Exploring writing, teaching and technology
Looking for Feedback on the Idea of a "Digital Writing Project"
This is cross-posted from my blog, and I hope to get some feedback from my NWP colleagues...
As we prepare to head to the NWP Annual Meeting and NCTE Convention in just about a week, I am also plugging away at our Chippewa River Writing Project Continued Funding Application. I have come to one of the most compelling parts of the report, at least for me… the point where we reflect on the summer institute and think about what that means for our site. So, here is where I am at right now and, in the spirit of collaboration, I look for any insights that you might be able to offer me here as I try to articulate my vision of our “digital writing project.”
Thanks in advance for your feedback and I look forward to seeing many of you in Philly next week!
—
From the CRWP CFA — Troy’s Reflections on the Summer Institute:
Our summer institute, from its inception, focused on a clear integration of literacy and technology. In seeing ourselves as a “digital writing project,” we began our work with the intent that a “web 2.0” ethos of collaboration, creativity, and commitment would infuse our work. As we reflect on our experience as leaders in this first summer institute, and review the comments of TCs, we see that these elements were present. In terms of collaboration, we relied heavily on the wiki and Google Docs as spaces to share all of our work, from our initial writer’s profile to our responses to teaching demos to our own personal writing. Teachers began the institute with the expectation that they would, indeed, become part of a collaborative and connected group, largely enabled by the technologies that we chose.
In terms of creativity, we invited participants to engage in literacy and technology not just from a functional perspective (although, getting the technology to simply function was sometimes a problem!), but from critical and rhetorical perspectives as well. Our use of digital storytelling, for instance, highlights this perspective. While inviting participants to create their own digital stories, we also analyzed the stories that others had created to get a sense of what worked, what made the digital stories more than simply a collection of images set to a narration. By constantly moving back and forth from the technical to the critical and rhetorical aspects of composition – both analog and digital – we feel that participants were better able to articulate what was creative about their work, as well as why that approach worked.
Finally, we look at the commitment or level of engagement from participants. While we are happy to report that participants in our summer institute, like participants at countless other institutes, reported that their summer experience was, to use an oft-quoted phrase, “life changing,” we were also surprised to see the level at which they believed the digital aspects of our work influenced them. For instance, one participant may sum it up best by responding to the “most important thing” question from the final SI survey conducted by Inverness:
The most important “thing” I gained is confidence with some interactive technology to implement in my classroom. I think implementation of the Wiki will benefit my students. Their mindset is that school work isn’t “real” work, and I’d like to change their mindset. Use of the Wiki will assist, I believe.
Simply stated, we “wikified” our teachers’ beliefs about what it means to be a writer and teacher of writing. Like Wikipedia, where many contributors create a collective whole that is, indeed, much more than the sum of its parts, we feel that our summer institute, with its focus on “collaboration, creativity, and commitment” allowed participants to see writing, and digital writing, in an entirely different perspective. We hope, like all NWP sites do, that this new vision will help inform the ways that they teach writing in their classrooms, especially in the ways that they integrate technology.
As we prepare to head to the NWP Annual Meeting and NCTE Convention in just about a week, I am also plugging away at our Chippewa River Writing Project Continued Funding Application. I have come to one of the most compelling parts of the report, at least for me… the point where we reflect on the summer institute and think about what that means for our site. So, here is where I am at right now and, in the spirit of collaboration, I look for any insights that you might be able to offer me here as I try to articulate my vision of our “digital writing project.”
Thanks in advance for your feedback and I look forward to seeing many of you in Philly next week!
—
From the CRWP CFA — Troy’s Reflections on the Summer Institute:
Our summer institute, from its inception, focused on a clear integration of literacy and technology. In seeing ourselves as a “digital writing project,” we began our work with the intent that a “web 2.0” ethos of collaboration, creativity, and commitment would infuse our work. As we reflect on our experience as leaders in this first summer institute, and review the comments of TCs, we see that these elements were present. In terms of collaboration, we relied heavily on the wiki and Google Docs as spaces to share all of our work, from our initial writer’s profile to our responses to teaching demos to our own personal writing. Teachers began the institute with the expectation that they would, indeed, become part of a collaborative and connected group, largely enabled by the technologies that we chose.
In terms of creativity, we invited participants to engage in literacy and technology not just from a functional perspective (although, getting the technology to simply function was sometimes a problem!), but from critical and rhetorical perspectives as well. Our use of digital storytelling, for instance, highlights this perspective. While inviting participants to create their own digital stories, we also analyzed the stories that others had created to get a sense of what worked, what made the digital stories more than simply a collection of images set to a narration. By constantly moving back and forth from the technical to the critical and rhetorical aspects of composition – both analog and digital – we feel that participants were better able to articulate what was creative about their work, as well as why that approach worked.
