Here we are with another month having passed us by and it seems like I’m struggling with a number of issues related to digital learning, in some senses, but more broadly on issues of school reform and how we will ever be able to set the ship of education sailing in the right direction again. So, this is a random series of thoughts for a single blog post, and yet I wanted to share them before this week gets underway. I promise that I will try to tie them all together in the end.
School Reform
Over the past month, I’ve been in a variety of twitter conversations with really smart people about the issue of school reform and high school dropouts and, subsequently, on two episodes of Teachers Teaching Teachers. Couple this with conversations I’ve been having with my wife about the future of our children school district which, like many in Michigan, is facing unrealistic budget constraints, declining enrollments, and mounting obstacles to real improvement. all of these conversations are interesting, and there was one recent blog post by John Merrow that captures nearly all of the frustrations I think many educators share. In particular, I found myself tweeting back and forth with Lisa Nielsen, arguing the merits of homeschooling (or alternatives to models of “schooling”). Here’s a clip:
hickstro: @InnovativeEdu Great convo on TTT. Still, what is it schls can/could do well/better than a lone student guided only by his/her own passions?10:12pm, Feb 22 from Web
InnovativeEdu: @hickstro The idea of “lone student” is a fallacy. A student has plenty of resources at their fingertips. Many are blocked/banned by school10:13pm, Feb 22 from Web
hickstro: @innovativeedu I’m happy that my 2nd grader turns to Google for info for his animal report. But he turns to me for advice on writing it.10:16pm, Feb 22 from HootSuite
InnovativeEdu: @hickstro – Why are you only seeing choices as school or Google? Many are learning w/out school & with relevant learning.10:43pm, Feb 22 from Web
hickstro: @innovativeedu I hear you. There is more than school or Google. The best parents are going to provide rich experiences for their children.10:58pm, Feb 22 from HootSuite
InnovativeEdu: @hickstro Or…the best parents will support their children in pursuing & developing rich experiences.11:03pm, Feb 22 from Web
hickstro: @innovativeedu So, is this a school problem? Or a parenting problem?11:06pm, Feb 22 from HootSuite
InnovativeEdu: @hickstro what i am talking abt is a school problem cuz there are PS students that don’t have involved parents so they need school.11:10pm, Feb 22 from Web
hickstro: @innovativeedu I’d like to think more… what can the best elements of home schooling offer schools? What can schools offer home schooling?11:13pm, Feb 22 from HootSuite
InnovativeEdu: @hickstro Many of these questions have been answered. Government won’t fund it. How do we change that? Feb 22, 11:16pm via Web
There were others involved in this conversation including Teresa Bunner, and it came at the end of a very smart episode of TTT, so there’s little bit out of context here in this blog post. I’m not sure what else say about all of it at the moment, that this will be an interesting spring as my personal life — and education of our five children — seem to be on a collision course with my professional life and what I truly value about schools, education, and learning.
Digital (Peer) Learning
Speaking of school (or, in this case, not school) and learning, I will be facilitating a course in Peer 2 Peer University, also known as P2PU, beginning next week with my NWP colleagues, Christina Cantrill and Katherine Frank: Writing and Inquiry in the Digital Age. Focusing broadly on what it means to write in the digital age, my particular interest with this course is thinking carefully about how and why we can use curation tools for teaching and learning. Sure, I am riding on the coattails of the Pinterest craze and advocating for this is one of our foci. Still, I’m trying to figure out how this can be a useful tool after a conversation earlier this semester with Andrea, Leigh, and some others educators. For what it’s worth, I’ve started a board, “Content/Creation/Curation,” and already received my first comment: “I THINK YOU PEOPLE SHOULD JUST LEAVE PINTEREST ALONE! & let people like ME JUST ENJOY IT!”
Indeed. I will try. Join the conversation at P2PU over the next few weeks.
Online Privacy
In my next seemingly random entry for the evening, I want to mention that I will be speaking this week at one of CMU’s “Speak Up, Speak Out” forums entitled “R They Watching U? Technology, Surveillance, Censorship & Privacy Rights.” Here’s the lowdown:
Date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Time: 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Location: Bovee UC: Auditorium
Speak Up, Speak Out: The Current Events Series presents “R They Watching U? Technology, Surveillance, Censorship & Privacy Rights.” SUSO is not a lecture series – it’s more like a town hall meeting called to discuss important events and topics in the news. Each forum is an opportunity for all participants to collaborate in thinking through the issues, identify problems, and consider solutions. For more information, visit the SUSO website. The forum facilitator is Justin Smith (SASW). Panelists include: Christopher Armelagos, graduate student; Amanda Garrison, Sociology; Troy Hicks, English; Jaime Humpert, student; Roger Rehm, CMU’s Chief Information Officer; and Ken Sanney, Finance & Law.
If there are enough of my colleagues who might be interested, I’ll certainly start the twitter back channel for this conversation as well, and could even open it up as a video feed on a Google hangout. let me know if you’re interested.
And, Finally, Food Waste
So, in the wonder of all things digital, I was enjoying Netflix this morning during my jog on the treadmill, And ran across this short documentary: Dive! Living Off America’s Waste. Tonight, we have the kids watch it with us, for two reasons. First, there’s the obvious social commentary that I want them to understand about food waste and all the issues about consumerism, consumption, environmental quality, and related ideas. Second, I found myself fascinated by the production of the film itself as a digital writing process. Jeremy Seifert appears to have produced this film in a manner that could be replicated by middle and high school students with a basic HD camera, a simple movie editing program, some creativity, and a lot of determination. I appreciated the mix of interviews, B roll footage, archival footage (most of which appeared to be from historical, public domain archives), stop motion animation, and the creative representation of food throughout. I think that the kids appreciated it, too, and my hope is that our two Girl Scouts might take this idea up as part of their social action project. At any rate, at the end of the week where I feel professionally helpless and I’m not sure to what I am doing is making much of a difference, it was good to see Jeremy’s film and to think about the power that a few good people can have in affecting change.
So, that was a mishmash of ideas for one evening. But, that’s what blogging is for, right?
This year was no different, yet quite different at the same time in the sense that the NWP as we have known it for so long is no longer. We are adjusting to what many are calling the “new normal.” Since the elimination of federal funding this past spring, the NWP has been scaling back, and this annual meeting was a tangibe result of that process while, on the other hand, the NCTE convention seemed as big as ever, celebrating its 100th birthday in the town where it all began, Chicago.
