Writing in Digital Environments Project

Preparing For Young Guest Authors

We are at Redmond Jr. High testing the site and preparing for a blog with a guest author. It will be fun to add students as guest authors and test the real school application of previewing their posts prior to publication. After attending the Public Library Association Conference last week, I'm excited to begin to extend the experience of reading, writing, and communicating with authors using web logs and chats.

Interaction With Digital Docs

I spoke with Bud Wampler recently from AAA of Southern California and he told me more about the essay contest. The couple of high school students that did enter this year sent in videos and included one about teens and DUI that Bud considered "...quite powerful." He said that community members serve as judges and winning entries at the local level are sent on to the national competition. The grand prizes include scholarships of $5,000. I hope that soon a web log would be considered in the written communication category.

A new web log, teachandlearn, talks about having students do more than just access resources:

What I would like to see more of, however, is interaction with the digital documents produced as a result of completing a given task - the digital trail or the social life of a document that emerged in the process of formulating ideas.

When Reading and Writing Become Jammin'

Earlier this week, Tim Lauer in his Garageband post points to Jon Udell discussing IT and the quality of experience that's delivered, the ability to negotiate protocals and relationships in a fluid, rapidly-evolving environment. Jon labels this ability with an action verb--to jam. Tim laments the fact that school district IT departments don't share this vision. An online dictionary defines jam session as "an impromptu performance by a group..." My experience with my web site, AuthorChats validates that the hurdles to a group performance that involves online reading and writing can be daunting in many school district settings. Further professional develpment opportunities for teachers and easier access to IT staff trained in collaborative technolgies will help. It seems that data management trumps curriculum support in most districts. I agree with Tim that the ability of students to share their work with others is the exciting thing about the internet in schools. Another writer this week is deploring the lack of vision and performance in her piece, Is it really that hard to write it out?

Web Log Writing: Mind Chatter and the Mother Tongue

I had the pleasure of hearing Amy Tan speak a few days ago and one of her answers to an audience member's question intrigued me. She was asked about revising. Like most fiction writers, she spoke of her "compulsive revising" yet also spoke about one of her most reprinted pieces of writing. Mother Tongue is now read mostly in essay form and was included in the anthology, Best American Essays in 1991. This essay was written first as a speech and written quickly, without much revising. I think Amy Tan was making a point similar to the one Terry Elliot makes in his comment to Will's blog post on "Blogging As Genre" :

Weblogs get way closer to the mind's original 'chatter' than some writers are comfortable with...Perhaps this original face we see grinning in weblogs is whole in and of itself instead of being some staging area to a better place. Or perhaps it's both.

I think one of Amy Tan's best pieces of non-fiction writing was created in a situation that was much like the way web log writing happens--with quickness and immediacy. It also shares the characteristics that Will mentions,

"... it's first person, it's informal, and it's opinionated."

Perhaps student's web log writing will be both as Terry suggests. Original, whole written thoughts, communicating to readers and existing on a web log page read by a few or by many. Some writers may have an experience like Amy Tan and find that their writing is chosen for inclusion in collections. Others may use their web log to play with ideas, capturing their mind's chatter and making it more conversational since there is that sense that readers are lurking and can respond via comments or email. Teen writers have already coined the term POS (parent over shoulder) to describe the lurking presence

Relational Discourse

At the TechEd conference last spring, John Seeley Brown's presentation, "Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age" provides some interesting ideas. He suggests that "...relational discourse is as important as content" in learning. I agree and think that web logs will offer a new arena for relational discourse. Students can discuss books and concepts. They can problem solve. JSB talks about constructing understanding with others through conversations. I think the asynchronious and archivable nature of web logs will make these blog conversations an important cognitive scaffold for student writing. A scaffold provides support with a platform. What will prove to be unique about a blog platform for student writing? A discussion about this was started during a gathering of educators at NECC and continues on web logs. Students may be less likely to ignore other student's comments and ideas when part of a web log study group than if they were working together using a bulletin board. The idea was mentioned at NECC that a web log may produce a more focused discussion that is more easy to follow than a threaded discussion board. In the discussion board environment, following an idea's progression can be difficult as students have to "click around" more to read through various posts. In a web log discussion, students can link to other student's ideas in their posts and participate in a focused extension of those ideas in the comments area. This may produce more focused, coherent discussions. John Seeley Brown says that today's students are learning a new language of interactivity." Imagining what this interactivity will look like over the next few months as students insert text, images, audio, and video into blogs is exciting.