NCWP–Teaching in the Community

I had a breakthrough earlier in the semester, but I’ve been too lazy to get on here, so thank you, Heather, for prompting me.

During our summer advanced institute, I showed you all a list of genre characteristics.  One of the items was “task.”  This was confusing and someone suggested that I change “task” to “genre” to clear it up.  I agreed that would make it clearer, but I knew that wasn’t right.  Genre and task are not the same thing, but I was unable to explain why. 

This semester I did an assignment with my students that made the difference very clear.  I gave small groups three different cards.  Each card contained a different piece of the writing puzzle: purpose, audience, and task.  For isntance, one group had express love, to your boyfriend/girlfriend, a letter.  Their job was to complete the assignment by writing a love letter to their boyfriend or girlfriend. 

After about five minutes, I went around collecting their audience card. I then gave them a new audience card.  Now, they still needed to express their love in a letter, but this time they needed to express it to their boss.  This made for a very different (and hysterical) letter. 

They realized that they had to make different choices in their second letter.  They had to be more careful with their words so that they didn’t get fired or accused of sexual harrassment.  It became clear to them and me that the task — a letter — was not the same thing as the genre — the purpose, audience, and task combined.  A love letter is very different depending on who you are writing it to.  It is even different if you are writing it to the same person but at a different time.  For instance, is it the first time that you are telling someone you love them or have you been together for a long time.

I then changed the task on them.  For example, the group with the love letter had to express their love to their boss in some other way — a billboard, a commercial, etc.  It was a total crack-up! 

At the end, I asked them to create a list of things they had to change from one writing assignment to the other.  Their list included everything that writers have to consider: tone, word choice, format, structure, etc.

The best part of listening to their conversations and pointing out to them all the decisions they were making.  It helped them see how much they already know about writing.

Next semester, I was to do the same thing, but I want to find some way to capture all of their comments.

It’s hard to remember now where I got the ideas; whether it was our NCWP advanced institute or some other place, but today in English 119 (one level below transfer) the clouds parted and a little bit of writerly grace shone down!  After semesters of bland or all together failed attempts at teaching peer revision, I had six students stay until well after class giving each other very astute feedback on their drafts.  Little snippets of “I don’t really know what you are persuading your audience to do or think.”  And, “Why don’t you use the example you talked about the other day here?”  And, “This introduction just launches into the issue, but I didn’t know it was an issue.  Maybe you could state upfront why.”  My Supplemental Instructor and I wandered around, but I found for the first time, that there was very little for me to do.  They were giving great feedback to each other without us!

As numbers have dwindled in my classes the last couple of weeks, I’ve realized that for now six students is a victory.  (Twenty students are enrolled in this particular class.  Eleven completed the rough draft assignment.  And six really spent time on peer revision.)

We began the peer editing process early in the semester by brainstorming about feedback.  Specifically, I asked them to write about a time they had to give feedback and it went well and another time when the feedback was not received well.  This gave us a template that they had created which framed the rest of our peer revision processes.  Once, we used a reverse outlining technique that they had seen a few times in class.  Another time, I gave them specific questions to go searching for.  But the most success I’ve had was today when I simply asked the writers to create two specific questions about their drafts.  Their peer editors then answered these.  I think it is probably a combination of their familiarity and confidence with peer revision and of their ability to create the questions (managing the revision process for their own work).  In any event, I’m excited to refine this process again next semester.

How are all of you doing at this point in the semester?  Good news?  Bad news?  Any news?

My writing classes are typically scheduled one hour per week in the computer lab. Students’ computer experience is diverse, but it is not unusual to have three (or more) students per class who have never used a computer and a similar number of computer wizards. As Tracy mentioned, turning to the more experienced students as experts can be very effective. They love to show what they know, and their less experienced classmates benefit. I usually don’t need to intervene as partnerships form naturally, but I will occasionally help a shy student find someone willing to help.

We use the Blackboard learning system (like WebCT) as a site to share and discuss writing ideas or drafts and to respond to/discuss readings. I use our Bb classroom to share information (syllabus, assignments, websites), and I’d like to find a way for students to take more ownership of our class site to post things they find relevant or interesting. Instead, it is just a place they visit when we are in lab and rarely do they visit outside of class. So it is part of their academic experience that “counts” but may not seem very relevant to their lives. Blackboard reinforces the traditional instructor/student hierarchy. Though students can be a little more autonomous, they can’t post content.

