Blogging is something I've never really done, but I'm interested to see how it could help students in various ways. Is it considered formal writing? Would I grade them on it? Is it just for their own practice? How personalized should it be? What if some students don't have internet access? Would I determine what they write about or just let them go with whatever they're feeling? These are just some of the questions I hope to answer over the course of the semester.
Over the summer, I took a class at the U on writing with Anne Beaton, who said that when she asks students to whom they are writing, they often respond, "whoever" or "anybody." She made the interesting point that ten years ago that was a cop-out answer, but in our current society that can actually be a valid answer. Students are posting on Facebook or Twitter and just about anybody who wants to can see it. They don't have a particular audience in mind, they're just putting stuff out there and seeing what will stick, so to speak. That disconnect between writer and audience is something I'd love to tackle more in this class, especially so we can figure out how to teach the students to write meaningful things even without a "target" in mind.
A couple of things stuck out me from the first chapter of Beach, et al. First, I love the idea of students working together to not just create a product but form ideas and have opinions. At Wayzata High School, we now have Google tools active for all students and teachers, and I believe the possibilities for collaboration are off the charts for any subject area. However, we also have a lot of older teachers who are wary of such tools and want to do things the way they've done them for the last thirty years. So, is it worth it for the teachers and helpful for the students if only 20% of their classes are using these tools consistently?
The next thing that I noticed was that "...71% of high school seniors had written only three or fewer papers during their 2004 senior year. When these students went to college, they were often not prepared for the marked increase in the amount of writing they had to do; half of students at liberal arts colleges had to write at least five papers that were 5 to 19 pages in length during their first year in college" (5). A couple reactions to this: First, we do a lot more writing at Wayzata. In my Sports Literature class alone (juniors and seniors) we write seven papers over the course of the semester, plus they have large papers in senior social studies and many students take composition or journalism classes, where they do a lot of writing. I find it extremely hard to believe that the students write that little during their senior year. Second, the quotation shows us what is still going on at the college level: formal written papers. If colleges are not using these digital tools, is it worth it to use them a lot in high school? Will their writing improve enough to the point that when they get to college they'll be able to produce good formal papers because of the digital writing they did in high school? If part of our high school purpose is to prepare students for college, shouldn't we be focusing on teaching them what they'll need to do when they get to college?
Please don't misunderstand my meaning, I think digital writing can be very valuable, but I have a lot of questions on how to make it work, put it to best practice, and just generally be meaningful for the students. I suppose that's why we're all in this class, and I'm looking forward to working through these issues with everyone!
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Jerrod, I really like your questions regarding the college prep aspect of high school writing classes, specifically at Wayzata. I see that 94% of Wayzata's class of 2007 intended some further education (http://www.wayzata.k12.mn.us/), which makes your question even more valid. Philosophically, I think writing classes should teach writing for contexts. Seems like they already get the writing online for "nobody" context. So workplace writing and college/academic writing would appear to be the "big two." I share much of your skepticism and look forward to reading your blog posts. See you in class Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteJerrod - we do a lot of writing at Simley, but mostly in the earlier years. In the later years students are able to choose many of their classes, and unless they are in the AP classes, they often are not doing much writing. I don't know what I think about this.
ReplyDeleteI was also interested in what Jon was talking about regarding writing for more specific audiences - workplace and academic. I've often writing should be: should we teach specific forms and audiences or teach skills which are more widely applicable? It seems like both are important.