Because Digital Writing Matters

Improving Student Writing in Online and Multimedia Environments

Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780470892237
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

How to apply digital writing skills effectively in the classroom, from the prestigious National Writing Project

As many teachers know, students may be adept at text messaging and communicating online but do not know how to craft a basic essay. In the classroom, students are increasingly required to create web-based or multi-media productions that also include writing. Since writing in and for the online realm often defies standard writing conventions, this book defines digital writing and examines how best to integrate new technologies into writing instruction.

• Shows how to integrate new technologies into classroom lessons
• Addresses the proliferation of writing in the digital age
• Offers a guide for improving students' online writing skills

The book is an important manual for understanding this new frontier of writing for teachers, school leaders, university faculty, and teacher educators.

CHAPTER ONE

THE LANDSCAPE OF DIGITAL WRITING

Teenagers’ lives are filled with writing. All teens write for school, and 93% of teens say they write for their own pleasure. Most notably, the vast majority of teens have eagerly embraced written communication with their peers as they share messages on their social network pages, in e-mails and instant messages online, and through fast-paced thumb choreography on their cell phones. Parents believe that their children write more as teens than they did at that age. This raises a major question: What, if anything, connects the formal writing teens do and the informal e-communication they exchange on digital screens?

—Lenhart, Arafeh, Smith, and Macgill, 2008, i

Today, students are doing an immense amount of writing—they’re blogging; they’re text messaging; they’re e-mailing; they’re updating their status messages, profile information, and live feeds on social networking and other sites; and others are “tweeting” (using microblog spaces and sites like Twitter). Perhaps most interesting in the midst of all this writing students are doing is that they don’t often call it “writing.” Writing, students note, is something they do in school. What they do with computers outside of school is something else. As a recent Pew Internet & American Life report on teens and writing noted,

At the core, the digital age presents a paradox. Most teenagers spend a considerable amount of their life composing texts, but they do not think that a lot of the material they create electronically is real writing. The act of exchanging e-mails, instant messages, texts, and social network posts is communication that carries the same weight to teens as phone calls and between-class hallway greetings. At the same time that teens disassociate e-communication with “writing,” they also strongly believe that good writing is a critical skill to achieving success—and their parents agree. Moreover, teens are filled with insights and critiques of the current state of writing instruction as well as ideas about how to make in-school writing instruction better and more useful. (Lenhart et al., 2008, 2)

A look at the ways in which students are writing today helps clarify the nature of what has been called the “digital revolution.” The digital revolution isn’t necessarily that we have computers, or that we have computers in schools, or that Internet access has spread so broadly in the United States. For many years, critics of computers in schools have noted that they sit unused at the back of classrooms or, worse yet, that they merely provide “edutainment” for students who cannot engage with typical forms of instruction. (See, for instance, critiques offered by Cuban, 1986, 2001; and Oppenheimer, 2003.) Yet this has not stopped the digital revolution, because the revolution isn’t about the tools, but rather how the tools are used. Many technologies have changed writing and writing processes—from chalk to pencils to the typewriter. The networked computer has dramatically changed writing and writing processes, and the ways in which people are using the Internet, as well as the sheer numbers of people writing on and with the Web, are having significant social and cultural impact.

This chapter surveys the new digital landscape for writing and examines why digital writing is complex and challenging, for both teachers and students. It identifies and explores some of the complexity that educators and policymakers should understand if they are to develop and sustain effective digital writing programs or curricula. It addresses as well some of the myths and realities surrounding the teaching and learning of digital writing practices, and begins to suggest ways that teachers and administrators can assess how well digital writing is being taught in their schools.

DIGITAL WRITING = WRITING + READING + LISTENING + COLLABORATING

Because Writing Matters presented a compelling vision of writing, arguing first and foremost that writing is hard work. Writers explore and generate ideas, shape their writing for particular audiences and purposes, and work to craft language to convey meaning. Writing well means taking risks, and allowing time to brainstorm and experiment, and later revising and revising (and revising again). When we write, we must be both writer and reader, stepping in and out of a text as we rework it over time for a particular rhetorical situation. As noted in Because Writing Matters, this is the recursive and social nature of writing, as years of research in written composition have chronicled.

As the personal computer made its way into the market, many argued that computers would make work tasks—including writing—easier and faster. Certainly, computers allow writers to engage in the work of writing differently, definitely more easily, and perhaps even better: the ease with which multiple drafts can be saved, material can be copied and pasted, and text can be moved around in a document is facilitated by today’s word processing programs. Spell-checkers and editing programs can speed up the labor of proofreading, and document design programs can help even novice designers create attractively formatted final products.