For me, this annual pilgrimage becomes a chance to meet with colleagues, share new ideas, reaffirm our beliefs about teaching, and to identiy the latest technologies to support readers and writers. From the moment I got on the train last week to the ride home, where I am composing the bulk of this blog post, I have been offered hugs, handshakes, and smiles from countless colleagues, both those in Michigan who I sometimes only see in November and from others around the country and, this year, around the world. As an opportunity to reaffirm my convictions about teaching and in the strength of educators, NWP and NCTE have always been the cornerstone for me.
Yet, this year is different, as noted above. The NWP Annual Meeting was subdued, perhaps even sad. Still, the work continues, and I document my days in Chicago with as much detail as I can remember, with hopes that this reflection will be useful to others, too.
Thursday, November 17
Google Docs saves the day for procrastinating presenters
The morning began early, with a breakfast meeting that found Paul, Steph, Michelle, and I tucked in a corner of the Corner Bakery, putting the polishing touches on our NWP session, “NWP Connect Community Builders.” This was a chance for each of us to share one case study related to our use of NWP Connect, and I talked about how the NWPM network used it during out advanced institute last summer. This led to a smart conversation about how sites can use NWP Connect to continue engaging in site work. Rather than focus on the tools, we talked about the many elements present in NWP Connect could be used by TCs as the organize Summer Institutes, Professional Development, Continuity, and Youth Programs.
In the afternoon, I found myself engaged in conversations with other site directors and, in all sincerity, found myself asking them “Why are you here?” Please understand that we had already had many opportunities throughout the day to express our concerns and, indeed, our remorse over the loss of federal funding. Yet, I was still surprised at the bitterness and anger that permeated that conversation. When one of my close friends and colleagues was struggling to figure out a plan for moving forward, I asked her why she was here, at the NWP Annual Meeting, if she didn’t see a purpose in her work. This led to a broader conversation about what we value as teacher educators, reminding us of the importance of what it is that we do. That was Debbie Meier’s message from lunch, a message that was meant to be hopeful, and I hope that I was able to refocus that conversation.
In short, the NWP Annual Meeting was bittersweet, and moving forward in this new educational and financial landscape remains a task that will be both challenging and rewarding. Our luncheon speaker was Deborah Meier, and that was inspiring to hear from a seasoned educator and real reformer. That said, is anything in education NOT ever both challenging and rewarding, simultaneously?
Friday, November 18
The first morning of the NCTE Annual Convention brought an educational heroine, Linda Darling-Hammond, into conversation with a few thousand English teachers. Her message, as always, was inspiring and evidenced-based, giving us pause to think about what “counts” as evidence and to whom that evidence counts. Clearly, as the research she has done her entire career shows, there are many things that we know about successful schooling, as outlined below in this series of tweets I sent out, reading from the bottom up:
LDH: “Those who can do. Those who understand teach.” #ncte11
LDH: If we are serious about equitable schools, we will set meaningful learning goals, provide equitable and adequate resources. #ncte11
#ncte11 Think about how you are spending your (and your school’s) money. Who benefits from the books you buy? ow.ly/1AzPBN
Whose interests drive standardized assessments? Who pays? Are we indirectly supporting bad curr. and inst. by the texts we buy? #ncte11
LDH: Highest achieving nations: kids have housing, healthcare, and pre-school. Invest in teacher learning. Leaner curriculum. #ncte11
LDH: Alternative certification and less coursework lead to teachers who have students that achieve even less than others. #ncte11
@MrsT73199 Indeed. Sadly it depends on your ultimate goals and what counts as evidence. I think we see education much differently… #ncte11
LDH: Evidence from NCLB is clear: lower test scores, more drop outs. Hooray for “evidenced-based” education… #ncte11 There are other ways!
#ncte11 Sadly, our school system is doing a great job at what it is designed to do: replicate inequality, demoralize teachers and students.
LDH: Anatomy of inequality diagram. We are moving backwards since the 1980s #ncte11 ow.ly/i/lyF4 We know what to do, now do it!
LDH: Amongst industrial nations, US follows on Mexico in rate of childhood poverty, nearly 20%, and major inequity in their schools #ncte11
LDH: Equitable teachers see, hear, and understand the child. They look for experiences, prior knowledge, and strengths. #ncte11
#ncte11 What does the fact that we are laughing at Ferris Bueller clip 20 years later tell us about ourselves? Our colleagues, profession?
LDH: The amount of information we have access to doubles each year. Most important skill is learning to learn. #ncte11
Blurry picture of LDH slide showing growth in high skilled jobs vs low skill jobs over last century ow.ly/i/lyAp #ncte11
LDH: Metaphors be with you… Hummingbirds, steel traps, and colonies of e. coli #ncte11
LDH: The power of literacy is so great that those who want power deny others access to the book. #ncte11
#ncte opens its second century w/ an award to Linda Darling Hammond and a standing ovation. Great start to #ncte11 !
The next session gave me opportunity to (finally) see a presentation by a long-time friend, Jennifer Collison, who invited us to write and think about the connections between film and literature. Also, in that session, another NWP teacher, Nick Kremer, presented his work on using comics to teach writing. He gave us some ideas from Scott McCleod‘s work, and then asked us to compose our own “sequential art narrative” using William Carlos Williams‘ poem, “The Act.” In the spirit of creativity, I made a short, digitized version of the nine-panel comic that I drew, repurposing the original text of the poem in the background.
I was also able to take in a brief session on globalization and then headed to the CEE Luncheon to hear author Rebecca Skloot. Her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, has become a best seller, and I read it over the summer. Her backstory as an author was interesting, weaving her history in school (including, essentially, dropping out of regular high school only to complete alternative high school in 18 months, and heading to college at age 16). She also talked about the obsession that she had with writing, biology, and, of course, Henrietta Lacks, which all combined in a ten year pursuit of the story that led her to craft the book. Hearing the story of an author, especially one who writes creative non-fiction, was inspiring, to say the least.
The evening found me in conversation with my colleagues from the Chippewa River Writing Project over a family-style, Italian dinner. We each talked about our big take aways from the day, as well as what we would hope to have happen for our site in the coming year. I think that we are on the right track, and the enthusiasm they all shared reminds me of our shared goals as colleagues in a writing project site. We will, of course, have to think about our finances and our mission in relation to what we are, and are not, able to do, but I am confident that our decision-making will be guided by our shared knowledge and experiences from NWP/NCTE this year.
Saturday, November 19
I will start my thoughts on Saturday by working backwards from the NCTE 100th birthday party and my first visit to the annual Scholastic dinner. Despite my general wariness about the role of publishing companies and textbooks — and their effects on students, teachers, instruction, and assessment — I feel that the words of the Scholastic CEO are genuine and that the family history and philosophy of the company is one that aligns with NCTE. It was good to be a part of this centennial event.
