Tech Tools’ new E.R.A. equals engaging, relevant, authentic Writing
The last decade has seen a growing emphasis on the use of technologies to support literacy instruction. Integration strategies for teaching English can help with word fluency and vocabulary development; reading comprehension; learning about literature; and the teaching of writing. Teachers must now think in terms of visual and graphic literacy, however, as well as reading and writing literacy. “In the future, students will not only be expected to exhibit verbal and written fluency in traditional text formats, they will be expected to interpret and produce communication in video and images. The task of teaching all these new skills will be primarily the responsibility of English and language arts teachers” (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 281).
Writing instruction is one of the most time-intensive parts of the English teacher’s job, but the expanding role of tech tools in the classroom does offer new help. “A variety of technology tools and strategies have emerged to spur students’ desire to write, to improve the quality of their written products (e.g., email projects, blogs), and to provide authentic publication sources” (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 271).
Digital concept mapping is one way to overcome students’ reluctance to get started. Kuhn notes that newer perspectives conclude that “motivation resides not within the individual but in the interaction between individual and subject matter” (2007). As a highly interactive pre-writing strategy, using concept mapping software helps students organize their thoughts prior to writing by making colorful and cartoon-like graphics. Brainstorming, clustering, then refining and organizing ideas into categories or subtopics – all this can be done with software such as Inspiration, or Mindmaple, or Bubble.us. Concept mapping allows students to produce an outline as a visual map; and generating a plan for presenting the information in a logical way. The diagramming side of the program can be used to create a variety of graphic displays, all of which are useful for students who like to think and plan using visual representations of their ideas.
The tech tool that many students take for granted is the word processing software package such as Microsoft Word. Using word processing to produce written drafts offers more flexibility to revise while writing. Revising is the stage during which students make changes in content or structure that reflect decisions about how to improve overall quality. To revise well, students have to move from composing text to analyzing it, looking for what needs to be added, deleted, or rearranged. One of the best ways for teachers to assist in this process is to project a student’s typed draft onto a screen or whiteboard and then model the thinking and decision making that goes into analyzing and revising the text. If projected in this way, students can make changes to the text as other students watch. Editing, as opposed to revising, is the process of refining a paper so that it has correct spelling, syntax, punctuation, and style. Editing is a lower order task than revising but no less important. All word processing programs have features that support the editing process, including spell-checkers and grammar checkers, as well as electronic search capabilities to verify consistency of word usage, tone, and tense. The teacher can model the editing process, and students can then edit each other’s papers (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 278).
Additionally, most word processing programs have automatic grammar and spell-check features that flag problems as they are being written. For example, Microsoft’s Word program underlines in red any misspelled words and underlines passages in green to show possible grammar problems. Word’s grammar checker is not always completely correct, but teachers can model how to use its prompts to check for, correct and re-check their sentences. To improve written vocabulary, students can check for synonyms to given words in the Thesaurus function.
Word processing programs also can track editing changes, can insert comments and have an autocorrect function. Autocorrect is a built-in feature that automatically sees and corrects misspelled words and incorrect capitalization. The comments function takes the form of bubbles around typed words that are placed in the margins of a document and connected by a line to the specific words or sentences referred to. Teachers can insert comments on drafts to give typed feedback — preferable to handwritten comments that take longer to write and are harder for students to decipher. Track changes is an editing command that can be turned on from one of the program’s drop-down menus to show layers of changes as they are made to an original document. Changes can be undone later. Each of these built-in features can save teachers hours and hours of editing time and can make writing problems and mistakes more visible to students (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 278).
One final tech tool, digital publishing of student work, gives students an authentic purpose and audience for their written works. In addition to interactivity, having a real-life audience is a major motivator for students, who engage longer and are willing to revise more when they know their work will be shared with others. One strategy that makes use of social interactivity, is having students share their work online in blogs and wikis. Another strategy calls for students to comment on each other’s posted works, thus engaging in a collaboration that makes them part of an ever growing and changing community of learners (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 270). Under a teacher’s guidance, students can upload their writing to websites, can publish electronic books, post multimedia slide shows, create podcasts and send email. Electronic penpals (such as the ePALS Global Community at http://www.epals.com) can connect millions of students and educators in 200 countries with authentic correspondents. Other sites that publish student work include KidPub: http://www.kidpub.com ; and Bookworm: http://www.bookworm-mag.com ; and WriteKids: http://writekids.tripod.com ; and Your Student News: http://www.yourstudentnews.com (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 273).
