technology in the classroom

During this last week of classroom observations, I've seen some fairly dramatic differences in the way student teachers conduct their classes. This has been particularly true in terms of multimodal teaching. The two teachers I've observed are basically polar opposites in terms of implementing technology into their classrooms. The first teacher used the smart board continuously. He posted all his notes and instructions up on the screen. His lectures had to do with computer games and the major in-class project that I witnessed involved watching videos on youtube.
The second teacher never once used any technology. Her students did not open their laptops at any time. The in-class writing assignment was done with pen and paper and the lesson for the day involved MLA and citation.

Any conclusions I could draw regarding which methods were more effective would be purely subjective, and a week of observations is hardly enough time to make any sweeping conclusions. But for what it's worth, the students in the second class were a lot more engaged. The class opened with the free write and I was singularly impressed with the shear volume of material each of the students seemed to be producing. I can't attest to the quality of their work, but for fifteen solid minutes the class was silent and twenty-five freshmen sat hunched over their pages scribbling away. Later, when discussing MLA citation formatting (a less than thrilling topic, by any standards) the students continuously raised their hands and asked pertinent questions. I never once saw this level of involvement in the first class. The strongest single memory I have from the technology heavy class was looking around and thinking "wow, I have never seen so many people look so bored while browsing through youtube."

Again, I'm not going to make any sweeping judgments about technology in classrooms. I'm not even going to say that one of the teachers was better than the other. There are tons of factors to consider.

But this experience does highlight for me the word of caution in the introduction to Multimodal Composing: Resources for Teachers, technology is not a silver bullet. In and of itself multimodal teaching won't fix whatever problems a classroom might otherwise have. Instead, "It is only teachers learning about new approaches to composing and creating meaning through texts that will catalyze changes in composition classrooms" (6).

Hello, my name is Jennifer, and I am a Millennial

As I was reading Scott Carlson’s article about “millennials” I realized I am one of them. I do not think for my generation being a “millennial” is necessarily a choice, I think, in fact, not being a “millennial” would be a choice. I entered high school with a cell phone in my hand and a buddy list full of friends to talk to on instant messenger as I did my homework after school. I write papers while watching tv, talking on instant messenger, and surfing the web. To me I need to have distractions so that I can take a break and collect my thoughts. I am part of this “attention-deficit-disorder” society Stephanie Miller refers to, but I think it is more of a way of life than a choice. Growing up in this new millennium, for a “millennial” is scary because, I think, so much is expected of us. I feel I am looked at with a sideways glance if I tell people I don’t know how to create a video for YouTube or that I’m an amateur at downloading music, or that I would have no idea what to do if my internet didn’t work or my ipod stopped playing. Being a part of this “millennial” society comes with its own expectations. Students want more time to meet in groups and interact not only to discuss what they are working on for the class they are in, but to discuss concerns with other classes. A student is doing their homework for one class during another because with class, work, driving time, and so many other obligations sometimes everything can’t be accomplished when it is supposed to. Where Carlson says “millennials” want everything “now” well, it’s because everything seems to be expected of us “now.”

I don’t think I will have a hard time understanding my students and this idea of a “millennial” society because I am a part of it. I understand multitasking and all that word encompasses. I think so many instructors become upset because they don’t feel students are listening to them, paying attention to the material, or taking the course seriously. Well, the truth is, sometimes they aren’t. With so much going on in a “millennia’s” life, Carlson is right in the fact that many students only learn what they want to learn and want to learn the lives. Juggling full course loads, full time jobs, and a social life leaves little room for fully absorbing a course. This idea, howeasiest way for them. Many students of the new millennium, however, don’t necessarily just want to learn this way, this is how they need to learn to accomplish everything in their ever, is taught to students during high school when they are accomplishing much of the same. By the time they reach college they have perfected the art of only doing what is necessary unless it is of interest to them. For today’s students they are taught what they do in high school will determine where they will go to college and if they will succeed, and in college they are taught how they perform in college will determine where and if they get a job. These pressures teach today’s “millennials” that a fast paced society full of technology is what they need to succeed. “Millennials” want their Google search results to have exactly what they need on the first page, they want to be able to pay their college tuition and find an article on Milton with one click of the mouse. I don’t think instructors should feel threatened by the way “millennials” learn, I think they just need to see it as a new way of learning, where a movie or a power point presentation helps us to constantly have something new to focus on, to keep our attention, whether that is right or wrong, it is the way we seem to learn.

