Recap #4: Blogging and Me

Although I feel as if I've only scratched the surface, the semester is ending and I have to start finding a way to wrap things up. I've re-read my earlier posts and a few issues stick out over and over again. I'll be posting on them for the next couple of days. Please read on...

4. Blogging and Me - So, I spent the semester blogging on the possible relationship between technology and struggling writer's. I decided to present my findings in blog form for a couple of reasons. First, I saw a lot of information about blogs and blogging out there and I was curious about this new web technology. Second, I wanted the experience of actually blogging. Throughout the semester, I signed up on Blogger and set up my blog, then started researching.

When it comes to blogging itself, I am an absolute convert. I can see why this medium would be able to motivate students to write more and possibly better stuff. Writing for a blog feels like a combination of journaling and e-mail. However, it takes much longer than those activities since I have no way of knowing who is going to be reading my blog. I worry more about the content and whether I am getting my point across.

As for the technology side, I found it relatively simple. I believe that probably anyone with basic computer skills could set up a blog with Blogger. Some basic HTML helped a bit with changing and creating links, but I don't know that it would be absolutely necessary to have. I liked that as I was able to pick up more skills I could add to the blog and my posts. Another huge plus was that the site made it easy to change the posts even after I "published" them. This came in very handy since I often noticed that one last typo after posting, and was able to go back to early posts and add links when I figured out how to do so. Also, the help page at Blogger was a good resource. They actually anticipated most of my questions, though it sometimes took a while to find those answers.

Overall, I really liked blogging my research. It was a way to journal what I found and ask questions that might not have occurred to me if I just kept pertinent information on notecards or something. I do wish that more visitors had commented on the blog. I was able to answer comments (and did so), and it would have been interesting to hold a dialogue through the comments section.

Recap #3: Teachers and Technology

Although I feel as if I've only scratched the surface, the semester is ending and I have to start finding a way to wrap things up. I've re-read my earlier posts and a few issues stick out over and over again. I'll be posting on them for the next couple of days. Please read on...

3. Teachers and Technology - I have major amounts of respect for teachers. Really I do. It takes a great person to knowingly choose a job that is hard, time-consuming, and poorly paid. And I don't just mean elementary and high school teachers ether. That said, I am not convinced that technology can do anything that good teachers can't. After lots of reading and exploring, I do believe that there are a lot of technologies out there that can help transform the classroom into a better and more exciting place. However, I've known teachers that have been doing that for years with not a computer in sight. Still, for the teachers that are ready and willing to use it, I think that some of the new technologies out there could help in creating awesome learning environments. I truly think that blogs and notepads are going to help teachers do great things. That's the good news. The bad news is that these new technologies, like all the stuff that comes before them, are not free. Not only money, but time and effort will be required to use these technologies in the classroom.

I've heard from a lot of excited people that have found really interesting ways to use technology in their classrooms with great results. However, as Dr. Al Jarf reminded us in her paper, those results came with more work from her. The blog seemed to do a great deal for her writing students, but it required lots of extra time on her part of keep responding to posts, encouraging and inviting students to keep posting, and just get the blog up and running. She noted that students needed that extra effort from the instructor to keep interested. This echoes what I've been reading all semester.

So, technology is good, but is it really fair for us to ask already overloaded teachers to assume more work? Perhaps if the assumption of more tech is paired with a reduction of the number of classes or students? But that costs money...

Recap #2: Blogging in the Classroom

Although I feel as if I've only scratched the surface, the semester is ending and I have to start finding a way to wrap things up. I've re-read my earlier posts and a few issues stick out over and over again. I'll be posting on them for the next couple of days. Please read on...

2. Blogs - I am completly convinced that blogs can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom and get great results. There is a huge amount of information out there about blogs in the classroom, and finding out about blogging and blogs has easily been the most positive and exciting of what I've found this sem. I can truly see lots of possibilities for classroom use before and during college. However, like anything else that produces results in the classroom, it seems that the best results come with extra loads on the instructor.

After my last post, I have to add that this is one of the most inexpensive technologies to use as well. Services like Blogger that provide free blog space (I have only positive things to say about Blogger), allow teachers to use their tiny classroom budgets elsewhere. Of course, participation depends on students having access not only to a computer, but to the internet...which goes back to what I was saying about tech. and money. But, in the college atmosphere where most universities provide computer labs, blogs could still be a great choice.

Given more time with this blog and subject, I would like to play with some of the other options I've seen on other blogs - but I'll talk more about that later...