Unlike the the respondents in the NTCE study, I see students’ access to computers and the Internet to be a significant barrier outside of class time. I am uncomfortable assigning asynchronous discussions or work that require Internet access because I don’t want to disadvantage students who don’t have Internet access at home.

Not really sure if I responded to the prompt.

Tools and discussion are required to facilitate multiple streams of simultaneous information. For readers with disabilities, too much conflicting text can be overwhelming. We work to understand and evaluate what is being said, and why and how it is presented.

We aren’t creating and solving problems cross-culturally. We aren’t designing and sharing information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes….

So much potential for critical thinking…..

Many of my assignments

In my tv studio production class my students get a unique opportunity to experience producing content for television. Students participate as team members learning on two tracks. One track takes them through a eight week journey of learning the crew production positions. Camera, lighting,sound,talent/host,director,switcher. Content development is the second track for students. They learn about genres in tv, research,outlining, pitches, call sheets, preproduction sheets and team building. the end result requires them to produce a 1/2 hour show utilizing their skills. this culminating experience allows them to bring the various skills together they have learned by actual hands on experience, writing exercises, and practice revolving crew positions. Costuming, remote shooting, editing, and graphic generation is added to second year student productions. Technology becomes the process and delivery for productions that vary from civic affairs, performance events, educational offerings, interview format, game show/entertainment, documentary, political statements, scripted drama. Class integrates technology with student developed content.

Students help each other turn on computers, access Microsoft Word, and transfer files to email, early on in the semester.  They assist each other in acquiring email accounts, and they support each other in learning basic software elements such as creating a header.  I teach in a networked composition classroom at Shasta College, and students are seated in desktop areas of four computers.  The student groups get to know one another early on in the semester, and they begin to work together to help each other within the first few weeks, as we pursue the first writing assignment.  When the rough drafts are due, I post a set of questions to the classroom screen, and students type the questions and their answers onto each others’ rough drafts as we play “musical chairs.”  Often, one or two students of a group of four is absent, and I encourage others to fill in the spaces.  We each respond to three papers during the rough draft review period.

Once we have identified one strong paper to discuss in each group, I ask the student to provide a copy for the whole class, and we have a whole-class workshop of a pair of papers, complete with a discussion of the typed-in peer review responses.  While it seems laborious, we have integrated our thinking about the assignment into an intense focus on student writing as the primary texts.  Each group has posed a question or two for the whole class about one student’s paper.  We talk a great deal about writing and authorship during these sessions.  I used to call them my “Monday Night Football” sessions, because I taught on Monday nights in my first networked classroom.  The idea is that we can all shout at the screen at once as we’re reading through.  This can be quite lively, funny, and animated, in a positive way.  I know it sounds rowdy, and rowdy is not for everyone, but imagine three students on their feet, yelling, “I think we need to consider putting a comma in there!” or “I really want to know what happens next!”  Not for the faint of heart: I do ask the writers of these essays their permission to participate in full-contact editing and reflection.  (Reflection is a contact sport?  Yes, that is a paradox.)

By the time the second or third paper rolls around, I am posing questions that could be answered in their next essay assignment, a reflection and analytical response to an issue presented in the reading.  I bring in five questions generated in my own teacher-mind as I complete the reading; I post these on screen, and I ask students to pose five more questions.  Soon, we have ten different approaches to the next writing assignment, and a few people have “talked through” an early draft.  I have taken notes on my whiteboard.  Then, I point out that this conversation is part of the pre-writing process, and we close the class with a short write, our brainstorming notes and first sentences for the paper assignment we just created.  I post the assignment to my Blackboard class website.  Students email their prewriting notes to themselves or save them to thumb drives.  Class dismissed.

In the posting I wrote last (under “The Debate”) I explained how I use Blackboard in my current Engl 2 classes (for assignments, discussions, and links to websites). I find Blackboard is useful, though it has some drawbacks, both for me and for students. For me, there is the incredible amount of time needed to create assignments and post things. I don’t understand why this system is not more intuitive. For students, there are the inevitable few that have problems logging on, or posting responses. Still, I have polled my classes and by far more like using Bb than don’t.

