Class+Reflection



 Coming into our //Teaching Writing with Technology// class, I didn’t consider myself a digital native, and I still don’t today. I was and still am what I consider to be technologically literate. If you provide me with the tools, I can figure them out within a reasonable amount of time. What I was lacking was the awareness of available technologies (specifically web tools) and the time to learn them. This class provided me with both of these gems.  With the iPad 1:1 initiative that my school piloted this year, my students and I constantly have technology available at our fingertips. Although my school rapidly threw the initiative together with little forethought, the program has been a fantastic resource within my writing classroom. Students are able to immediately research ideas and concepts, write and revise drafts, e-mail writing to me and their peers, as well as hundreds of other beneficial activities I haven’t even imagined yet. Literally, every week I learn a new technological tool or app or the students are teaching me some aspect of an app we’re working with. I loved the amount of technology within my classroom and the participatory role that I am engaging in with my students this year. This wasn’t always the case, though.  Whereas I have always had a very close report with my students, I still felt as though I needed to be in absolute control of my classroom. Over the past four years, my district has been acquiring a large quantity of new technology, but I have accepted it hesitantly. Like I said, I do not consider myself a digital native, but it does take time for me to learn new technologies. And, seeing as how I like to be in control of my classroom, bringing an unfamiliar tool into my class was a daunting task. Several of our texts this semester (primarily those by the Richard and Cynthia Selfe) encourage a different mindset, though. They claim that in order for a technology rich classroom to be self-sustaining, student experts need to provide guidance for other students and even staff. I have found this to be the case this year. For example, my final unit of study this year that I am currently working on is a nonfiction unit. My students and I have examined creative nonfiction’s organization and how authors generate their ideas for nonfiction books. Our culminating activity for the unit is that every student writes a nonfiction book on a topic of his or her choice. My original plan was that the students would create books on Microsoft Word that they could print, bind, and publish within our classroom. Instead, my district’s technology coordinator told me of the //iBookCreator// app for the students’ iPads. I knew nothing of the app and did not have any time to learn it, which would have greatly intimidated me in the past. Now, I was excited to have my students “test drive” the app, and I am thrilled that I had them try it. Yes, there have been technological glitches that I didn’t know how to fix, but instead of getting frustrated, I turned to the students. All but one of our problems had a solution that the students have discovered and shared with one another in class. I feel that this collaborative system has created an even more tightly knit community within my classroom. Also, since the students are creating iBooks, as they finish their books, they are uploading them into our //iBooks// account. Therefore, students are sharing their books with one another and have been providing feedback to authors throughout the writing process. Our one true problem is that the students now wish to share their iBooks with a larger, more authentic audience, which we are not sure at this point how to do. I stare this problem in the eye with determination and a continuous grin, though, because my students are truly proud of their work and wish to share it with the world. For this, I owe a “thank you” to technology.  I also found the time this semester to familiarize myself more with blogs and wikis. These are tools that I am familiar with but have not had the time to play with. Our classroom blog this semester allowed me to recognize the ease of use a blog provides for communicating within a writing community. I realize that this is in part due to a dedicated blog master (Thank you, Blog Master!), but the nature of the blog itself beckons communication between members. This led me to create my own wiki for students to showcase their work this year, which in turn led me to research blogging within the writing classroom to generate audience awareness. I am thrilled with the resources I found during my research, and as my final project details, my sixth-grade writing enrichment class next year will revolve around creating authentic audience through the classroom writing blog. A large portion of my summer will be spent mapping this out. That’s how excited I am!  Overall, this course encouraged me to try new tools, such as YouTube and wikispaces.com, that I have avoided learning for several years now. I am so happy that I can now pull these resources from my teaching toolbox to motivate not only my students but myself. Giving my students the opportunity to leave meaningful digital footprints is one of the most rewarding experiences of my teaching career thus far.