But at the same time, computers also provide a more complex space for writing, offering writers a whole new set of options to consider. Computer composition allows for multimedia components such as voice recording, audio, image, video, and more. Along with these media components, writers have access to an array of tools and spaces in which texts can be composed and shared. Writers can shift easily among several different programs including e-mail clients, RSS-feed readers, wikis, blogs, and a number of other increasingly customizable online tools. These online tools allow for virtually instant sharing of texts throughout the writing process, enabling the composing process to be public and interactive from the earliest stages. So for anyone who imagined that computers would make writing easier, the irony is that by making a host of individual tasks easier, computers have dramatically expanded options for writers and have probably made writing, and learning to write, more complex.

Consider this story of Dànielle DeVoss’s experience in working on this chapter:

I sit down in front of my computer, coffee in hand. Once my computer has booted up, I launch my applications in the order I tend to use them: WordPerfect (word processing); Eudora (e-mail); Mozilla Firefox (Web browsing and access to Google Docs); Adobe Photoshop (for image editing); Microsoft Word (word processing . . . yes, I use two because although I learned to write with computers using WordPerfect—version 1.0, with its entirely blue screen, before the computer mouse was created!—most of the people I collaborate with use Microsoft Word); and also AIM and Yahoo! Messenger, both for instant messaging (most of the students I work with use AIM, while most of my friends use Yahoo! Messenger).

My Firefox homepage is a customized Google News page, and it loads first. I spend a few moments scanning headlines, and open up a few new tabs—one to check my current eBay bids, one to access the MSU Library’s online journals, and another for my Google Docs menu. A couple of people instant-message me to confirm meetings later in the day or to say hi while I’m waiting for my e-mail to come into my inbox. Once my e-mail comes in, I triage, sorting e-mail by priority. Students with questions or concerns get top priority. Administrators with questions or concerns get second priority. Family and friends I save for later in the day. Facebook requests I ignore.

I toggle into WordPerfect and open the “to do” list I update daily and work by religiously. I prioritize the day’s items, then toggle into Word to open the first few documents I need to work on: an advising form for a student I will meet with later in the morning, the draft of this chapter, and the table of contents for another book collection I’m working on.

I head to the middle of this chapter, to return to a spot I digitally marked two days earlier—I marked it to return to when my mind was fresher. I think about how I can edit the section, and know I have a good quote that might spark me, embedded in a slideshow presentation I used in a workshop two weeks prior. I launch Microsoft PowerPoint, find the slideshow I’m thinking of, and there’s the quote. I copy and paste it into the Word document.

I receive an e-mail from a graduate student working on a project, and send her the files she needs for the document she’s working on. A friend of mine sends me a link via instant message, and I take a moment to watch an ad (that he considers hilarious) from the 1980s, now living on YouTube. I pause in remembrance of a YouTube-free world. While I’m in Firefox, I toggle back to my Google Docs tab to check on another document—a conference presentation proposal—I’m working on with two other colleagues. One of the other authors made changes the night before, and I review them, and add a sentence or two. I then head back to Word and continue working on this chapter.

Although many aspects of this digital multitasking might feel new—or even foreign—to writers who learned to write in different environments, it is clear that the work that scaffolds these tasks is similar to the “hard work” of writing in any environment. Composing still depends on phases of planning, reflecting, drafting, and revising, and writers still produce texts for audiences. Collaboration is still a key part of writing well—bouncing ideas off of others and getting feedback across the writing process. And writers still need to learn to manage time and attention to tasks in the face of competing priorities.

But still, there are important differences. In digital spaces, collaboration might happen via e-mail or instant messaging, or it might happen through a course-management system discussion board or some other space for sharing writing. Writing, at every stage of the process, can now be shared across time and space instantaneously to get a prompt response. Thus, the nature of digital writing is such that it both invites and, in some sense, demands instant feedback. Gone are the days when students turned in stacks of essays to a single teacher and were content to wait a day, a week, or a month for feedback. Now students can participate in—or create their own—communities of writers. They are able to stay in touch with others through the RSS readers, social networks, e-mails, mobile phones, and other Internet-enabled tools, in ways that continue to bring text, image, audio, and video together, to share their personal and academic lives. These examples highlight the ways in which digital writing matters to those who are engaged in it.

Thus, the instant communication and always-on connection that students routinely experience in digital environments may be at the root of why students consistently distinguish between the writing that the Pew report called “e-communication” and the writing they are asked to do in school. New digital tools enable a strongly “participatory culture.” According to media scholar Henry Jenkins and his colleagues (2006), a participatory culture is one

• With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement

• With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others

• With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices

• Where members believe that their contributions matter

• Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created)

As more and more young people experience this kind of culture around writing and media outside of school, they are likely to bring these interests with them to school. Fortunately for writing teachers, the elements of participatory culture—defined not by the tools but by the experience—can also characterize an effective writing classroom.