On Fox, Perl & Tobin

Mem Fox's "Towards a Theory of Why People Write" was a very engaging piece of writing for me for several reasons. It veered me time and again towards thinking about my own writing practices, both implicit and explicit. Further, it actually practised what it preached-- it is very clear that Fox is "ach[ing] with caring over what [she is] writing" (Fox 113); that she is writing because it matters, and that the piece is a result of huge investment on her part. Fox's list of why people might want to write may not be exhaustive, but it does provide a solid platform to enter the discussion, or, to use Fox's martial metaphor, the fray. She provides three basic reasons why people should/might want to write and contains and explicates her arguments along those moot assumptions.
What Fox says about writers aching with caring over their writing seems to be, as she herself identifies later, the most important reason of the three. Frankly, I think it will be a challenge getting students in a writing class to care about what they are writing. As Ben very pertinently pointed out the last day in class, they might not care about things we care. On the other hand, even if we attempt to rise above our limitations to interest ourselves in what they care to write about, it might not always come through (I can foresee what a quandary I will be in if some of the students in my class decide to write gleefully on baseball, basketball or one of the other inscrutable sports that are so integral to American life). However, since identifying the problem is the first stage of solving it, one can still feel hopeful, and after reading the passage Tobin quotes in his essay from Donald Murray's Learning by Teaching (Tobin 5), I am all for hope.
The point Fox makes about writing as comradeship follows directly from this premise:"there's always someone on the other side, if you like, who sits invisibly watching me write, waiting to read what I've just written. The watcher is always important" (Fox 116). If the writer should be aching to care over his/her writing, it helps if s/he can believe that the reader is equally aching to care to read what s/he has written. Mere publication or financial reward --while by no means unwelcome!-- is not enough. This I can understand from my own experience. The writing sample I submitted as a part of my application packet to KSU was supposed to be published in an internationally refereed journal. It was refused by the referee. Twice. However, the fact that one of the professors at the University of Calcutta I respect and admire had appreciated it before the refusals came about meant much more to me. And since all contributions to the journal were unremunerated, it has always been a comfort to think that even if it did get published, I would not have been a cent richer for it (not to forget the fact that the petite piece had succeeded in wangling what it was to do along with the rest of the application packet--getting me chance to pursue PhD at KSU, with an assistantship).
Something else I liked about Fox was her insistence that form matters in writing. ("In the end they must be able to spell and punctuate; they are powerless without those skills."--Fox 124) i.e. while she does not say that form is the be-all and end-all of writing, she does not overemphasise content over form. As she concludes by saying:" Interaction, not action" (Fox 124). One must not neglect the rules in order to interact, let alone to forge that interaction into a tool of 'power'.

Sondra Perl's "The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers" begins by outlining ambitious goals (Perl 417), and by the time the essay is over, it is clear that she has progressed a good deal in achieving them. Perl's methodology attempts to represent in quantifiable terms the process of how unskilled writers write. Her analysis of Tony's writing process, especially her discussion of 'miscue categories' with regards to encoding and decoding helps indicate in concrete terms the hurdles an unskilled writer faces while writing. The primary characteristics Perl identifies, such as-- too much editing that hinder fluency and/or logical continuity of thought; unease while writing about subjects too far-related to the writer; an egocentricity that takes meaning for granted resulting in imperfect articulation seem to stem from as much a lack of confidence (too much editing) as from an overabundance of misplaced confidence ('the meaning is clear already, I need not explain any further'). One of the most interesting of Perl's final observations was her corrlataion between "the number of problems remaining in the student's written products" and "the number of miscues produced during reading" (Perl 434). It identifies a critical lacuna in the writer's writing process which, it seems to be the job of the teacher to help the writer identify and address appropriately.

Lad Tobin's "Process Pedagogy", while it offers a perfectly competent and animated history of the subject itself from an engagingly personal point of view, does little else. the only idea I found helpful was his decision to start off a semester by asking the students to write an essay on a subject of their choice on which they would not be graded but receive only feedback. This, I thought, might be a good idea to begin building a writing relationship with the students. Other such methods may include asking them to write a review/reaction to an artefact from their immediate environment or popular culture (the most interesting advertisement in the Daily Kent Stater of the day? a Madonna video? Tina fey's imitation of Sarah Palin?). And then, get down to doing my job, which is "not to tell the writer where she had gone wrong or right but to help her see what she had accomplished and what the essay might become in its next incarnation" i.e. to read "not for error and assessment but for nuance, possibility, gaps, potential" (Tobin 6).