Now, back to the morning. I began my day in a great conversation with Kristen Turner, talking about data that we had collected from her writing methods class in the spring. That data had revealed some “opportunistic tensions” in the ways that pre-service teachers described their own experience with digital writing and what they (perceived they) were able to do in the classroom. That led us to our morning session, “Writing Our Inquiry,” where Kristen, Kia, and I reported on our experience with last year’s CEE Colloquim on multimodal/multigenre writing. We had a small, but participatory crowd, and the conversations about digital writing in pre-service teacher education were valuable. Kristen and I have plans to write an article, and I enjoyed having the chance to talk with her about our work.
Then, in the afternoon, I got to see my friends and colleagues Bill Bass and Franki Sibberson talk about “digital mentor texts,” and they shared some great resources on how to help students think about identifying and using mentor texts to create their own digital writing pieces. Bill especially gave some great examples that helped me think how to talk more about the craft of digital writing, and we carried that conversation well into the evening. I hope that there are some collaborations that may come from these ideas.
Sunday, November 20
And, now on to today. I have to admit, I kind of stayed away from the conference sessions until it was actually my turn to present. I had some wonderfully productive conversations with my long-time MRA colleagues, Amber and Sue, which led them to give some great insights into what I want to write for my upcoming book. This led to a conversation with my editor from Heinemann, Tobey, who again offered some great ideas and has given much to think (and write) about in the coming weeks.
Finally, this brings me to the session that I was most anticipating for NCTE 2011, the opportunity to do “Reports from Cyberspace” with Sara Kajder and Bud Hunt, our third annual attempt and introducing newer literacies and technologies to our colleagues. This year, Bud joined us virtually, using Adobe Connect, and we attempted to use Celly and Google Docs for backchannel conversation. Our audience this year was very concerned about the practical and pedagogical implications of using technology, fueled in part by many of continuing trends in education towards budget cutting, lack of technology resources, and more standardized curriculum, as evidenced by their comments in the “yeah, buts…” list that Sara transcribed:
Where is the research that shows it works?
Where is the tie to common core?
I don’t have the time and the energy
My kids don’t have access to the internet at home
When do I have time to learn how to do this myself?
I am afraid the students know more than meWhere do I even begin?
I am teaching to my strengths – that doesn’t include this.
How will they function when the world ends?
Is it cheating?
Where is the discursive space for critique?
That media project doesn’t product the same quality as does my beloved 5 paragraph essay?
My district has no money for this.
They will be distracted and their grades will go down
We can no longer talk with one another
If I use it, won’t they just play games when I’m teaching?
How can I test this?
Students are spending time in corporate-controlled online spaces
I don’t want my kids’ work online.
Why spend time on a tech project when we need to spend time on the paper…
I have to prepare them for a MC test
What happens if the power goes out?
I can’t afford a smart phone myself so how can i let kids use theirs
It kills their brain cells, right?
That’s quite a list.
I am not sure exactly how best to answer all of the questions, except to say that we need to shift paradigms, as I have said before. I think that Bud, Sara, and I have been consistently on target with our message over the past three years, and our article that will be appearing in English Journal next year. It almost goes without saying, but I suppose it needs to be said… the time to act is now.
Teach. Digital. Writing.
We still tried to share many ideas with people though, all of which are outlined in our Google Presentation, Google Doc, and recorded in the archived version of the webinar, available here.
Reflections
Looking back at Chicago and NWP/NCTE 2011
Since this was the tone on which we ended the conference, I am not quite sure what to think. As I sit here on the train, talking with my good friend and colleague Aram Kabodian (who is making a much more engaging and playful video about his experience in Chicago, which I am sure he will post to his blog), I am a bit disheartened. NWP was not, and will never again, be the same. At NCTE, while we wanted to have audience members this afternoon grab the bull by the horns and become advocates for themselves and their students seemed, instead, to end with a whimper, not a bang. And, finally, as I look ahead to what will happen for our site, Chippewa River Writing Project, I am just not sure where things are at, or where they are heading, although I know that we won’t stop.
As with many reflections of this nature, I come home from NWP/NCTE very tired, and a bit sad, although not for the normal reasons of leaving friends and colleagues behind for another year. This time, sadly, I think that I have finally said “good bye” to the NWP as I have known it, and I am not sure what my future holds. No matter what, I will return to NCTE in future years to share my knowledge and experience, learn from my colleagues, and renew our faith in teaching writing.
Tomorrow, I will be speaking with Danielle DeVoss and Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, co-authors of Because Digital Writing Matters, at the first ever WIDE-EMU Un-Conference.
For my chunk of the plenary address, I will be presenting: Teach Digital Writing: Five Paradigm Shifts for K-12 Education My hope is that by using AuthorStream here to present both the slides and a recorded narration of my talk, I will be able to participate in the backchannel that is happening during the actual plenary address time. We’ll see how that goes…
My thanks to Vidushi Kanwar of AuthorStream who has offered a promo code for those of you who might want to try out the “Pro” version of AuthorStream with a 20% discount: DIS20
Over the past few weeks, I have been fortunate enough to teach in MSU’s MA in Ed Tech program here in Rouen, France. With the inspiration of Leigh Graves Wolf and Punya Mishra, one of the major foci of the program is on creativity. As I think about how to be more creative in teaching my own pre-service methods courses and leading professional development, this summer has been very helpful for me, allowing me enough flexibility to explore new ideas while also teaching about broad themes in education, as well as educational technology. To that end, we have been inviting the teachers to do “quickfire” types of activities each day, and I wanted to share some of my thinking on some of the creative works that I have developed in the past few weeks alongside my colleagues — and how they can be connected to digital writing — beginning with one that Punya led yesterday.
Multiplicity Photo
Troy's Multiplicity Image (7-20-11)
Yesterday, Punya led us in a conversation about “tensions” in education, and we had to represent our tension through a multiplicity photo. Using my iPhone (solo, so I had to actually record this as a video and take screen shots from the footage), Pixlr, this tutorial, and help from colleagues in class, I was able to produce and submit the photo above. Don’t ask me which tension I was trying to represent exactly, as I am not really sure myself; my composing process got too focsued on the the outcome and the tech, and I really forgot what it was I was supposed to “say.”
What I do know is that it took me a great deal of thinking to do this quickfire because A) I did it alone and we were supposed to have a partner to take the photos, B) I got a late start, and C) even though Punya said we could repurpose a tool like PPT to blend photos together, I knew that I wanted to do something with an image-editing tool (once Photoshop wouldn’t work for me, I switched to Pixlr).
