Two Great Reads

For a while now, I have been waiting for a local article to focus on the benefits of blogging as related to student writing on standardized tests. The easy thing would have been to do it myself, but then again, that just makes too much sense.

A teacher in the middle school I work in, Erica Hartman, (go check her out!!) brought this article from nj.com to my attention through her blog, The itclassroom. In it, Bradley A. Hammer, a professor of writing from Duke University, summarizes why he blogs with his freshman students:

High schools and their curriculums are failing to keep pace with those same advances. They remain focused on "standards," asking such questions as: Do blogs prepare a student to take the new SAT? Does an e-mail message train a student how to write a traditional college-level essay? Clearly, the answer is no.

However, he goes on to say that blogging with an eye towards academic rigor goes a long way towards marrying those elements. This fact is something many of us know already; if you are going to put something out there for the world to see, you'd better have done your research and polished it. His statement strikes at something larger, something more sinister involved with blogging: its negative connotation among some teachers.

To quote Hammer from the article:

In contrast, "standards-driven" high school writing is hindering student interest. Without opportunities for students to publish their writing, they will assess that they write not for meaning, intellectual discovery, communication or understanding but rather in obligatory, outdated, punitive and proce dural ways to obtain grades. Consequently, as students spend their years of education consumed with standardized tests, they learn to write -- and think -- in ways that fail to offer rich and critical contexts for learning.

Teachers seek opportunities for writing to engage and challenge students to think critically throughout the processes of intellectual debate. Writing courses that remain wedded to the genre and methods of the past merely limit students' ability to imagine their work as real. The traditional argumentative essay does not force students to engage critically with complex reasoning "about" an issue but rather merely instructs them on how to argue "for" or "against" it.

Erica, like myself, feels that there is a way to successfully bridge the gap between social networking and the writing associated with that, and successful, critical reading and writing:

Eventhough this article pertains to college writing, I am thinking about how it relates to grades 6-8, especially the mind numbing preparations we do for the GEPA, I'm sorry the ASK8.
Seems to me this is more evidence that each student should create and maintain their own blog.

When we began publishing student writing last year on Writingthecity, we immediately noticed several things happen with them:

• they began to regard audience as driving force behind how much time they spent polishing their writing.
• undercurrents of healthy stress through competition for "reads" began to circulate among the classes.
  
• word of mouth "press" about whose story was good and worth reading, or in more technical terms, critical review.

So what is stopping us? What are our concerns? Because, if it is safety, we've got that one handled. If it's fear that this type of writing won't help come test time, well, that's up to you and how much rigor you supply.

Flickr image credit to Merrick Brown's Photostream

Me, Removed

Have you ever been intimidated by your blog? Strangely, I have stared blankly into my scribefire box over 10 times in the last few days, trying to find something that fits nicely. Call it writer's block, but this is terrible. There is so much going on in my world that is worthy of at least a note, but, alas, it just won't come.

This is meant to be the chisel to break through whatever I am going through. I'll break it down by topic to make it easier on me.

Introducing: Teen Book Sleuth


Two weeks ago, my colleague David Gorecki and I ran the 2nd Annual Sparta Academy of Digital Media, where we take a group of students through the process of creating digital media. We usually break it down into movie making and web creation. With all that I have learned this year via this blog and the various people who I have the pleasure of reading, it was truly a great opportunity to let students explore their interests and learn some great skills. Out of the 16 students that we worked with, only one chose to focus on website creation. That in itself is telling. However, the student that did, we will call her Teen Book Sleuth after the site she created, really blew us away with her ability and interest level. She worked for most of the week using FrontPage, but after talking with her and getting the OK from mom and dad, we set her up with an account at weebly.com. She transferred her content from FrontPage to the weebly site and customized it to include a blog.

To say that we were surprised at her writing ability is an understatement. She is a wonderful writer and and avid reader. Her site is set up as a review of books in the Young Adult category. I can only imagine what she will produce as she moves along in her studies and her reading. Please visit the site and leave a comment on her blog. She is expecting you.

Connective Writing Workshop

I am in the process of putting together resources for a workshop on connective writing on Monday and Tuesday of this week. The wiki is nearly complete, and I will release the address when I finish it up. To that end, I would like to thank Sheryl Nussbaum-Beech, on whose wiki at APBC I have relied on for resources. What I have found in the past is that teachers respond very well to other teachers who have done something successfully. In that light, I have asked some people from the edublogosphere to participate in the workshop via Skype. Already, I have two people who will be skyped in (one on Monday and one on Tuesday). If you are interested, let me know and we will work something out. It would be a great honor to have some of you talk to the staff I work with.

