Like a new mom: excited but totally freaked out

After reading Beach's article about the wonderful uses of digital writing in the classroom, I am all fired up about the idea. Given the prevalence of digital media in today's culture, it is not only essential but also exciting that students learn how to navigate Web 2.0 applications. The idea of using blogs in the classroom as an alternative to the traditional journal notebook is very exciting. Thinking about my own uses of blogs, I put much more thought into pictures, titles, and audience than I ever would with a handwritten text that would only be read by myself and one or two other people. Many students are already using Facebook or MySpace, it seems like a great idea to hone those skills and interests. There are many students who will be extremely fired up about using blogs, wikis, and self-made websites to communicate with the teacher, class, and wider audience.

BUT...

My excitement is riddled with confusion, fear, and apprehension: like a new mom. I have so many hopes and dreams for using digital writing in my classroom, but I worry about the downsides of it. The dangers of online communication are frequently highlighted in the news, and I worry about letting my students put themselves out there under my direction. I worry that they will reveal too much about themselves--or too little because they are also worried about being metaphorically naked on the Internet. I worry that the "technology divide" will be even greater among students who do and those who do not have access to the Internet. My hope is that this would be the kind of thing that would close the gap, since students who might not otherwise explore Web 2.0 applications would necessarily do so, thus improving their knowledge, comfort level, and skills. However, I also recognize that some students will feel intimidated by the technology. I do not want to lose them. I hope that some students will get so excited about digital writing that they create their own blogs or wikis for personal use, but I worry that some of them will go too far, using it inappropriately or irresponsibly. I worry that if students do this, the literal or emotional blame will be placed on me. I worry that parents will be freaked out by the idea of their students having their own website. I worry that I will dig too large of a hole for myself and not be able to keep up with the students' online work.

Whew!

Resource Link: Many of us explored www.teachertube.com last semester for our fantastic Technology for Teaching & Learning class, but I'm not sure how many of us looked at the site for how we might actually use it. The Writing Channel within this site provides videos and other resources for incorporating writing--including digital writing--in your classroom.

Squirrels in the Springtime

"...our observations of the grading phenomenon in writing classes echo those of researcher Paul Diederich, who says that the classes he visits are 'fantastically over-evaluated,' with teachers 'piling [grades] up like squirrels gathering nuts.'" (page 182)

~Dornan et al. (2003). Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom. Pearson Education Group, Inc.: Boston.

I absolutely love this quote. It evokes so many images in my mind. First, I imagine Kelly Gallagher carrying the boxes and boxes of student journals to his car when he assigned journals. I imagine the teacher at Caribou hanging out with me at 10pm on Friday night while she graded student essays. I imagine us in about two months as we cope with the first inundation of grading student papers/projects. And I imagine the students who toss said papers/projects into their lockers, never to be seen again.

Initially, I disagreed with authors' stance that only a fraction of writing assignments should be graded. Generally, I do not like to write and would be--okay, am--one of those students who do not put any effort into the in-class, on-your-own, not-for-credit writing assignments. So, I was thinking that my students would also slack off on writing assignments if they knew that they were not to be graded. And then the light bulb came on.

It is okay to slack off sometimes! Wait, that doesn't sound quite right, at least not coming from a teacher. Let me try again: We should allow room for students to struggle, relax, or really get fired up about writing. No person can produce consistent, quality work on anything. We all ebb and flow with our output. Looking back, even though I despised the freewriting time during my undergraduate creative writing class, a few of those pieces evolved into a portfolio-worthy product. Not everything was graded and I didn't always put in a lot of effort, and that was okay. That is what the writing process is all about. Alas, my guilt over writing about my irritation with the class during all of those freewrites has subsided.

Now, let's bring this back to my original quote: not everything needs to be graded. We do not need to feel like terrible teachers if the trunks of our cars are not weighted down with student work each and every weekend. While there will be some students (like me) who do not try hard because they know that the writing will not be graded, there will be others (like Paw from the ELL book?) who write more because it is not assessed.

Resource link: This is a lesson plan from http://www.readwritethink.org/ about using a multigenre approach for making personal connections with literature. This seems to be a summation of the concerns addressed last week during our group's presentation as well as the desire to bring in personal connections and reader-response to our assignments. This particular lesson plan focuses on using hypertext--or digital--mediums, but I think that it could be applied to a paper-based project as well. Here it is: http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=782

"Word Drunk"

Have you ever wanted to projectilly vomit up your last bowl of steaming spaghetti after reading an overly superfluous, obnoxiously obtuse and irritatingly descriptive piece of writing? I know that I have. As I was reading about how to teach students to write with more interesting voice and descriptives, I panicked at the thought of another generation overusing adjectives and adverbs. Beauty is simple. Sometimes the most powerful statements/ideas are only a few words long:

• "To be or not to be"


• "Jesus wept."