Recap #1: Money and Technology

Although I feel as if I've only scratched the surface, the semester is ending and I have to start finding a way to wrap things up. I've re-read my earlier posts and a few issues stick out over and over again. I'll be posting on them for the next couple of days. Please read on...

1. Money = Technology. Throughout the course of the semester, I've found people raving or talking or bragging about different kinds of technology and the effects it will have in the classroom. Sometimes I've been unable to believe all the hype, but even when I completely agreed that a type of technology (like blogs) could be an excellent classroom tool, I still found myself coming back to the money. I just can't get forget that the cooler and newer something is, the fewer people there are who will have the opportunity to use it. In this case, those people are students.

Way back in my second post, I found government tests that showed unsurprising results. Apparently, the poorer you are, the more likely it is that you are one of the "writers left behind." But technology always costs money. And if your parents don't have enough money to provide you with all the latest and greatest in technology, then your school probably doesn't either. That just proves that the very students that could most use the help that all this new and exciting technology could provide - these are the very same students that are the least likely to get to use it.

Effect of Online Learning on Struggling ESL College Writers

This morning I found Effect of Online Learning on Struggling ESL College Writers, an interesting article by Dr. Reima Sado Al-Jarf, an English writing professor in Saudi Arabia. She has done a study on the effects of computer and internet usage on the writing abilities of her students with some interesting results. According to her research, when she added an online portion (using Blackboard) to her coarse, her students not only felt more motivated to write, but they wrote more often, and learned more from that writing then the class which only had in class instruction. I found it interesting that she specified that no mistakes were remarked on or "graded" in the online portion. Rather, the students were encouraged to start their own thread discussions, respond to others, and send each other e-mail, not only about classroom issues, but holidays and birthdays. Also, Dr. Al-Jarf encouraged them to use find information on Yahoo and other web sites.

Ultimately, she found that this technology, when used in addition to the usual classroom work helped the students scores and writing a great deal. (Please go to the article for more specifics on testing and classroom work.) I begin to wish that my Spanish classes had an internet aspect like this class, as I can see many reasons why I would have picked up vocabulary and rules much quicker...

This article seems to be one more piece of evidence that using the technology available (internet, Blackboard, computers) outside of the classroom can and does help student writers write more and better. I am forced to remind myself what Dr. Al-Jarf made a point of in her article. **This internet work was in addition to the normal classroom activities. Also, the instructor often got students to participate by invitations, e-mails, and comments on work already done. All of this could lead to more successful writers - and a larger workload for teachers.**

As usual, this paper can be found at http://dwc.hct.ac.ae/elearning/Research/SaudiResearchESL.pdf Please check it out for a lot of good information and more specifics on what I provided.

Some more thoughts about Haas...

Looking back over my post about Haas (Haas Post from Class), I got to thinking more about the way that computers changed the way I write and think about my writing. How, I wonder, does this affect new writers? While by no means a professional or expert writer, I was most of the way through college before I truly abandoned printing a large number of paper copies. The computer didn't really stop being little more than a good typewriter till college. But, if writers tend to plan less and do fewer deep revisions when using the computer, what does this mean for beginning writers?

When I led writers workshops for remedial writers, we really pushed revision. I found it difficult to get the students to see the difference between editing and revision on a deeper level. Students had this view of their papers as a complete text. Once typed and saved, it was finished. Basic editing changes could be grudgingly made, but more than that was incomprehensible. Haas writes about the computer getting between the writer and the text. Perhaps feeding their words through a machine and getting what looked like a finished product made students feel as if the process was over.

Though I do it differently now, I still do a great deal of revision. I waste less paper and more hard drive space. But if a student has never really used the process, how do I convince them of the importance of it?

My professor made a good point about my earlier post. Although I do it differently, I am still pre-writing and planning my writing. When a paper is assigned, I often spend a day or two (if I have the time) running all the possiblities through my mind. I'm not sitting down and filling pages, but I am working it through in my head. Often, when I do sit down to write, whole phrases and paragraphs come out fully formed. But again, I arrived at this process through practise and figuring out what worked for me. I am not at all sure that I could have done effective pre-writing mentally if I hadn't spent so many years doing it physically.

So I still find myself wondering how to get students to see the process of writing and revision as just that: a process. After my last post, I wonder if blogging could do it. If technology changes the way students percieve thier texts, perhaps technology can be used to make a process that has become more hidden less so.