Some of the things I took away from Monday’s three texts:

Fox places emphasis on the view of writing as intertwined in the social. That is, (via her citation of Mitchell and Taylor, “…the writing on the pages is not a concrete object but one portion of a relationship” (p. 116). Two pages later, Fox adds to this idea: “It’s what happens beyond publishing that’s important; it’s the response to my work that matters” (p. 118). Defining a piece of writing as simply a tangible object independent of any social, cultural, personal, etc aspects is as reductive as defining a student as independent of those aspects. I suppose Fox (and others) might argue that a piece of writing is an extension of the self: language voiced into the world via the medium of writing chosen by the writer. By viewing writing in this manner, we can better understand how to ‘teach’ writing: How do we get our students to see themselves as writers and to embrace their power over language? How can we prepare them for the various writing tasks they will need to perform and undertake throughout their lives? Or perhaps one of the more daunting questions: How can we get them excited over writing and learning? Fox explains, “clarity and voice and power and control are much more easily developed through letter writing because, perhaps, the audience is so clearly defined and will, if all goes well, respond” (p. 122). While I am not planning on only assigning letters to my students, I do think Fox’s emphasis on the letter can point to the importance of audience.

Even the most well planned writing topic is nothing without a consideration of the audience. Often, I think we write for a specific audience without even thinking (too in depth or continuously) about it: A research paper for the academic community, a note to our self, a blog post to a specific group, etc. Even the most banal dictionary definition was written with a certain audience in mind: the speaker of the language in question. Fox points to the letter, in part, because it allows the writer an audience to receive the text and thus helps him/her to better focus the clarity, voice, power, and control of the writing. It is almost as if having a specific audience in mind helps the writer see a bigger purpose in the text, rather than writing to simply finish to assignment.

To reference Perl, it is mentioned that students often complain that they have “‘no idea” what to write” (p. 430). Perhaps instead of beginning the topic-hunting process, students might try to discover a specific audience to which they would like to write. I would think this might help to narrow the topic selection down a bit. Rather than requesting that students simply write an argumentative essay on a topic of their choice, they should write an argumentative essay on a specified topic to an audience of their choice. I’m just brainstorming myself here, but maybe something like that would help.

On another note: I found Tobin’s piece really helpful in explaining process pedagogy. I’ve been introduced to these ideas previously, but never read about them in the detail that he goes into. Process pedagogy will help students “adopt more productive attitudes and practices…that may take time to integrate but will remain long after the course has ended” (p. 12). In addition, he also explains the importance of using other pedagogical approaches to create a more holistic learning environment: audience identification, establishing a “credible ethos,” source citation, the infamous five-paragraph essay (for our favorite standardized test, the GRE), and various postprocess concepts and methods (p. 16).

Who are we writing for?

Of the three articles we read this weekend, Mem Fox’s article really made me think and reflect about why my students will be writing. As Lad Tobin confesses, he and many undergrad students write their papers the night before they are due, cursing themselves and the assignment, all the while swearing to themselves they will never wait that long to write a paper again, that is, until the next assignment is due. This idea of Fox’s though, where students are writing for more than just an assignment, is very intriguing.

In my junior English class we were asked to write an editorial for the local newspaper. The final part of the assignment was to actually send our responses to the paper. That one assignment took most of our junior class longer to write and correct than any other assignment. Everyone wanted to make sure their copy was as close to perfect as was possible before sending it to the editor. Looking back, this process is very good, yet very disturbing. It seems when we write and we know it is just us and the teacher reading our papers that although we try to write the best possible paper, it is ok if there are grammatical mistakes or questionable ideas because only two people will only ever see the paper, and for many of us, the teacher is someone we have come to know and therefore it is somehow ok that he or she sees a paper that may not be our best work. I think this is especially true for freshman and sophomore undergrads. If you add another element, however, a stranger who you do not know how he or she will judge your work, somehow the level of perfection in the assignment is uppped.

A friend of mine in undergrad had to submit, as part of his assignment, a creative piece to our schools literary magazine. I think this same principle holds true. The assignments were better read over, better developed than those just the student and teacher read. Maybe it is the element of the unknown that scares students into submitting only their very best work to a third party, or maybe it is the will to make sure he or she and the teacher are only seen in the best light that makes a student submit the very best to an “outsider.” Whatever the case, I think having someone else who matters read a student’s work is very beneficial. Fox tells us that it helps show students that there is a world beyond class assignments created just for a teacher to read. It shows them the world beyond college and helps them see the future. I agree with Fox, and I think providing student’s with another person, an unfamiliar third party, can be just what their writing needs.

