Because Digital Writing Matters E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 307

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

How to apply digital writing skills effectively in the classroom, from the prestigious National Writing Project

As many teachers know, students may be adept at text messaging and communicating online but do not know how to craft a basic essay. In the classroom, students are increasingly required to create web-based or multi-media productions that also include writing. Since writing in and for the online realm often defies standard writing conventions, this book defines digital writing and examines how best to integrate new technologies into writing instruction.

• Shows how to integrate new technologies into classroom lessons
• Addresses the proliferation of writing in the digital age
• Offers a guide for improving students' online writing skills

The book is an important manual for understanding this new frontier of writing for teachers, school leaders, university faculty, and teacher educators.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

PREFACE

THE AUTHORS

Introduction

DEFINING DIGITAL WRITING

WHAT THE PUBLIC HAS TO SAY ABOUT DIGITAL WRITING

WHAT MIGHT DIGITAL WRITING LOOK LIKE IN THE CLASSROOM?

WHY DIGITAL WRITING MATTERS

DIGITAL WRITING AND THE NATIONAL WRITING PROJECT

CHAPTER ONE - THE LANDSCAPE OF DIGITAL WRITING

RESITUATING THE “DIGITAL GENERATION”

TEACHING WITH AND FOR THE DIGITAL GENERATION

THE NEW DIGITAL LANDSCAPE: SIMPLER TOOLS FOR A MORE COMPLEX WORLD

MEETING THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING AND LEARNING DIGITAL WRITING

CREATING DIGITAL STORIES

SHIFTING RHETORICAL TERRAIN

CHAPTER TWO - REVISING THE WRITING PROCESS

USING DIGITAL TOOLS TO SUPPORT PROVEN PRACTICES IN TEACHING WRITING

THE WRITING CLASSROOM IN TRANSITION

THE WRITING PROCESS IN THE INFORMATION AGE

EMBRACING THE CHANGES IN A TIME OF TRANSITION

CHAPTER THREE - ECOLOGIES FOR DIGITAL WRITING

IN ECOLOGY SMALL CHANGES MEAN BIG RESULTS

CRAFTING A HEALTHY DIGITAL ECOLOGY

COMPONENT ONE OF A HEALTHY DIGITAL ECOLOGY: PHYSICAL SPACE FOR DIGITAL WRITING

COMPONENT TWO OF A HEALTHY DIGITAL ECOLOGY: ETHICAL, LEGAL, AND POLICY ...

COMPONENT THREE OF A HEALTHY DIGITAL ECOLOGY: ONLINE ENVIRONMENTS FOR DIGITAL WRITING

TOWARD STEWARDSHIP: SUSTAINING HEALTHY DIGITAL ECOLOGIES

CHAPTER FOUR - STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENT FOR DIGITAL WRITING

THE DOUBLE HELIX OF STANDARDS IN WRITING AND IN TECHNOLOGY

FOCUSING ON ASSESSMENT: WHAT ABOUT THE WRITING ITSELF?

CHAPTER FIVE - PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR DIGITAL WRITING

COMPLEX INSTRUCTION BUILT ON A FOUNDATION OF CONTENT-RELATED EXPERIENCE

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO INQUIRE INTO DIGITAL WRITING AND PRACTICE

MOVING FROM “OVERCOMING RESISTANCE” TO “INVITING LIFELONG LEARNING”

AFTERWORD

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WEB RESOURCES

Acknowledgments

INDEX

Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-40772-1 (pbk.) ISBN 978-0-4708-9220-6 (ebk.) ISBN 978-0-4708-9221-3 (ebk.) ISBN 978-0-4708-9223-7 (ebk.)

1. English language—Rhetoric—Computer-assisted instruction. 2. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching. 3. English language—Composition and exercises—Computer-assisted instruction. 4. English language—Composition and exercises—Study and teaching. 5. Report writing—Computer-assisted instruction. 6. Report writing—Study and teaching. 7. Electronic portfolios in education. 8. Multimedia systems. I. DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole. II. Eidman-Aadahl, Elyse. III. Hicks, Troy. IV. National Writing Project (U.S.)