More importantly, I was learning with my students. I normally talk about the fact that I am only one step ahead, and helping them figure things out. But, because I am one step ahead, I look like a tech genius. In this case, I was walking right next to my colleagues, or even a step behind. I had to raise my hand when Punya asked us who wanted a tutorial and, after figuring it out, immediately had to explain the concepts of the layering, erasing, and blending to another colleague, leading her through the process.
This put me in the role of the learner, and only a slightly more knowledgable other. It was good to feel uncomfortable with a technology and process. This reminds me that when I am talking about digital writing tools, no matter how common they are to me, they can still seem completely strange someone who has never used them. Moreover, describing what we did as a composing process is critical, because it helps me frame the task in terms of purpose and audience.
Ignite Presentation
[iframe_loader src=”http://present.me/embed/625/350/1253-maety2-authentic-use-presentation” height=”375″ width=”640″ click_words=”Go to Present.me to view” click_url=”http://present.me/embed/625/350/1253-maety2-authentic-use-presentation” ]
Inspired by the idea of an Ignite-style presentation, in particular this one by Chris Lehmann, Greg and I wanted students to summarize the major problems and possible solutions related to technology integration in education. We also wanted our students to be concise and collaborate. We wanted them to develop an “Authentic Use Policy” for themselves and their colleagues. Knowing that Present.me would be the final tool that we used to share our work and record the five-minute presentation, we knew we needed to have slides in a PPT compatible format. Also, people needed to collaborate. Fast.
So, we went with Google Docs. And, while it didn’t allow us all the flexibility in terms of design, it did work as a collaborative composing space. I recorded the entire 30 minutes or so of the slidedeck coming together using Camtasia, and here is a quick clip of the few minutes that I was working on my slides. Watching what I am doing (playing with fonts, finding a CC licensed image, organizing slides) and what is going on in the background with other partners’ sets of slides shows us a quick glimpse into the collaborative composing process. We had talked about slide design and looked at some resources from Robin Williams’ Non-Designers Design principles, and that helped some of us guide our work.
This collaborative, quick process is one that many of the teachers said could be adapted to their classroom. Moreover, the slides contain information that could be adapted for future PD that they might lead. While it was fast, it captured a semester’s worth of learning, and brought all our voices into the process, both in terms of design and implementation.
[iframe_loader src=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnOqF-pKpPA” height=”550″ width=”510″ click_words=”Go to YouTube to view” click_url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnOqF-pKpPA” ]
Stop Motion Video
[iframe_loader src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/5KjsG_467do” height=”550″ width=”510″ click_words=”Go to YouTube to view” click_url=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/5KjsG_467do” ]
Punya has been exploring stop motion with his own children for a number of years, and I have also been inspired by the work of Kevin Hodgson, and I wanted to find a genuine opportunity to try it out with my own. After watching a series of videos that our MAET students created in response to a prompt about creativity, my own children were quite inspired. Lexi, Beau, and I took my iPhone, and some bowling pins that they had been playing with outside, and began to craft a story. Using a lawn chair to steady my camera, we shot dozens of pictures while, at the same time, trying to think about a good story to tell along the way.
They quickly figured out that the one yellow pin should be excluded in some way, and had to figure out how to animate that. They worked together to hold the yellow pin off screen, having her “peek” back in as the bowling ball moved forward to knock down the other pins. At first, we ended the picture taking with the yellow pin standing in the middle, triumphant. But, they were not happy with that ending, as they didn’t feel like the story was really “over.” So, we brainstormed other options. One of them remembered that grandma had just thrown away a red twist tie, and we fashioned that into a smile to put on the yellow pin. After importing those shots, choosing a song, putting in the sound effect, and testing it out on an audience of siblings, we knew that we had created a good story.
While my kids did not “write” in the traditional sense, spending time putting words on paper (or screen), we were clearly engaged in a storytelling process. Also, the fact that they had to think about the story in such small, frame-by-frame increments led them to carefully consider what each pin would be doing. Finally, even though Lexi’s feet were accidentally included in one key shot (that we didn’t want to shoot again because we couldn’t get all the pins back in the exact place), they were able to creatively solve that dilemma by putting a note in the credits.
This has been a fun summer, both in terms of teaching and trying out new digital writing approaches with my kids.
We have quite a crew of NWP colleagues here at EduCon 2.3 in Philadelphia this weekend, too many to list right now. As we begin our conversations this morning, for instance, I am in a room with Chrsitina Cantrill (NWP), Meeno Rami (PhilWP), Paul Allison (NYCWP), Chad Sansing (CVWP), Cindy Minnich (CAWP) and probably even more colleagues who I have to meet yet. As I sat down this morning for the presentation, I met Shelley Krause (@butwait), who I had been conversing with about digital literacy via Twitter when at the NWP Resource Development Retreat a few weeks ago. EduCon’s theme this year is “innovation,” and the ideas and connections so far this morning remind me of how creating an environment, a space (both physical and virtual) is so important to creating opportunities for innovation. And, the fact that all the sessions are being streamed, tweeted (#Educon), GoogleDoc’ed, blogged, wikied, or whatever, it is truly an opportunity to help us innovate.
So, speaking of innovating, I know that webcasting isn’t really an innovation (in the sense that people have been doing it for years). But, for me, trying to do a live presentation and a webcast at the same time is something that I haven’t done yet. Also, our local site (Chippewa River Writing Project) and state network (National Writing Projects of Michigan) will be hosting a month-long online book study for Because Digital Writing Matters beginning later this week. So, as a kick off, Sara and I are going to give webcasting for BDWM a try this afternoon when Christina Cantrill and I present at EduCon in Philadelphia from 2:30 to 4:00 EST. You should be able to watch live on EduCon’s site, but we hope that you are able to join us in the webinar to by clicking on this link, launching Wimba, and joining as a participant:
This is a new experience for Sara and me, even as techies, and we hope that we are able to get you as our NWP colleagues to join in the conversation. So, enjoy all the conversations coming out of EduCon this weekend, and we hope that you can join in our webinar, too.
So, I just finished hosting the lightening round of Tweeting that is know as #engchat (wiki link).
I sat down sat down at Panera with my bread bowl at about 6:45, thinking that I would have time to eat and follow a casual conversation. An hour later, there were so many great ideas that emerged that I barely lifted my fingers from the keyboard, let alone my spoon. That said, I just want to catch a few of these ideas, and a few bites of my cold soup, before the restaurant closes!
Even in a world of hyper-connected English teachers, we are still asking the right questions, both about teaching and technology. About access, both to the net and the tools. About teaching, both the content and the process. About assessment, both how and why. I really appreciated the questions that people asked, especially how they forced me to keep coming back to the writing and the writer, not just talk about tools.