RESITUATING THE “DIGITAL GENERATION”

As computer and Internet usage grew throughout the 1990s, policymakers and educators began to focus on the “digital divide”: the division in access to technology that separates our schools and children into “haves” and “have nots.” As has been reported for years, poorer districts are at a disadvantage in providing the hardware, software, Internet infrastructure, and professional development required to bring effective uses of technology into classrooms. Consistent attention to the digital divide has motivated efforts to expand access, including the substantial provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which gave the nation the E-rate program.

The law was designed, in part, to help support libraries and schools with the access costs for Internet connectivity. The E-Rate system was introduced within the Act, which allows eligible libraries and schools to purchase crucial infrastructure components. When he signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act into law, President Bill Clinton noted: “Today, the information revolution is spreading light, the light Jefferson spoke about, all across our land and all across the world. It will allow every American child to bring the ideas stored in this reading room into his or her own living room or school room.”

Though continued efforts to address the digital divide are critical, many educators are now discussing a second divide: the “digital disconnect,” which refers to the disconnect between the current “digital generation” who have grown up in networked environments and their older parents and teachers who have not. The disconnect is what fourteen-year-old “Arthus” discussed in an EdTechLIVE Webcast interview with Steve Hargadon, director of the K—12 Open Technologies Initiative at the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and founder of the Classroom 2.0 social network. Arthus offered this advice to English teachers: “Stop being so disconnected from the technology . . . learn that there’s new ways of learning. It’s not about learning the knowledge, but learning to think. All knowledge is a Google away” (Hargadon, 2007).

But schools may not necessarily realize that students hold these views, or agree with the ways in which technology learning is happening at their schools. As reported in eSchool News (Prabhu, 2008), Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, the group that produces the annual “Speak Up” survey for students, noted that “two-thirds of principals in a recent survey said they believe their school is preparing students to be competitive in the global workforce. But most tech-savvy students didn’t share that view.” Students reported using less technology in school even as Web 2.0 applications become more ubiquitous outside of school. This digital disconnect is something different from the classic construction of the digital divide. It is not simply about hardware and software (although those are certainly aspects of the disconnect). Instead, the disconnect is about the ways in which teachers and students perceive the application of technology.

Marc Prensky was one of the first to popularize the notion that today’s students are the first to have grown up surrounded by digital tools and toys. In his now-famous description (2001), Prensky argues that current students are “digital natives,” whereas those who teach them, who learned digital technologies as adults, are “digital immigrants.” Digital immigrants, like all immigrants, retain certain “old world” ways of seeing and interacting with their current reality. According to Prensky: “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach” (1). Our “digital native” students access, synthesize, and reply to information in ways that are fundamentally different from what most adults do. Yet we digital immigrants continue to teach “legacy content,” or traditional curricula, rather than teaching “future content” such as “software, hardware, robotics, nanotechnology, genomics, etc.” as well as “the ethics, politics, sociology, languages and other things that go with them” (4).

The insights of Prensky and many others are useful in pushing educators to consider how digital tools and technologies can transform education, but the distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants is only part of the story. Popular press articles are quick to characterize young people as a homogenous group and to talk about them with labels like “digital natives” and the “digital generation.” However, this blanket labeling obscures the very important and fine-grained details related to writing with computers, and the very diverse backgrounds of different writers. Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies scholar, argued that this is a “generational myth.” In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (2008, B7), Vaidhyanathan summarizes the clichéd expressions related to how we talk about the “digital youth,” and argues that in his years of teaching and being around young people at both public and private universities, he has witnessed a broad, highly variable degree of “comfort with, understanding of, and dexterity with digital technology.” Vaidhyanathan warns us that when we talk of a “digital generation,” we’re leaving out the many, many people without access to digital tools or to the training and support necessary to use them well. It’s important to note that in using such labels we create dichotomies and barriers that do a disservice to both teachers and students and may suggest that our new generations of digital natives need only be left alone to learn on their own. These labels, although convenient, generalize and thus obscure the details related to what both students and teachers actually can do with digital technology.

Recent ethnographic research has...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• PREFACE
• THE AUTHORS
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE - THE LANDSCAPE OF DIGITAL WRITING
• CHAPTER TWO - REVISING THE WRITING PROCESS
• CHAPTER THREE - ECOLOGIES FOR DIGITAL WRITING
• CHAPTER FOUR - STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENT FOR DIGITAL WRITING
• CHAPTER FIVE - PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR DIGITAL WRITING
• AFTERWORD
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• WEB RESOURCES
• Acknowledgments
• INDEX