• I love you.


• Just do it.


• "Let it be"


• Mmmm...good

When Culham adressed on page 144 the dangers of students getting "word drunk" with their word choices, my heart skipped a beat. Alas! Someone who would put an end to this nails-on-a-chalkboard form of writing. Then, I realized the truth. Culham was essentially telling educators to let students do this through trial and error. Ugh. My hopes were shot down. As the chapter went on, my hopes dropped even further by Culham's suggestions. The examples offered in the text were classic cases of overdone description:

The cold is keeping my fingers from typing smoothly [...] The clock doesn't make any noise, but the second hand jerks its way through the minute. ~Culham p. 160

Really? Wouldn't it be more effective to say that your hands are cold and the clock is quiet? I think so. That passage actually goes on for seven lines, but I figured I would spare you.

Culham does offer some interesting good suggestions about teaching the concept of voice. It sounds very trendy to use music to introduce voice, but I think that would be more appropriate for teaching tone. In order to write with an interesting voice, students need learn how to use their language (i.e. word choice--note: these are two separate chapters). By listening to music, students will learn how different musical interpretations can lend different tones to the SAME WORDS in a song. How does this teach students how to use their language to create voice? Anyone? The same goes for using art. I like the idea of using these things in your class, but I do not feel that they are most appropriate for teaching voice.

Resource link: The Philosophy Department at the University of Miami sponsors a "Bad Writing Contest" each year. The nominees are from poorly written scholarly articles:

The Bad Writing Contest attempts to locate the ugliest, most stylistically
awful passage found in a scholarly book or article published in the last few
years. Ordinary journalism, fiction, etc. are not eligible, nor are parodies:
entries must be non-ironic, from actual serious academic journals or books. In a
field where unintended self-parody is so widespread, deliberate send-ups are
hardly necessary.

Passages found on this site could be used to show students that even Ph.D. professors--or especially Ph.D. professors???--can still write poorly. This also highlights the importance of readability and audience.

Ok, so I'm a little bit frazzled

Because I like you all so much, I'll be perfectly honest: I have only read one of the assigned articles so far. When I came home from class tonight, I found out that our phone line--thus our internet connection--is out of commission for a while. The repair guy cannot come until tomorrow night. Ugh. Do they not know that like 70% of my life is lived online?! Nonetheless, I have managed to hack into one of my neighbors unsecured wireless networks. The connection keeps going in and out, so I am going to take advantage of it while I can. I am pretty fired up after reading the Gillespie article, so I shall share my thoughts about that.

I am in one of the groups doing their "book lesson" on the Romano text, which Gillespie references in her article. After spending some time with the Romano book, I really was not too excited about it. I thought that the ideas were great and creative and fun, but I was a little bit bored by it all. Gillespie changed that. Personally, I am not very excited about doing "creative writing" and have put much thought into how I will incorporate or address it in my own classroom. After reading Gillespie, I cannot see how I could ignore it! Even though she basically summarized Romano's ideas, the way she did it really hit me. Her description of the A Single Shard multi-genre project was quite inspiring; I would like to be in her class! I really enjoyed reading what some of the students wrote in their reflections about their projects. The reflections give me hope that students do have intrinsic motivation when given an opportunity to choose the best type of project, writing style, and/or genre for themselves.


This Spring I will be teaching the book Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli; I am really looking forward to incorporating this multi-genre approach while we are working on this text. Stargirl is a novel about a very creative, free-spirited high school student and how she is accepted--or not accepted--by her peers. A multi-genre approach would be great since the character of Stargirl is too unconventional to be truthfully handled in a traditional 5-paragraph essay, or some other prescripted form of writing.

Woohoo! I'm back online! Gee, what prompt service Qwest has for fixing customers' problems: 24 hours. Really, what if that was my only phone line? What if I needed to call 911 but couldn't because they wouldn't come and fix my phone? Could I sue them? Hmmm...if this teaching thing doesn't work out, maybe that's how I'll make my millions. Okay, on with the assignment...

Resource link: Today I observed at my student teaching site and was a little frustrated by their lackluster social issues research papers. They writing 7-paragraph essays; he has given them a handout explaining what each paragraph should be about. Boring. Given this experience as well as Candance's suggestion in her comment, I looked into websites about combining a social issue research paper/project with the multigenre approach. This article, "Exploring the Past through Multigenre Writing" offers practical suggestions for making the traditional research paper more interesting and meaningful.