No matter how little or how much access we (and our students) have, we need to continue advocating for more. Milton Chen in Education Nation talks about how 1:1 access is a digital civil right, and this conversation on #engchat tonight reminds me of that. Both the chat itself (the skills and processes that I needed to engage in a twitter-based chat with colleagues is both a mental and technical challenge, not to mention how to stay focused) as well as the topics that it raises (when, for instance, do we want students to attend to an online chat as compared to a face-to-face one?) remind me of how incredibly complex this thing called “digital writing” really is. It is both immediate and archived. It is both multilayered/multithreaded/multimodal, yet intently personal and focused. It can enrich our minds and offer us alternatives, or it can drive us to distraction. When and how do we teach digital writing so that it can be useful and productive?
There are incredible possibilities. One thread of the conversation spun off into the possibilities of gaming and how one teacher, Carl, uses Scratch with his middle school students. Showing the potential for interactive media as a space for storytelling (even if it is not “gaming” in the sense of programming and designing a full narrative with complex options), this example shows the ways in which a student can work to think through the process of writing in a different form. At one point, someone in the #engchat asked something similar to “what isn’t writing then?” and I think that it raises a good point. Whether spoken, printed, or otherwise designed with media, I think that “writing” is intentional. It involves an act of planning, revising, and producing. This Scratch example, to me, is clearly writing.
Those are some brief, initial reflections. I am so thankful for having had the chance to lead the #engchat session tonight, as it gets my new year and new semester off to a good start, helping me rethink what it is that I hope to accomplish in my teaching, research, and writing in the coming months.
For two years in a row, Sara Kajder, Bud Hunt, and I have presented Three Reports from Cyberspace. We plan to submit for NCTE 2011, so with any luck we will get to work together again and share in a wonderful conversation before, during, and after the conference. For the moment, I want to focus on that “after” part from this year’s conversation, one that began first in an open Google Doc that generated some initial conversation, led to a Google Moderator forum that we used on the day of the presentation, and now takes us back to the wiki for planning next year’s session. Bud has been posting some videos from our Orlando engagement, the first featuring Sara talking about assessment, and promises more to come.
So, on new year’s eve, I take my time to pause and look back at what we said, what our colleagues said, and what my agenda needs to be for 2011. To begin, a few quotes from that open Google Doc, loosely organized into the categories we discussed at NCTE — teaching, infrastructure, and assessment:
Infrastructure:
Suddenly, though, for the first time, I really worry about approaching the point where the state of the equipment gets in the way of the learning. I’m not there yet. I can just see some inklings of this problem on the horizon, and the fact is: my school doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on equipment. ~ Kevin Hodgson, William E. Norris Elementary School, MA
The great thing is that my district purchased interactive white boards for each teacher in my school, a new computer lab for my school, and netbooks for each kid in 5th-8th grade in the district. They have also installed wi-fi in each building in the district. The not-so-great thing is that none of these things are functional. It is mid-November. The kids haven’t seen the netbooks, the white boards are not yet interactive, and the computer lab tables are empty. ~ Angela Knight
The subject of all things tech at my school is a sore one. We have 3 computer labs (2 of which are used for classes) and a mobile lab. Our free lab and library computers are pathetically slow. (We’re talking computers with places for the square 3×5 disks.) The mobile lab is better, but they’re not maintained as well as they need to be so many of our lap tops aren’t functional. ~ April Estep
My report from cyberspace is bleak. Two years ago I had a Writing lab to use with my students on a daily basis. Students could research on the internet, compose papers at the keyboard and do various online activities I selected for them to do. Today I need to share that same lab, so my 140 students need to share with 280 others. ~ Joanne Wisniewski
I’m at a 1:1 tablet school, so access is excellent. We’re in our second year of all the Middle School kids having their own blogs. Teacher comfort level with them is increasing, and while the new sixth graders take a bit of time to acclimate, they’re pretty much good to go by the second trimester. I occasionally feel guilty that we’re not doing more, pushing harder, since we’ve got the technology available. The good thing is that the tech feels like who we are at this point, so we’re not just pulling out shiny things. ~ Meredith Stewart, Cary Academy
In my local district, many teachers and parents are feeling upset because, in the same year, (a) the district had parents buy school supplies like paper, crayons, etc. instead of the school providing it all, (b) the district put iPads in all the 1st grade classrooms. Not from the same pot of money, but there’s a general feeling that if strapped for cash you should buy paper and crayons first, then iPads. ~ Anne Whitney
I use lots of technology in my classroom, and my kids also use technology frequently. One of the biggest obstacles to participating in authentic tech use in the classroom are the barriers erected by the district to protect students. Bandwidth is a huge issue, with our upgrade, and the entire system going to a universal login (any building, you can access your documents). This sounds like a good idea, but has slowed things down too much. ~ Freyja Bergthorson
Teaching:
(With an iPad initiative starting next year)… “This will be incredible for kids, but will take a lot of energy. Will I be able to keep up? I’ve never felt this unconfident before.” ~ Sandy Hayes, Becker Middle School, MN
First step: learning about the existing knowledge, skills and attitudes that support or inhibit people’s interest in exploring digital media tools for composition. Second step: creating simple collaborative on-ramp activities that help teachers experience success quickly to build confidence. Third step: introducing key concepts that help them connect mass media, popular culture and digital technology to their existing instructional priorities. Eventually, teachers will design, implement and assess their own projects which will be shared online. ~ Renee Hobbs, Temple University, Philadelphia
I got a Smart Board and LCD projector installed this year, so I’m enjoying that – but I don’t feel like I’m using the Smart Board as much as I should be. How are English teachers using Smart Boards in an interactive way? ~ Jennifer Sekella
For schools with International Baccalaureate programs, in the US and around the world, cyberspace is the most powerful and compelling place ever for their students. They are in the process of activating the largest social learning network in the world, with privacy and safety features and multiple security levels.
Assessment
I am scared that very few teachers that I know really use technology. This is just not good for students! We are all so obsessed with raising test scores, there is no demand at all. Tech is used for Read 180, SRI tests, but not for exploring, researching, creating. That’s a problem. ~ Teresa Ilgunas, Lennox Middle School, CA
And, some active verbs that we generated from the session at NCTE that indicate thoughts about what we can do in our classrooms, schools, districts, and communities:
Risk
Share
Advocate
Push
Model
Motivate
Try
Fail
Do
Fail better
Fail big, fail better
Play
Experience
Have fun
Implement
Change
Experiment
Question authority
Engage
Revisit
Reflect
Revise
Think
Entice
Archive
Yodel
Produce
Synthesize
Craft
Scrap
Celebrate
Learn
Seduce
Use what we have
Dump the “buts”
So, where does this leave me at in my thinking about our state of “educational cyberspace” this year?