Underlife (Carefull its Tricky)

Reading over the concepts of underlife produced by Robert Brooke, I decided to take some time and reflect on different ways I used underlife as an undergrad, or even as a graduate student, to be perfectly honest. I think all of us had been guilty of underlife at some point in time during our college career. All though as we have stated in class that the technological gap between us and our students may be greater than we had anticipated, we had other methods of producing underlife. I remember working on homework during class (mostly because of the ease of doing work in class rather than later that night), and I remember several occasions where I read ahead or was working on something for class, but none the less something that wasn't relevant to the topics in class that.

With beginning our class observations this past week I came to understand the concept of underlife as much more extent than my own personal experiences. In one class I witnessed 6 students sending text messages, one checking Facebook and another sending emails while the professor was talking. While none of these activities were extremely distracting the rest of the class (at least no more distracting than when I attempted to open a Sprite quietly and had it fizz and hiss from the back of the room) they still impeded those individual students in absorbing the information being discussed.

I would even purpose that some of the "stupid" questions that we will have asked in our classrooms will be a direct result of some sort of underlife activity. Students that seem to not be paying attention when we are giving directions, but may be paying attention to something else (the usual suspects: texting, facebook, myspace, webpages). The key question becomes, how do we counter these forces at work?

We had discussed several methods of attempting to overcome underlife in class the other day, but the one observation that I could make about most of the forms of underlife I noticed is that most, if not all, of the guilty students were sitting in the back of the room, and were only performing these activities when the teacher was standing and talking at the front of the classroom. It seems obvious that the students most likely to be playing on the computer or their phones will instinctively sit as far away from the position of the teacher as possible, so standing in one spot and talking at the students instead of talking with the students seems to be the least effective method of teaching possible for several reasons. First, the teaching style is very ineffective for just generally communicating with students. Second, as I have observed, the farther away a student is from the teacher, the more likely they are to engage in some sort of underlife activity.

The goal of the English teacher should not be to eliminate underlife. Brooke himself says that underlife is an important aspect of institutional life. I think what is important for a teacher trying to promote critical thinking and allowing students to discover their identities is to curtail the amount and types of underlife that takes place in our classrooms. While it may not be a horrible aspect of underlife for a student to doodle on a handout or talk to the person sitting next to them in class about an assignment, texting and distracting activities can be detrimental to a students success in our course.

Rewriting and our students

I read an interesting article recently that is quite relevant to the things we’ve been discussing and reading: “More than just error correction: Student’s perspectives on their revision processes during writing”, by Debra Myhill and Susan Jones (_Written Communication_, V. 24, N. 4, Oct. 2007). Basically the authors argue that revision happens throughout the writing process rather than at one point (the draft). One of the first important distinctions made by the authors is that between editing and rewriting. They argue that editing is focused on fixing errors and surface-level problems, while rewriting actually “involves alterations to the meaning” (p. 324).

The authors reference problems that occur with novice writers and students, as opposed to “expert writers [who] change text level and meaning features” (p. 325). Students may have problems with revision and rewriting because they are not well-versed in self-monitoring their writing, and while they may notice problems with their writing, the students may not know ways to deal with those issues (p. 325). A reference to a text we’ve read before, Myhill and Jones argue “they engage in the process without the necessary cognitive, metacognitive, and social understanding to make appropriate changes” (p. 325). Now, this is definitely not to say the students do not have the abilities to do so, but may not be aware of those abilities, or have not yet mastered them. I think this is where we as teachers come in: We can help the students become aware of the abilities they possess, and learn to master their writing with those skills. In addition, Myhill and Jones argue, “writing is a process that demands self-monitoring” (326). Again, I think this is an important argument, because of the power it gives to the writer regardless of age, class, race, etc. Authorship involves power on a variety of levels, and in order to make the most of their voices, students will need to learn ways in which they can ‘monitor’ their writing and meaning-making activities.

The authors, after setting up the critical context, discuss the methods and results of their research. They observed writers in the classroom, did interviews, etc. in order to better gauge how the students understand their own writing processes. Finally, the authors discuss pedagogical implications of this study, which I think might be very helpful for us as teachers.
1) Teachers should “recoceptualize” revision and rewriting into an event that occurs throughout the writing process (p. 340).
2) We need to learn how to teach students to better understand their own metacognitive abilities with respect to writing and rewriting. This will, hopefully, give students better access to writing and rewriting strategies (p. 341).
3) “Fostering explicit metalinguistic discussion of texts, linguistic structures, and the ways in which linguistic choices can create different effects and different meaning-making possibilities might support writers in developing both a language and cognitive structures to solve their ‘dissatisfaction’ problems” (p. 341).

I encourage everyone to read this article; it’s not that long or dense, and I think it has some valuable information for us to use in the classroom.