PE1404.B43 2010

808’.0420785—dc22

2010023119

PB Printing

PREFACE

Teachers of writing have always had a consuming interest in the tools of writing. Whether it is the search for the perfectly sized journal or the choice of just the right background and style for our blogs, the writer in us knows that tools matter, that tools shape the user as the user shapes the tools. So it is of little surprise that many writing teachers were among the early adopters of new digital tools for writing. From early work with word processing software, HyperCard stacks, and desktop publishing to the participatory affordances of blogs, wikis, and the read/write Web, writing teachers have been wandering the digital frontier for some time.

The National Writing Project (NWP) can trace its work with writing and technology to the early 1990s when groups of teachers, such as the “Net-heads,” and early online communities, such as Urbnet and the E-Anthology, laid the foundation for sustained attention to new networked and digital technologies at local Writing Project sites. Over the years these efforts grew, and Writing Project sites named “technology liaisons” to their local leadership teams, applied for minigrants to support their work with technology, attended tech-focused networking events like the NWP’s Tech Matters retreats, fostered a national special-focus network to share and support one another, and nurtured local technology teams. NWP sites were considering how best to use these technologies in their teaching and professional development repertoires because of the technologies’ profound impacts and the questions raised about the very nature of writing and learning to write.

In 2003, the NWP received federal support to mount a substantial program—the Technology Initiative—to broadly expand opportunities at local Writing Project sites for professional development in technology and the teaching of writing. More than twenty Writing Project sites received support to research and design new approaches to professional development that would engage teachers in creating the kinds of environments where young people would and could learn to be writers, creators, and participants in a digital age. Throughout the initiative, teachers brought to the surface powerful examples of classroom practice that suggested what it might mean to teach writing in a digital age, developed frameworks for professional development for colleagues, and continued to ask themselves hard questions about literacy learning.

In 2007, at a culminating meeting of the initial Technology Initiative, a study team of seventy-three lead teachers and scholars from around the country explored this work together through facilitated discussions of cases of classroom practice presented by teachers in the NWP and the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN), another early adopter of digital writing as central in the English language arts curriculum. The rationale was straightforward: teachers in these networks had been experimenting long enough with writing in digital environments that collective interrogation of their work was likely to generate some degree of shared knowledge—and important new questions—about emerging classroom practices and the opportunities for student learning that they did or did not create.

In many ways, that conference—and subsequently this book—captured a turning point in the NWP network’s thinking about digital writing. The original question of the Technology Initiative—How can we effectively integrate technology into our teaching?—both reflected a commitment to technology’s inherent potential to have an impact on the teaching of writing and indicated the degree to which we conceived of technology and writing as separate. But the cases presented in the conference, as well as the conversations they provoked, pointed us to an important shift in emphasis that has emerged in our collective work with technology since 2003, and the title of this book points to that shift. We began to see that the issue was no longer “technology” or “tech integration” per se. The issue was writing itself.

At the close of that conference, participants Dànielle Nicole DeVoss and Troy Hicks suggested that what the NWP needed was a companion to its popular book Because Writing Matters that would take up this insight about technology in writing. In a small postconference meeting with Elyse Eidman-Aadahl and Christina Cantrill, the plan for Because Digital Writing Matters was created.

In the three years since that initial Technology Initiative conference, the challenges and the opportunities have only become more clear. Writing today is pervasively and generally digital: composed with digital tools; created out of word, image, sound, and motion; circulated in digital environments; and consumed across a wide range of digital platforms. Even when we read and write with paper—as we certainly do now and will continue to do for a long time to come—we bring to that paper a different understanding of what writing is and can be, based on our experiences in the digital world. This evolving understanding of writing, which informs the ideas conveyed in this book, also undergirds our new efforts around digital writing. With the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative, we now embark on an effort to support an emerging field of practice, that of teaching writing in the twenty-first century.

