For February 26

As I sit down to write this, I realize that we are all enacting digital writing on an article about digital writing; dare I say it, having a meta-digital writing experience!

That being said I found Beach's introduction/piece a little unsatisfactory. Since I'm going to be using blogs and wikis in my classes at Central, I was looking for some more concrete evidence, or just something else, I'm not really sure to be honest. I liked the example of using the blogs at Edina H.S and how the students "were much more engaged than they had been in their face-to-face discussions...students' own questions were driving their discussions" (Beach et al 1); it made me question the use and purpose of the blogs at Central. Are my students there getting to this level of engagement or depth of response with their blogs, or are they simply another medium through which to write a structured assignment? Is it my responsibility to change the level of usage (or depth of responses) as a student teacher or do I merely maintain the use? I know that for many students access is a problem and I wish that this article had addressed that in a little more depth; perhaps it is explained more fully in the actual text but it seemed to me that there weren't a whole lot of solutions for low income schools, except to get as much lab time as possible. Beach and company write that "when students have their own laptops in classrooms, they are seven times more likely to use computers, 40 times more likely to do their own composing...had higher levels of motivation than student with access to shared lab/cart computer access" (Beach et al 14). To me, this seems like a no brainer! If students have the computers available to them every day, of course it's more likely that a teacher will incorporate them into the class and increased use will cause increased comfort which would increase motivation to use computers (since the proficiency is higher)!

I feel that as of late, my journaling has been more of ranting that positive comments but maybe that's just the way I have to approach everything--which a super critical eye instead of taking it in aesthetically...*shrugs* I liked the Beach article because it really makes me question the use of the blogs and wikis in the class I'm going to be student teaching in. I hope that I'll be able to incorporate the use of the blogs more, but I understand that access is a problem. Access is one thing that I'm not sure how to address. Do I make exceptions for kids who didn't have a chance to type it up? Go to the computer lab? Give them a pass to go to the library to type it up and miss class time? Or are the expectations high enough that students will take the time to make arrangements to work after school, at a local library or at a friend's house to get the paper/blog typed up?

Links of the week:
Class wikis for the courses I'll be teaching at Central, an actual use of digital writing and digital literacy.
http://centralenglish12.pbwiki.com/
http://10ib.pbwiki.com/