First, I would suggest that we are at the “tipping point” for mobile/1:1 computing and, as educators, we should advocate for nothing less in our classrooms, especially given the web-based tools that we can ask students to use, from office suites to photo, audio, and video editing. Given the reports from above, and what I know about the digital divide that still exists in our schools and communities, I know that there are no silver bullets. Yet, the fact that mobile devices now cost about the same, or less, than textbooks and that we can ask students to live an academic life fully online, there really are no excuses for not moving in this direction. This will take a great deal of work in teacher education and professional development, no doubt, but the fact is that we should start with the assumption that students could and should have 1:1 access, and begin to teach teachers how to work that way.
Second, in terms of where I am going in my own thinking and work for the new year, I want to make sure that we continue talking about digital writing, not just tools. I am thinking about this in all of my presentations and teaching, making conversations about writing as explicit as possible, even when we are caught up in learning the tools. For instance, I will often pause and ask teachers to think about the actions they have performed when they have engaged in a task like composing a writer’s profile or collaborating on Google Docs. We talk about the writing process, the 21st century literacies they used, the common core standards that the task addresses. We need to continue to make the conversations about teaching and learning, no matter how the devices change.
Finally, I hope to continue this conversation with all of you this year, beginning next Monday night, January 3rd, on #engchat. The topic, “What’s happening in your digital writing workshop?” will, I hope, give us a chance to talk about the many examples of good work that teachers and students are engaged in. As we prepare for the conversation, I offer one last report from cyberspace this year… this one from Joel Malley, an NWP teacher, that he created as a part of his testimonial to Congress last fall. I hope that his video offers us some points to consider as we think about the obstacles and opportunities that face us in cyberspace in 2011. I recognize that we aren’t all able to teach in situations similar to Malley’s, but I do think that his take on teaching writing in a digital make for good points to consider as we continue the conversation.
Last year at NCTE, we began a conversation, Three Reports from Cyberspace. We thank Jeff Golub and Jim Strickland for organizing the session, and Helen Wierenga for being our responder. And, we thank all of you, because what happened during the session was, quite simply, amazing.
Bud, Troy, and the entire audience were engaged in a continual conversation that moved from notes appearing on the screen, to questions from the audience, back to one of one of them answering on stage, and out to the wider world through Twitter and Etherpad. Sara’s thinking was with us in the room, even though she wasn’t physically present. Over the course of the hour, we shared a number of examples from our own teaching and research that helped illuminate issues related to filtering, curriculum, assessment, and teaching in digital spaces. We were, in short, completely engaged in the conversation, in “multitasking” at its best. And that brings us to where we are now, preparing to offer more reports from cyberspace.
So, why write about that here, three weeks from the next session/conversation?
We do so as an invitation.
A conference session is a waypoint, a time and place to check in on where we’ve been, but more important, where we’re going. So before we get to that waypoint, let’s take a moment to share our own reports from cyberspace as a way of starting this conversation. Here is a link to an open Google Doc where we’ve left space for you to jot some thoughts as we move into our time together. If you can join us for the session at NCTE, great. But if not, and you’d still like to report or check in, feel free to do so.
Here are some prompts that will take us into our session. Help yourself to whichever one(s) will be the most useful in your thinking and reporting:
What’s the state of your educational cyberspace at this moment in November 2010? What’s good? What’s scary? What’s working? What’s not?
What needs doing? Fixing? Raising up?
Where are you focusing your attention?
Where are we going with all of this Internet stuff? What’s new? What’s good?
Finally, what do you hope to leave our session with? What’s next? So what?
If the reporting ends at the session, then we’ve failed. Conferences are notorious spaces, in that we all get together and get excited, but then the momentum seems to die. Help us figure out where to go and what to do next. In a time of increased standards and assessments, when everyone is an expert on matters of teaching and learning, and reading and writing, we need to tell our stories. It’s never been more important to be thoughtful out loud.
Troy Hicks, Bud Hunt, and Sara Kajder
PS – If you can’t make the session, but will be at NCTE, you’ll have another chance to join us immediately after this session at the Middle Level Get Together. We’d love to see you, and hear your report(s), wherever you’ll choose to join us.
As I whittle away some time between flights on my way to visit colleagues at the Boise State Writing Project this weekend, I finally have a few moments to capture some thoughts about my experience leading the book club conversation on the English Companion Ning during the month of September. Overall, I want to start by saying that it was a positive experience, and that I was energized by the participation and enthusiasm of the 100+ members who joined in the conversation. So, my comments below don’t reflect negatively on them… it is more of a musing about what it means to be a digital writer and digital teacher, even when technology doesn’t cooperate. With the smart, collegial nudge from Kevin, I offer some thoughts on what I had hoped to do over the course of that book club discussion, as well as what really happened.
Week One: (Mis)Adventures with a Webinar In the first week of the discussion, we got off to a wonderful start with some pre-discussion threads that led nicely into a conversation about how we are using digital writing in our classrooms this fall. There were many thoughtful conversations that happened on the forum (which I hope to reflect on in more detail in another post), and I wanted to have an opportunity to more directly address some of the questions that were emerging. So, I signed up to host an Elluminate session through LearnCentral. I thought I had gone through the steps necessary to have a full session, not the kind that was limited to only three participants. I broadcast the URL on the ECNing and on Twitter, and anxiously awaited the opportunity to chat with people in the webinar.
What happened, unfortunately, was that I had signed up to host only a three person “room” with the free version of Elluminate and, once I had logged in, only two others were able to join me. Notes appeared on the ECNing and via Twitter, and I quickly had to change gears and launch a chat in an alternative space, a Meebo chat room. That, too, gave me difficulties as I had to login (after not using Meebo for almost two years) and finding a stable URL for the chat room to share with people. Eventually, we were able to make it in, and about 15 people were in the conversation at one point.
As with all things tech, I realized again that I needed to have a back up plan for when something didn’t work the way that I wanted. My pedagogical goals were still accomplished, but only after dropping five and punting, which was frustrating. It reminds me that I (and all teachers, for that matter) need to have a certain level of TPACK in order to make plans, and contingency plans, on the spur of the moment. Fortunately, people were able to follow me to Meebo, although I am not sure how many. They had to have a certain level of experience to know that it was a problem with Elluminate, not them, and then to navigate their way to Meebo based on my updates. That takes some initiative and skill, which is tough to coach when I, as a teacher, was not able to really talk with them. While I was hoping for one experience, I had to settle for another, yet still held tight to my purposes (talking about the issues raised in the forum through an interactive chat). From this, I am reminded that we can meet our pedagogical goals using a variety of technologies, yet both teacher and learner need to have some level of expertise with navigating online spaces and be highly motivated to participate.