References
Kuhn, D. (2007). Is Direct Instruction an Answer to the Right Question? Educational Psychologist. 42(2), 109-113.
Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H. (2013) Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching, Sixth Edition. Allyn & Bacon. ISBN-10 0-13-282015-3, ISBN-13 978-0-13-282015-8.
Writing instruction is one of the most time-intensive parts of the English teacher’s job, but the expanding role of tech tools in the classroom does offer new help. “A variety of technology tools and strategies have emerged to spur students’ desire to write, to improve the quality of their written products (e.g., email projects, blogs), and to provide authentic publication sources” (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 271).
Digital concept mapping is one way to overcome students’ reluctance to get started. Kuhn notes that newer perspectives conclude that “motivation resides not within the individual but in the interaction between individual and subject matter” (2007). As a highly interactive pre-writing strategy, using concept mapping software helps students organize their thoughts prior to writing by making colorful and cartoon-like graphics. Brainstorming, clustering, then refining and organizing ideas into categories or subtopics – all this can be done with software such as Inspiration, or Mindmaple, or Bubble.us. Concept mapping allows students to produce an outline as a visual map; and generating a plan for presenting the information in a logical way. The diagramming side of the program can be used to create a variety of graphic displays, all of which are useful for students who like to think and plan using visual representations of their ideas.
The tech tool that many students take for granted is the word processing software package such as Microsoft Word. Using word processing to produce written drafts offers more flexibility to revise while writing. Revising is the stage during which students make changes in content or structure that reflect decisions about how to improve overall quality. To revise well, students have to move from composing text to analyzing it, looking for what needs to be added, deleted, or rearranged. One of the best ways for teachers to assist in this process is to project a student’s typed draft onto a screen or whiteboard and then model the thinking and decision making that goes into analyzing and revising the text. If projected in this way, students can make changes to the text as other students watch. Editing, as opposed to revising, is the process of refining a paper so that it has correct spelling, syntax, punctuation, and style. Editing is a lower order task than revising but no less important. All word processing programs have features that support the editing process, including spell-checkers and grammar checkers, as well as electronic search capabilities to verify consistency of word usage, tone, and tense. The teacher can model the editing process, and students can then edit each other’s papers (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 278).
Additionally, most word processing programs have automatic grammar and spell-check features that flag problems as they are being written. For example, Microsoft’s Word program underlines in red any misspelled words and underlines passages in green to show possible grammar problems. Word’s grammar checker is not always completely correct, but teachers can model how to use its prompts to check for, correct and re-check their sentences. To improve written vocabulary, students can check for synonyms to given words in the Thesaurus function.
Word processing programs also can track editing changes, can insert comments and have an autocorrect function. Autocorrect is a built-in feature that automatically sees and corrects misspelled words and incorrect capitalization. The comments function takes the form of bubbles around typed words that are placed in the margins of a document and connected by a line to the specific words or sentences referred to. Teachers can insert comments on drafts to give typed feedback — preferable to handwritten comments that take longer to write and are harder for students to decipher. Track changes is an editing command that can be turned on from one of the program’s drop-down menus to show layers of changes as they are made to an original document. Changes can be undone later. Each of these built-in features can save teachers hours and hours of editing time and can make writing problems and mistakes more visible to students (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 278).
One final tech tool, digital publishing of student work, gives students an authentic purpose and audience for their written works. In addition to interactivity, having a real-life audience is a major motivator for students, who engage longer and are willing to revise more when they know their work will be shared with others. One strategy that makes use of social interactivity, is having students share their work online in blogs and wikis. Another strategy calls for students to comment on each other’s posted works, thus engaging in a collaboration that makes them part of an ever growing and changing community of learners (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 270). Under a teacher’s guidance, students can upload their writing to websites, can publish electronic books, post multimedia slide shows, create podcasts and send email. Electronic penpals (such as the ePALS Global Community at http://www.epals.com) can connect millions of students and educators in 200 countries with authentic correspondents. Other sites that publish student work include KidPub: http://www.kidpub.com ; and Bookworm: http://www.bookworm-mag.com ; and WriteKids: http://writekids.tripod.com ; and Your Student News: http://www.yourstudentnews.com (Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H., 2012, p. 273).
References
Kuhn, D. (2007). Is Direct Instruction an Answer to the Right Question? Educational Psychologist. 42(2), 109-113.
Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A.H. (2013) Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching, Sixth Edition. Allyn & Bacon. ISBN-10 0-13-282015-3, ISBN-13 978-0-13-282015-8.