Entry #10

I'm blessing and addressing a post from Carrie's Entry #4:

In reference to the digital writing workshop, Carrie says...

"...we must think carefully about how and why we want students to engaged with digital writing" (Hicks, 2009, p.27) is an important mantra to keep in mind when we are expanding the walls of our classrooms into the digital world.  There is so much out there, but we have to keep our students focused and remember to always to give them a purpose.  The same writing goals pertain to a digital workshop as they do in a standard workshop.  Though being on the internet is always more fun than looking at a textbook, we as teachers have to remember to teach the same skills as we would before in our digital writing workshops. 


Carrie, I absolutely agree with you that the digital workshop and the traditional workshop must go hand in hand. We were actually talking about this in LTED 612 tonight! Students definitely still need to practice traditional skills (even handwriting!) so that they can later use digital tools. I think that students sometimes think of technology as more fun and cool than the traditional writing workshop. Or maybe they believe it to be "easier" to write using technology. There are certain types of technology that can simply be used one time to create a quick end result. However, we want our students to know that we expect much more from them. We don't want them to just do a podcast or make an iMovie just to get it done. Of course, we want them to fully transact with the reading and writing processes. As teachers, we must always be sure that assignments that we give using technology would also meet the same standards/objectives that a traditional writer's workshop would. I like to view technology as taking the next step to enhance writing that has been composed in a traditional writer's workshop setting. The digital writer's workshop should take written work to the next level by exploring form. It should not be the "easy way out." 


For example, digital story telling is quite an extensive process if you think about it. It may actually require more work than the traditional writer's workshop because there are many technical elements that go into it. Students could just slap a digital story together, but would it have the same impact as a digital story that was carefully edited so each image matched the text to a tee and transitioned at an appropriate time? Not only should we teach students skills that are required to succeed in the traditional writer's workshop, but we also need to stress new skills that they need to become literate in the language of technology. 


As Carrie says, we must always give our students a purpose to write. In some cases we might not have to "give" it to them, but we should let them come up with their own purpose for writing. What is writing without a purpose? It is meaningless and seems silly. No wonder students grow to deeply dislike writing. As they move through their schooling many of the writing tasks they do lack an authentic purpose, which turns writing into a tool to get something done rather than a creative process in which a student can develop new understanding. This truly saddens me because in the younger years students are excited about writing, for some of them it is their favorite part of the day. However, eventually the switch occurs from learning to read/write to reading and writing to learn. I'm not sure why it has to be this way when in reality we are always evolving as readers and writers. If we are to build a love for writing within our students then our instruction and assessment need to match this philosophy that we are never experts on reading and writing. By remembering form follows function we can maintain consistency in our writer's workshop that revolves around a meaningful purpose. In the real world people write with a purpose in mind (one that probably falls somewhere in Halliday's 7 Functions) and this is how we want our students to think about writing. Why write? Write for a real purpose whenever you feel the need. Thinking of writing in this way makes it a less daunting and more of an expressive task that anyone is capable of. I hope to teach my students to first think purpose and process and then think product.