Week Two: A Voice(less) Thread The second week, I wanted to create an interactive, multimedia experience through which we could all contribute to a conversation about a piece of student work. Voice Thread seemed to be the logical choice for this. So, I created a Voice Thread about Looking at Student’s Digital Work, and posted it to the ECNing forum with some discussion points for people to respond to. I welcomed comments on the forum, as well as on the Voice Thread itself, where people could leave voice, video, or text comments right there. I sent out the email to the book discussion group, and waited for replies. Kevin replied quickly to let me know that I had to adjust the settings on the Voice Thread to make it public (a point I will come back to in a moment).
By the middle of the week, there were only a few replies, and one person emailed me to say that this was a big jump for most people — moving from a text-based discussion thread on the ECNing to a Voice Thread — and that they may not have know what to do, both in the practical and technical sense. While many people still seemed comfortable with the process of reading and replying to discussion threads on the ECNing, suggesting/encouraging alternative discussion formats without the opportunity for explicit coaching and mentoring stifled the conversation. Also, it could just be that people got busy with back-to-school work, but I seem to think based on the initial technical difficulties of not being able to post, combined with the hesitation that many people may have had about moving their conversation to a Voice Thread, I inadvertently made a pedagogical move that, instead of opening up conversation, unfortunately shut it down.
As I continue to think about how and why I would invite fellow teachers and students into a Voice Thread, I think back to our brief experience using that tool in the CRWP summer institute and to this conversation on the ECNing. I am still not exactly sure why the technical problems with Voice Thread occurred in the manner that they did, but I do know that, again, I had tried to make a technological move that didn’t work with the pedagogical goal I had in mind. This time, I failed to drop five and punt. I just turned the ball over on downs, and let the week’s discussion remain stagnant, both on the Voice Thread and the ECNing. In a classroom situation, I couldn’t have let that happen, but I was able to in this case given the context of the situation. Not a teaching move that I am proud of, and it makes me think about how I might recover from such a situation in the future, both in face-to-face and online teaching. I’m still thinking.
Week 3: A (Semi) Failed Attempt to Teach Both F2F and Online Knowing that I would be delivering an opening session at the Eastern Michigan Writing Project‘s “Writing Beyond Expectations” conference at the end of my third week of leading the book club, I had thoughts that I would create a video stream of the session for others to join into the conversation. Having cleared it with colleagues at EMWP and knowing that I would have a wifi connection that would handle the stream, I sent out a note to the ECNing and on Twitter to join in the next morning. As luck would have it, this would be strike three.
As soon as I connected to UStream and had a signal, I sent out the tweet. I tested the broadcast in another browser and it all looked good. As the time to begin the presentation neared, however, UStream lost connection to the server. I don’t know exactly why this happened — was it a UStream error, a wifi error, or user error? It doesn’t matter because, again, the technology that I had hoped to use failed me. This time, I had no backup, although I am sure that I could have tried to get another service to connect and stream if I had wanted to. But, I had no time since the presentation was starting with the audience in front of me waiting.
Also, Sara and I had hoped to have a back channel conversation occurring on a Google Doc, but because of our set up in the room (two computers running, with one unable to connect to the wifi), and the fact that many participants couldn’t connect either, I was stymied. Luckily, I was able to jump from one computer to the other and deliver my Prezi, with the few people who were able to get on the Google Doc adding some ideas. In my evaluations, many people expressed frustration with the pace of my presentation and the fact that they couldn’t get online. I know I was moving at a speed that assumed most people were online, but I wasn’t able (or, at the very least, didn’t take the time to) confirm that this was the case. Because of this, people in the room weren’t able to engage in the ways that I had hoped they would, and there certainly was no external audience either. Again, the technology didn’t work in the way that I wanted, and while we were able to recover and still have a good presentation overall, I agree with some of the comments from participants that what I did was not immediately applicable to their classrooms because, well, it just isn’t practical to fumble so much during our limited class time.
As the presentation continued and I was asked smart, hard-hitting questions about how and why we should continue to use technology when, not only in my own presentation but also in the schools in which we work we can’t rely on the technology to do what we want or need it to do, I continued to answer with my belief that we are still able to use technology now in more flexible and robust ways than we were able just a few years ago. I still believe this, and I think that technology can allow us to write beyond expectations, as I shared in an earlier blog post. Yet, these are important questions when, for the third time in three weeks, the technology guru was stymied. I began to wonder about my own stance related to technology use and I shared my frustration on Twitter. And, as I noted before, Kevin encouraged me to write and think about this experience, and here I am.
Closing Thoughts As much as I want to say to say that I have clearer answers about why and how we should use technology to teach writing after this experience, I simply don’t. What I do know, however, and have reaffirmed through this experience, is that online and face-to-face networks of teachers who work together have the potential to make substantive changes to their teaching practices. n particular, by working together to use technologies in new ways, we can see what works, when it works, and why it doesn’t work. I am glad that I shared these “failures” in front of my colleagues because, as I noted above, it shows that even the “tech guru” doesn’t even have all the answers. Yet, I keep asking the questions and trying things out. That’s the philosophical response.
Here is the more practical response, for those who are teaching other teachers about digital writing, as well as for those of us who want to integrate digital writing into our own classrooms. When introducing a new technology/digital writing practice into our teaching, make sure that you are building on an established practice, and make sure that you have a back up plan. For instance, I wanted people in the session to be able to contribute to a collaborative Google Doc during the presentation. Many were not able to, and I simply asked them to write down (on paper) words and phrases in my talk that sparked other ideas for them. This led to a turn-and-talk moment, and we were able to move forward from there. When Elluminate didn’t work, and we couldn’t literally talk through our ideas in that forum, we switched to a chat room which, while clunky, still worked.
I wish that I had a particular plan to share with you for how to use all different kinds of technology for all different situations (when, for instance a wiki is better than a Google Doc, or which program you “should” use for digital storytelling). Yet, what this experience leading the discussion on the ECNing, and the associated failures that I had with it, remind me of is the fact that we really can’t have a strict blueprint. This is the reason that we have to think about our teaching with technology from a broader perspective, thinking about how to build our own TPACK through our own personal exploration, play, and failure. I am thankful that I continue to have opportunities to read, write, and teach about digital writing in a variety of contexts, and to learn from my mistakes.
So, I end this post where I began it… with the energy and enthusiasm of those teaching in their own digital writing workshops. At the end of September, Joel Malley represented the NWP on Capitol Hill, and shared this video about his digital writing workshop. I appreciate what he is doing with and for his students, and for all of us, in providing this vision of what it can mean to teach digital writing and it reminds me that, at the end of the day, we are all still learning.