This workshop is a pivotal one for me, as I would really like to use it as a springboard to get a cohort of teachers blogging from out district. As it is now, very few have taken to it. I am not distressed over it, but blogging and connecting to the myriad resources available through blogging will be a key way to move our pedagogy forward here in Sparta. That's a lot of pressure, but I think it's warranted.

The Key Ingredient in a Collaborative Writer

This new post from the people at Zoho has me thinking that they are, more than ever, on to what we might need in a collaborative document editor.


A couple of days ago, George Siemens posted about Coventi Pages and it's unique way of showing edits and comments as a sidebar, which makes for great editing and collaboration. What I like about Zoho's product, first off is the prettiness of Zoho and the whole suite of apps, and now they just announced that their will be a chat feature added to their Zoho Writer. This is a good thing for anyone who has worked with either Zoho or Google Documents.


I could never figure out why Google Spreadsheets had a chat feature, but Docs did not. In my opinion, the chat feature should be a standard on any collaborative editing package out there.


This post also brought up another problem for me when I looked at it in terms of what is available in this area of Web 2.0. As more of my staff are beginning to see the possibilities of lesson design that utilizes Web 2.0, they are not ready to deal with the onslaught of choices. As a tech coordinator, I try to steer them in a direction that I think will minimize confusion, frustration or data loss. That decision often has a lot to do with what is recognizable to the user.


Branding is important. As someone who is actively involved in finding better options for teachers to use to create lessons, integrate technology and design curriculum, this is something I run into all of the time. A brand carries a lot of weight with people, often at the expense of functionality and efficiency. However, where is the line between what the teacher feels comfortable with and what is the more efficient product? This is where apps like Coventi and Zoho might struggle. Schools, like all other businesses, have been the victims of so many fly-by-night technology companies that have sold them something cutting-edge, only to have that bite them in the proverbial arse shortly thereafter. A solid brand like Google, though completely functional and usable in the online writing application genre, will win out among casual users every time because it is a recognizable name that isn't going anywhere. With that comes an illusion of accountability to the user that is yet another feature that draws the user to their product.


So, while Zoho and Coventi's products show promise, and in my opinion contain better features than Google Docs, I will be hard pressed to sell the use of Coventi or Zoho to my staff. That's OK, because I think this is a win-win situation; if we are using these collaborative pieces, that makes me happy.

Photo from Morguefile.

More on "Conversations"

In order to get some of these ideas going a little deeper, I will re-post Clay's comment on "Blogs as Conversations," here:

Clay Burell said...

Patrick, you really do nail the pedagogical affordances that, in my book, only blogging offers to developing student literacy--writing AND reading.

What I'm now experiencing with my own students is this: the idea of being writers is unsettling to them. After 9 years of schooling, they have only written homework and "schooly" writing assignments--have only been students, and never writers.

So they are resistant to this shift. They don't want to learn to be writers, because it's harder. It makes them find their own ideas, instead of hacking out some tired exercise based on ideas that Teacher prescribed to them.

So students have to be "professionally developed" as well as teachers into what the read-write web means for their learning. It's new to them too, and just as uncomfortable.

Which brings me back to your main point: the training I'm pushing on my students now is precisely what you highlight: reading with writing in mind; writing with an audience in mind; conversing with other writers and readers via comments; hyperlinking and connecting.

Some get it faster than others. All need to hear this: we know you've never been a writer, and we know you're a novice. We're forgiving that way. This is a long-term journey you're starting, so start where you are as a writer, and we'll take you as far as we can in the coming years. Trust that you'll grow.

That sort of thing. Enjoyed your post.

This is an observation that I have not heard about too often in my travels. As digital immigrants, we expect that we will have some issues with cognitive dissonance as we enter into blogging-as-practice and pedagogy, but Clay brings up examples from what he is seeing with his students. This is new for them as well, and this is equally as hard for them. By becoming consistent writers through blogging for larger audiences, we are kicking the chair out from under them, so to speak.

Think about the structures we have always placed on the writing process. We still use those structures, only the end piece is shifted dramatically. Audience is the most intriguing factor for us as teachers of writing because of the stress it places on the earlier steps of the writing process. Just by allowing for other students to access your writing openly and without the constraint of a 40 or 80 minute class period, it places new stress (what I would call "good stress") on the writer as he or she develops ideas, formulates syntax, and revises. Eliminating the time constraint that a student's work is open to others really transforms the whole process.

Professional development for students? I like that one, and our teachers will like to hear that as well.