Finally, we look at the commitment or level of engagement from participants. While we are happy to report that participants in our summer institute, like participants at countless other institutes, reported that their summer experience was, to use an oft-quoted phrase, “life changing,” we were also surprised to see the level at which they believed the digital aspects of our work influenced them. For instance, one participant may sum it up best by responding to the “most important thing” question from the final SI survey conducted by Inverness:
The most important “thing” I gained is confidence with some interactive technology to implement in my classroom. I think implementation of the Wiki will benefit my students. Their mindset is that school work isn’t “real” work, and I’d like to change their mindset. Use of the Wiki will assist, I believe.
Simply stated, we “wikified” our teachers’ beliefs about what it means to be a writer and teacher of writing. Like Wikipedia, where many contributors create a collective whole that is, indeed, much more than the sum of its parts, we feel that our summer institute, with its focus on “collaboration, creativity, and commitment” allowed participants to see writing, and digital writing, in an entirely different perspective. We hope, like all NWP sites do, that this new vision will help inform the ways that they teach writing in their classrooms, especially in the ways that they integrate technology.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Paul Oh on -
Thanks for sharing this Troy. A manifesto of sorts for critical engagement with the broad issues of digital literacy and implications for teachers and teaching. Makes me want to quote from your book, the Digital Writing Workshop. So I will: "When we ask students to be writers in this age, we are inherently asking them to be digital writers. Therefore, our pedagogy needs to acknkowledge this shift and adopt a perspective that honors and integrates digital writing into our classroom." (p.10-11)
Fostering this shift, as you've done at Chippewa, requires teachers to become familiar with digital learning tools and environments. As Evan Nichols of the Bay Area Writing Project once said to me, "Teachers of writing need to write. Teachers of digital writing need to write digitally."
This belief is complicated, from my perspective, by the collaborative nature of today's social media environments. In a conversation just last night with Chris Sloan, Wasatch Range WP, and Paul Allison, NYC WP, we realized that more than simply writing digitally, teachers may also need to create digital artifacts alongside their students, to co-construct a collaborative learning community, because that is what social media tools afford and how they are employed in the world. We realized that we weren't familiar with a generally accepted term for this act. Maybe you're aware of one. Chris said he thinks of this as "embedded practice" - which he engages in at Youth Voices alongside his students. I like the term a lot. It's essentially what Peter Kittle describes in his powerful video about multimodal composition, "A Question of Balance."
Reading your post also reminds me of a conversation I had a year ago with Rebecca Kaminski, director of the Upstate Writing Project, who said that her site's deliberate work with its TCs with regard to literacy and technology in the Summer Institute led to professional development opportunities with forward-thinking administrators who were invited to a fall conference. After witnessing demos, many of which focused on digital literacies, the administrators were eager to contract with Upstate. Which, I believe, has positioned Upstate in its service area as a source for intellectual capital on the topic, and as a "Digital Writing Project.
-
Permalink Reply by Candance Doerr-Stevens on -
I'm very drawn to the idea of having a "Digital Writing Project" or at least an Advanced Institute that is geared solely towards writing and teaching via digital tools of "collaboration, creativity, and commitment" (as you said so well). Here at the Minnesota Writing Project, our district partnerships are wanting more and more professional development opportunities that involve digital writing and new media creation. Yet our TC pool does not have the tech leadership capacity to meet all of these needs. An advanced institute designed in similar spirit to what you've described above would help build this capacity.
I know that the teachers in our region would love the opportunity to participate in a prolonged digital writing experience. In fact, this semester I am teaching a course on Digital Writing with a group of 18 teachers (through a special partnership between MWP, Edina Public Schools, and University of MN) and the teachers feel so empowered to have the time to contemplate, discuss, and create/write using these new software products. I sense through their enthusiastic feedback, that they want more, and more of this professional development.
How does one go about setting up (and funding) such an advanced institute?
-
Permalink Reply by Barri L. Bumgarner on -
I'm working on a project for a class that will be a digital writing project for Missouri Writing Project's four week insititute next summer. I'm focusing on digital compositions that will reach across the content areas. It's been really fascinating to get feedback from folks in other disciplines, and I'm looking forward to see how it turns out!
-
Permalink Reply by Mary in Missouri on -
Barri,
Have you heard anything more about a possible grant to do a Digital Storytelling AI? Troy's book would be idea to use in a DS AI.
I have tried to contact Keri about the grant she wrote for Ozark and I am not getting any responses. I did find the grant site and downloaded the information. It looks like a director is going to have to write it.
Are you in Philly?
Mary in Missouri
-
Permalink Reply by Candance Doerr-Stevens on
-
Hi Mary.
It's funny that you mention Troy's book. I was actually thinking of using it myself along with a Digital Storytelling class/institute of some sort, but am not sure how to make the class happen. Have you used ithe book before?
About
Badge
© 2009 Created by Kevin H. on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
