with a beginning, middle, and an end?
Is your writing clear, and does it make sense to a person who reads it? Have you checked for correct capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar?
My Final Thoughts
ReplyDeleteWriting – don’t tell anyone – is something I enjoy. Now I look for ways to make my love for writing contagious. It takes time and effort, and even the most skilled writers rewrite their pieces. How do I make it palatable to those students who like to do everything quickly? There is no easy answer to that.
Some teachers use technology, others try to hook students on interesting topics and morph teenage propensity to talk about themselves into introspective writing. It works for some, and doesn’t work for others.
My working thesis is that writing has to be differentiated in genres and pedagogy and it shouldn’t be ever taken lightly. The outcome of a random writing test is perhaps the most unpredictable. Students at the top of the class may score low, while the sleepy and belligerent ones frequently surprise me with beautiful thoughtful pieces. Writing assignment is like an old Vegas slot machine that seems very simple: drop a quarter - win a car. Sometimes we just keep dropping quarters teaching the six traits, the 6+1, the frame, the tower, the accordion, writing on-demand, fast writing, MyAccessing and Achieving3000. After all those quarters, dude, where is my car? Therefore, writing strategies, assessment and scoring are also debatable and have to be re-evaluated often.
Where does my own writing come from? Why did I wait until Sunday to do it? Why couldn’t I write this paper at 4 pm on Thursday? What if I had to do it on demand? I’ve done “on-demand” before and won a five-year scholarship. I was sixteen. Would my students pull it off when they are sixteen? Would my tweens pull it off with a #2 pencil next Wednesday? I hope so.
My favorite point that Kelleher makes is that blog comments sharpen our debate skills. When I was a freshman in college, with an all-night computer lab in my dorm, for the first time I was exposed to as much internet as I could keep my eyes open for. Entranced by glowing chat-rooms, I not only sharpened my debate skills, but I grew into an incredibly speedy typist.
ReplyDeleteExcuse me for having a somewhat laissez-faire attitude about internet reading and writing, but I dare say “let it be.” Variety is good. Read poetry and the classics, make up your own instant message languages with your friends, read comic books, listen to song lyrics, shield yourself from the offensive replies of online newspaper articles, examine the replies of online recipes. If we know what is proper, we can enjoy the improper. Are we not free to distinguish right from wrong? As an educator, I will teach them to be discerning. I may need to use drills to do so. Practice, exposure, projects, and drills. These skills they need on the test and on the job. In addition, these are the skills they need when they want to be clever on the street, on a blog, and in a letter to their grandma, too.
Lena I love your analogy about students and writing. Technology definitely makes revision a lot more palatable for students.
ReplyDeleteThe article on how the internet has changed writing talks about the idea that first you have to have good thinking in place which as a teacher I try to keep my students thinking at the top of Blooms rather than the bottom.
I do think technology needs to be used in classrooms. This is the world our students are growing up in. Using multiple technology tools helps to engage students in their learning plus allows them other avenues for expression. As a teacher it is my job to make sure that technology is in fact enhancing learning and is not just for technology sake.
Through this class I am ready to use more technology tools than I have in the past. I am really interested in using a blog which allows students to read others thinking and give or get instantaneous feedback. This helping to scaffold learning.
The author of writing change in 2000s closed with the statement, "best way to learn good writing is to write a lot." To me this is the bottom line which is supported by others such as Donald Graves, Sara Holbrook and this class.
As I read through other posts above, I have to agree with Sondra when she points out the difference in views and opinions in the use of technology of teachers (and administrators) in the buildings we work. Just to give a little perspective of my mindset and how it compares to others, I want to share a little with you about me.
ReplyDeleteI graduated high school in 2002. The school I graduated from had two computer labs, and one small room with a few computers for our school newspaper. The technology we used was Microsoft Word, and maybe a yearbook program or two, but beyond that, we didn't access the internet much for anything other than our email, which was strictly forbidden at school. My parents had computers at home, but the only thing I was vaguely familiar with regarding technology there was WordPerfect (if anyone remembers the Doogie Houser blue screen)and towards my later years in school, ICQ (the messaging (dated) equivalence of AIM).
Upon graduation, I went to Loras College, a lap-top campus. Boy was I behind. I didn't even know how to turn my computer on, let alone utilize Excel, PowerPoint, or create my online portfolio. I didn't know how to hyperlink, I didn't own an iPod until this last November, and I constantly felt behind my classmates in the assigned tasks. After classes started, I realized that I had an actual class, specifically for teaching me how to utilize these tools appropriately, creating online portfolios, hyperlinking teaching philosophies, researching through other data bases like ERIC, creating spreadsheets to do grades if we were to ever teach at a school without online grading systems (which has come in handy-believe it or not) and formatting and citing sources.
