Sep
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Instructional Technology
9/1/2009 7:48 PM
You know what is incredible daunting? Writing notes to a bunch of Language Arts teachers. I can feel the red pencils sharpening! However, now that we’re a couple of weeks into Inspired Writing, I just wanted to share a few resources and observations. The first is an article that, to me, strikes a balance between the challenges and opportunities of literacy in the 21st Century. Among our challenges is the rising expectation that all our students will need to proficient writers.
You know what is incredible daunting? Writing notes to a bunch of Language Arts teachers. I can feel the red pencils sharpening! However, now that we’re a couple of weeks into Inspired Writing, I just wanted to share a few resources and observations. The first is an article that, to me, strikes a balance between the challenges and opportunities of literacy in the 21st Century. Among our challenges is the rising expectation that all our students will need to proficient writers. The author Thompson writes “Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn't a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they'd leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.” (“Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”) Now however, one Stanford professor notes, “‘I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization,’ she says. For Lunsford, technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.” (“Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”) For more on Lunsford’s opinions and the Stanford Study of Writing that informs them, please see http://ssw.stanford.edu/.
Next, some of you have asked about venues in which to publish students’ work. A good place, one affiliated with The Denver Post, is http://nextgen.yourhub.com/NextGen. Note that you would want your students to post according to the naming protocols we’ve set up, but what a great way for your students to “write to a variety of audiences.”
Finally, I had the real pleasure of helping a teacher at Goddard Middle School, home of the Vikings, launch her class wiki. In doing so, she was walking kids through the layout and organization of the wiki. She called their attention to the top text, which read “Welcome to Our Wiki” and asked the kids what the significant words were in that title. I, the technologist, picked up on “wiki” as the key word. She, the facilitator, focused on the word “welcome.” The kids, almost universally, pointed to the word “our” as the most important one.
Thanks for your continued partnership, teachers!
3 comment(s) so far...
Re: Inspired Writing Updates
Wonderful views from the different audiences Wiki, Welcome, OUR. Thanks for the link to the article, too. Interesting how the world changes and how we all need to keep that in mind. Thanks for the post Mike.
By Renee Howell on
9/8/2009 2:24 PM
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Re: Inspired Writing Updates
This is good stuff. I'd add that as we all "meet" more through our online postings (written and multimedia) we risk losing the importance of personal connection. So although I'm comfortable in a world where there are more voices being heard than before, I'm concerned that the depth of meaning sounded by those voices will be less. It is indeed daunting to put any thought or feeling "out there," but almost terrifying to put one's deepest thoughts and feelings. Anyway, just noodling. Thanks for sharing, Mike.
By Jim Stephens on
9/14/2009 7:50 PM
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Re: Inspired Writing Updates
Thanks guys! Jim, I share the same concerns. Just because we all now possess the ability to publish doesn't necessarily mean that everything needs to published. And inherent in the word "published" is public. See reality TV and Twitter as examples. There is no doubt that the 21st Century is marked by a super-abundance of information, almost to the point of white noise. What one does with that information, what positive constructions one can make, are the indicators of a literate person in the 21st Century.
Mike
By Mike Porter on
9/15/2009 7:04 AM
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