4

Notes

- Teaching students to write well is critical

- Many students struggle with learning to write well & learning to enjoy writing (tech tools can support individual & collaborative writing)

- Tech tools to help organize ideas before writing (& planning)
- Benefit of using concept mapping as a precursor to writing > process requires students to actively evaluate & organize their ideas as they are generating them (66)
- Semantic networking tools = computer-based concept mapping tools (effective intentional planning & analysis tools for the writing process)

- Supporting Presentation Writing
- Develop & deliver an effective presentation (PowerPoint)
- PowerPoint offers features that can distract learners from creating an effective presentation--visual design features (animation, slide transitions, etc)
- What teachers can do:

- Presentation requirements

- Students evaluate existing PowerPoint presentations
- Supporting Creative Writing w/ Technology
- Publish the writing = motivates students
- Publish on the Internet for public access--inspires students to take their work more seriously & to engage in a level of reflection about their work that is otherwise rare (71)--to write with a purpose, to think critically about what they write, to read what others have produced, & to compare their own work to the work of others

- Supporting Collaborative Writing w/ Technology

- Collaborative writing = activities where written works are created by multiple people together

- Benefits: positive relationships between students, increased participation by students, opportunities for peer and self-assessment, more sources of input and ideas, varied points of view

- Guidelines to help students successfully engage in collaborative writing:

1. Structure activities at the beginning

2. Help the collaborators work out effective meeting or working procedures

3. Establish up front the expectations for participation in the project

4. Pay attention to students who are often left out

5. Familiarize students with the collaborative writing software

- Supporting Peer Feedback on Writing

- Writing instruction may be difficult for teachers because of the time demands of providing feedback that helps students effectively revise their work and improve their writing

- Solution: student-to-student feedback

Students should be given a list of criteria to look for when doing peer reviews.

This chapter proved to be an interesting read. Prior to the reading, I had planned how I will approach writing in my classroom, but the reading encouraged me to consider how I can incorporate technology into writing, as well. Last semester I was enrolled in LAE 4314, a class concentrated on teaching writing in elementary classrooms. One piece of information from the class that I noted is that it is a great idea for each student to read aloud a piece of his writing to the class and then have his classmates write positive comments on index cards. Incorporating technology into this idea, students can record their voices reading aloud their stories or poems and post it online. This can be accomplished using VoiceThread, for example. With VoiceThread, students can also upload images to accompany the audio recording of their story. There are several options to post comments, as well, including using voice, text, or video. Another bit of information from LAE 4314 that I noted is the idea of author visits, in which students from upper grades share their work with students from lower grades and vice versa. A webcam can be used to connect students in one class with students in another class or even another school. Webcams can also be used to communicate with the author of a book the class is reading or an author students admire. I think it would be great for my students to create and manage their own classroom magazine or newspaper on the computer. The content can include what they have been studying, interviews with classmates, a faculty member spotlight, students' fiction and nonfiction work, and their artwork, among other items. Students will be exposed to various writing styles through these activities. For example, the format of a creative writing story is much different than a straight-forward news story.

Throughout my schooling, I have been taught to always write an outline before jumping directly into the essay. Concept maps are a great way for students to organize their ideas. This tool also helps students stay focused on the task at hand because it clearly lays out the different points and topics that students will address to support their thesis.

Personally, I do not enjoy collaborative activities or group projects; however, I do plan to use it in my classroom, as the benefits outweigh the negative aspects. I agree that it is important to give structure to group projects; students must understand what is required of them. Furthermore, each member will be assigned a specific task or, depending on the students' ages, each member will choose a task. I also plan to group students myself. These guidelines ensure that all students participate in the activity and that no one is isolated.

Based on the description of Poetry Forge in the textbook, my initial reaction was that this is a horrible website because it does not allow students to create their own poems, rather it generates poems for the students. Users enter their own adjectives, nouns, and prepositional phrases, and the tool combines them into "poetic" phrases. The site, according to the textbook, is designed to help learners engage in poetry writing and practicing the application of literary structures that are essential and commonly used in poetry writing. I explored the website and created several poems by typing in random adjectives, nouns, and prepositional phrases about Spring. The different poems that were generated as a result of my contributions were unsatisfactory. I feel that this site would stifle children's creativity. The child is not creating for himself. Yes, it can be used to introduce children to writing poetry for the first time, but I prefer students to read and study different poems and be inspired by these to create their own, rather than just type in random words and phrases, and have special software combine them for the user.

Twitter can be used to help students develop their writing skills. For example, because the user is limited to 140 characters, this helps students practicing editing and revising. This helps students extend their vocabulary, as students really need to consider their word choice. Furthermore, students can tweet about what they learned in class that day. This helps students with their summarization skills and thinking about the main idea.

Note to self: collaborative writing idea > in google docs have each student write a sentence to create a classroom story (one student starts the story and then the next student adds a sentence and so on > class can read story together and peer review)