I find it is most useful in the beginning of the class, before the class has “gelled” and students don’t know each other. When they respond to each other’s postings they begin to talk to and have relationships with each other. I respond to the first postings, modeling what I want them to do (respond to specific points, quote from their work), and I find that students will automatically pick up these habits themselves. Some of the later discussions I don’t participate in, and they work fine without me.

I have also found that encouraging students to use technology in presentations is wonderful. Students know more and different sites than I do (and than each other), and they use amazing You Tube and other clips, as well as nearly always create their own PowerPoint presentations. They are truly impressive.

I have also started encouraging students to incorporate images into their research papers, which adds another level of creativeness and professionalism to their papers. They like images (and look at them all the time), so putting them into their own texts is not hard for most. (They also have to learn how to cite these, so they are not plagiarizing the images.) But they are surprised that they are “allowed” to do it. It seems to me with the rise of computer accessibility and knowledge that this (incorporating images and words together) is a natural evolution.

On a separate class/use of technology–in my Critical Thinking (Engl 11) class last semester, I used a book called “Snoop,” which discusses how you can analyze a person from her/his things. One of the projects we did was analyze MySpace and facebook pages to come to deeper understandings of the people who created them.  To do an in-depth job with their analysis, they had to pay attention to many small details (and write about them), and then discuss them as signifiers of the person’s personality. It was very interesting, and my students did a very good job.

I ask students to analyze a letter which poses a particular argument to a specific audience.  It asks students to help each other in groups read for inference, research organizations, and answer the question “why post this letter as an ‘open letter’ online?  The response has been good and the exercise seems to have relavance for students as they prepare their own argument letter.

The question I have is about the teacher-centered nature of the activity since I was choosing the letters for them.  I have tried asking them to choose an online argument themselves, but I end up with things like Pepsi advertisements (an argument sure, but not a complex one worthy of thoughtful analysis) or rants to the editor about a student party that got out of hand (an example, I guess, of an unsupported argument).

The NCTE edict that 21st century literacy demands that students not only create but analyze texts does much to the ideas of what a text IS (Smith talks about this in her reading a little later).  There are a lot of advantages to this for students entering a global workforce.  They get a head-start in analyzing the visual as well as language-based arguments that bombard us in an online world.  Once they are good at that, I like to think, they can use this skill to move themselves where they want to go in the world professionally and personally.

I feel like I use a lot of technology in my writing classroom.  I use it to instruct on a daily basis and model different forms of writing, and I require my students to write their final versions on a computer and look up information.  However, when I look at this list of 21st century literacies, I think I only really get to number 1 — develop proficiency with the tools of technology.  I guess we do more than that — I get 21st century literacy confused with technology.  We definitely do a lot of building relationships to solve problems (#2), and we design and share information to meet a variety of purposes (#3).  Not sure if we do that for a global community though. 

I’m having trouble picturing what it looks like to “manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information,” and I’m really not sure what a multimedia text is and what it is not.

It seems to me that the most important one is the last — the ethical responsibilities — and we don’t do enough of that. 

As I have read only “Diving In,” my response will reflect my ignorance of the other articles.  

However, purpose seems to be what the writer only addressed at the end of the article. I like to think that that should be the driving force of everything we do in our classrooms. I think when I write my syllabus, I try to clarify for my students and me what we are trying to achieve. No matter what aspect of writing I am teaching I always try to keep in mind that clarity in writing reflects clarity in thinking, and so assisting the students to think critically  is the basic objective that underlies all our activities. This does not mean that we engage in deep philosophical reflection on the eternal verities; we operate at a much simpler level. An example is that I would write a badly structured sentence on the board.  The meaning is unclear and the students suggest the various meanings it may have.  Then they decide how to rephrase it and write sentences which each make one of the possible meanings clear.  Another simple tool we use to encourage reflection is to apply the journalist’s questions to readings ;  I also encourage students to apply these questions to their own writing.  I think it makes writing assignments more meaningful to them.   

With regard to exigency and context, I keep the writing sample I get from each student on the first day of class. This lets me know something about each student’s objective in college and also reflects the predominant writing challenges.   I refer to the writing samples during the semester so that I can monitor students’ progress.