So with this book we ask the question: Why does digital writing matter? Digital writing matters because we live in a networked world and there’s no going back. Because, quite simply, digital is.

THE AUTHORS

The National Writing Project (NWP) envisions a future where every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in a digital, interconnected world. The NWP is a nationwide network of educators working together to improve the teaching of writing in the nation’s schools and in other settings. The NWP provides high-quality professional development programs for teachers in a variety of disciplines and at all levels, from early childhood through university. Founded in 1974 at the University of California, Berkeley, the NWP today is a network of more than two hundred university-based sites located in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Codirected by faculty from the local university and K–12 schools, each NWP site develops a leadership cadre of teachers through an invitational summer institute, and designs and delivers customized professional development programs for local schools, districts, and higher education institutions. NWP sites serve over 130,000 participants annually, reaching millions of students. For more information, please visit www.nwp.org.

Dànielle Nicole DeVoss is an associate professor and director of the Professional Writing Program at Michigan State University. Her research interests include multimodal composing; computer-technological literacies; K–12 partnerships and connections; and intellectual property issues in digital space. With Dickie Selfe, DeVoss worked to establish the Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum workshop for middle and high school students and teachers. DeVoss’s work has most recently appeared in Computers and Composition; Computers and Composition Online, and Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. DeVoss recently coedited (with Heidi McKee) Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Ethical Issues (Hampton Press, 2007), which won the 2007 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award. She is currently working on an edited collection with Martine Courant Rife and Shaun Slattery, titled Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Composition Classroom.

Elyse Eidman - Aadahl directs National Programs and Site Development at the National Writing Project at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been a high school English and journalism teacher, an educator professor, and a director of the Maryland Writing Project at Towson University. In her current role, Eidman-Aadahl oversees national learning networks and professional development programs for the National Writing Project, a network of more than two hundred university-based local sites. As a scholar, she has directed numerous action research networks in the United States and abroad that focus on engaging teachers, youth practitioners, and young people in the study of literacy as a sociocultural-material practice. Winner of the Hollis Caswell Award, she has published in a range of journals and coedited Writing for a Change: Boosting Literacy and Learning Through Social Action (2006), published by Jossey-Bass.

Troy Hicks is an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University (CMU) and focuses on the teaching of writing; writing across the curriculum; literacy and technology; and teacher education and professional development. In his research, he collaborates with K–12 teachers and explores how they implement newer literacies in their classrooms. He is director of CMU’s Chippewa River Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, and he frequently conducts professional development workshops related to writing and technology. Hicks is author of the book The Digital Writing Workshop (Heinemann, 2009) and writes the blog Digital Writing, Digital Teaching, which explores issues related to teaching writing with new media for K–12 teachers and teacher educators: hickstro.org/.

INTRODUCTION

Why Digital Writing Matters

In today’s complex, high-technology world, the importance of writing as a fundamental organizing objective of education is no less valid or practical. Writing, properly understood, is thought on paper. Increasingly, in the information age, it is also thought on screen, a richly elaborated, logically connected amalgam of ideas, words, themes, images, and multimedia designs.

—The Neglected “R”, 2003, 13

Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools (National Writing Project and Carl Nagin, 2006), originally published in 2003, argued for the irreducible importance of writing. In the years since its publication, the basic argument of Because Writing Matters remains unchanged. Writing is still an important act and an essential tool for learning and social participation. Skill in writing is still crucial inside and outside of our schools. Writing is still recognized as a socially situated act of great complexity. And writing is still understood to be hard work.

However, in this volume, Because Digital Writing Matters, we argue that—despite the short time frame—much has changed in the landscape of what it means to “write” and to “be a writer” since 2003. Social networking and collaborative writing technologies have taken hold, if not always in our schools, certainly among our students. Bandwidth has increased in many locations, along with wireless access. Spaces and devices for creating, sharing, and distributing writing have become more robust and more accessible. Not only does writing matter, but writing matters.