I was amazed at how much easier my life became once someone actually showed me how to utilize these programs and online resources. But as I look back, had my professors not been comfortable with utilizing the programs and software themselves, they wouldn't have incorporated it into their teaching to help me utilize them most efficiently and appropriately.
Since then, I've attempted to incorporate what it is that I'd learned in college to what I am teaching to my high schoolers. Some of my administrators in the past have not been entirely supportive of incorporating some of the tech-ideas that I've come up with, which has been a huge disappointment to me, knowing how I felt when I graduated and fell to the bottom of my peers in reference to tech-savvy skills.
With that said, I think there are ways to incorporate the old-fashioned approaches, e.g. pen and paper, into the process and utilizing the features on the computer screens, iPods and other tech resources we have access to, in order to best serve our students.
I feel like I've fallen in between two generations: those who don't use technology; and those who do. It's frustrating to think about how much we really need to focus on and do in order to best serve our students, but I think it's important that we're supported in our attempts to provide instruction and access to the technologies these students will be using in order to keep them competitive with their peers for jobs that require knowledge of specific programs and other technology.
Ugh, I have published an ugly blog of my beautiful classroom for you to see. Forgive me, it's better in person.
ReplyDeletehttp://harborviewroom215.blogspot.com/2011/04/blog-post.html
While taking this class, I began a unit on The Great Gatsby. Instead of doing pencil/paper response, I created a blog. I post a question with some commentary and then invite the students to respond. Their writing, higher level thinking, interactions have exceeded my expectations! Writing on the blog has forced their response to be more formal (complete sentences and thoughts), mostly because I made a point of asking for that, but their interactions with each other have reinforced my rule. Many response comments are reminding each other to use capital letters, no text language, and clarify their answers. I think technology has helped raise the bar.
ReplyDeleteOn another note - I'm sad to have the class end. I liked the format and shared my experiences with my students and our blog. I did enjoy the interaction in a smaller group, but I found it challenging to keep up with this blog, as well. My hidden sometimes lazy writer had been awakened and I hope to continue writing.
It has been so interesting to read the different viewpoints of my classmates on technology and writing...I very much related to Brielle's post about how she feels like she's "fallen in between two generations: those who don't use technology; and those who do." I am not super-duper tech savy, but I have/had a website in the past, have on online homework calendar, email my students parents from a group account I set up in my district-email, use facebook and blogs occasionally - and that doesn't even address being familiar with excel, word, pages, entourage, powerpoint, and other applications enough to utilize them efficiently in my daily work. I constantly run into teachers from a slightly, er, older generation who do not have even a basic understanding of many of these programs - which drastically cuts into the amount of time it takes them to use these kinds of programs in their daily work life.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, there are many other issues at hand as well. I found the "Writing!" article interesting and could relate to the elementary teacher who observed that her reluctant writers were much more interested and eager to write when they were allowed to compose in a more electronic way. I have been piloting the MyAccess program this year with my students, which is very different than the presentation software mentioned in the article, however I have noticed that many of my reluctant writers are MUCH more interested in writing just because they get to use a computer and type! I'm not sure how long this will last, but I do think that we need to be aware that technology has so many possible implications of how we can better meet the needs of our students - that it is hard to ignore and it deserves our attention and some time, and training too!
I know this (“Using Multiple Technologies”) is an article from 2004, but I did get some reminders from it about how motivating technology can be for writers. My students are such quick studies in technology. I definitely have them do the pencil-and-paper writing/planning/sharing, but having them create their own blogs to publish their writing to has expanded our scope in all classes. The kids take more pride in their writing, and they can’t wait to see comments from me (I like to think) or other students. I personally have just figured out how to use hyperlinks this year (thanks to this class) and plan to tutor the kids in how to link to other files too.
ReplyDeleteChoices about what programs to write with – One thing I have noticed this year, is that my high school students have overwhelmingly preferred using powerpoint when creating presentations for history class. I’ll take a chapter every so often, one that lends itself to the presentation structure, and the students create and present slideshows as the project. At the beginning of the school year, I had asked them to create powerpoints, but it was obvious they weren’t very practiced in it. By April, they are working in pairs, editing each others’ (and their own) writing before it goes “public”, and using bullet points, graphics, and design like the best websites. Amazingly, their oral presentation styles have improved right along with this, as they are proud to “speak up” and explain their information for the rest of the class. This, with ELL students, is amazing.