Tomorrow, I have the privilege of keynoting the Eastern Michigan Writing Project’s fall conference, “Writing Beyond Expectations.” I have been giving a great deal of thought to the event, and as both a teacher educator and writing project director, have been trying to figure out how to frame my talk in light of the conference theme. Content standards and expectations, of course, come to mind when I first consider this theme, yet I have been thinking more and more about the expectations, both tacit and explicit, that we have of ourselves as teachers of writing and, equally important, that we have of our students. So, with that in mind, I am going to think through this idea of “writing beyond expectations,” especially in light of digital writing, through these three lenses: our content, our students, and ourselves.
Writing beyond content expectations
As we consider the many pressures exerted on us from state and now national content expectations, certainly we could feel angry, frustrated, confused, or downright indignant about the fact that, without much input from educators, we have had yet another set of standards put upon us and our students. And, while political opinions on this abound, I want to think for a moment about how we can use the new core standards as a place to begin, a place from which we can write beyond the expectations. In particular, I am interested in exploring how the three genres represented in the standards– argumentative, informative, and narrative — can be enhanced by digital writing.
Argumentative expectations include clear statements of one’s claim, evidence of support, and acknowledgment of counterarguments, and digital writing tools can provide opportunities for students to present their work in this mode through a variety of media. For instance, we can invite students to create podcasts in which they perform a dialogue — perhaps scripted, perhaps not — where they present their side of an argument and engage in conversation with someone holding the opposite view. We can invite them to post public service announcement videos on YouTube or Viddler, then annotate those videos with comments about effectiveness of the rhetorical strategies the writers have used. We can also invite students to create VoiceThreads around a particular topic, or engage in conversation through a social network or blog.
For informative writing, students are expected to examine a topic and support it with relevant details, including domain specific vocabulary. We can invite them to create hypertexts — via blogs, wikis, or websites — where they divide up their information into sub-pages, thinking about about when and where to insert hyperlinks to both connect their own pages and link to others. In those pages, they can think about how additional audio, video, and images can be used to provide support for the information they are trying to present. Also, we can teach them how to research with RSS and advanced search, as well as how to cite their sources with social bookmarking and online citation tools.
Narrative expectations also provide us with opportunities to explore digital possibilities, including ones to develop dialogue, characters, setting, and the arc of a story by blending words, both spoken and written, with images, music, and sound effects. Modeling a narrative in a manner similar to stories that one might hear on This American Life would be one option to pursue if using podcasting. Also, digital storytelling provides students ways to create multimedia videos that build from the mode of memoir, where the whole story really becomes more than simply the sum of its media parts. Other narrative examples that I have seen include a choose your own adventure story that has grown organically on a wiki, or the use of tweets or status updates that tell a story.
All of this is just to say that when we invite students to write beyond content expectations — considering the different ways in which we can represent argumentative, informational, and narrative modes through different media — we will give them opportunities to express themselves in different ways, always considering the audiences and purpose for their writing. Which leads next to helping students as they learn to write beyond themselves.
(Students) Writing beyond themselves
When we ask students to write, we certainly want them to meet our academic standards, yet we also know that they are trying to learn how to be writers and, perhaps even more importantly, reply to the writing of others. In this sense, we need to expect that students will write beyond themselves. By this, I do not mean that students will necessarily try to write more lengthy, complex pieces than what they are ready for, although that can sometimes present them with welcome challenges. Instead, what I suggest here is that students write beyond themselves first by focusing on external audiences and purposes and, second, by learning how to respond to others, especially through digital means.
First, I believe that students should write for external audiences, as all teachers of a writing workshop approach have advocated for over the past few decades. That said, the internet makes these external audiences much easier to communicate with, although it is not enough simply to have students post to a blog and call it good. Cultivating a community of digital writers is a task that teachers need to take seriously, which leads to the second point. A digital writer needs to be both a writer and a responder. When trying to learn about their audience, students should take the opportunity to get to know them by reading what they have written and then engaging in response. Fan fiction communities, where veteran writers mentor newer writers are a great example of this. Moreover, it is nearly as easy to respond to a digital text through talk as it is through type. Digital writing happens, in large part, due to the fact that it occurs in a network (or across networks), and expecting that students will write — and respond — beyond themselves is of critical importance for them as they become digital writers.
Writing beyond ourselves
In this sense, we want to build on our long-held belief that teachers should be writers, and expand our understanding of who a teacher as writer actually is. What does it mean for us, as teachers, to be writers? To be digital writers? Teachers who write make better teachers of writing and, in turn, teachers who are digital writers make better teachers of digital writing. Yet, if digital writing is scary in and of itself, then teaching digital writing is probably even more of a frightful leap for most of us. Not only because we feel that we want to be “in charge” of our classroom or that we want to look nothing less than knowledgeable in front of our students, but because understanding of what digital writing is, and what it can do, is limited both by our own experiences as writers, as well as the resources present in our schools and classrooms.
In the past few years, and even in an online conversation I have facilitated this month, I have heard nearly every reason why we shouldn’t teach digital writing — from issues related to the digital divide to the lack of time we have to cram yet another thing into our curriculum to concerns about filtering and our inability to get to websites and install programs on our computers. I hear, and understand, these concerns, yet my response now — even more so than what I would have been comfortable saying just a few short years ago — is that we need simply to move forward. Even two years ago, I would have had trouble making the claim that students could have access to a word processor outside of school and be able to save their work whether they are at school, at home, at the library, or on their mobile phone. But, now, nearly all of them can. In short, we are at a point were access is, quite nearly, ubiquitous when we use cloud computing applications, and I don’t think that we have any excuse anymore for not engaging students in digital writing.
Also, we need to ask ourselves, “What does it mean to be a writer in a digital age?” When and how do we use images, sounds, and music to support our arguments, descriptions, and stories? When do we post to a blog as compared to a wiki? Why would we want to use either, or would we want to use something else instead? In what ways can we think about our own writing practices — from emailing and texting, to writing letters and lesson plans — and how we use digital tools in a variety of ways to draft, revise, and publish our work?
As we think about our content, our students, and ourselves, we need to learn to write beyond our own expectations. We need to think about the ways that we ask our students to be digital writers by being digital writers ourselves. As we turn our attention to your classrooms throughout the rest of this conference, I invite you to think about how we can write beyond expectations as we compose our classrooms, and craft our digital writing workshops, both today and as technologies, students, and our culture continues to change.
For two years in a row, Sara Kajder, Bud Hunt, and I have presented