Writing in the 21st Century

[Will Allen]

What are everyone's thoughts about writing in the 21st century? Will the continued exponential growth of technology dramatically affect how students write and/or perceive writing in their academic life?

[Mary Burke Shaffer]

I think the changes have already arrived! Students write much more on a daily basis than ever before, they just don't realize that's what they're doing. My students (7th & 8th graders) often tell me that they "don't write" unless someone (the teacher) makes them, but then I see them two minutes later busy sending a text to a friend. Texting is certainly a nontraditional literacy, but one that I feel has possibilities for further academic exploration.

[Pam Downing]

The best writers will still be the best thinkers. Technology is a tool we use to communicate, but great writing comes from the deepest of human thought, emotions, and reactions. Reflection on purpose, and especially QUALITY, will become more critical to our instruction as quantity of writing increases exponentially.

[Cindy O'Donnell-Allen]

I think Pam is right; kids are writing more than ever. At least at our house they are. My daughter has gotten hooked on fan fiction. I asked her recently for a ballpark figure of how many words she generates on a given entry. "Oh, about 3,000," she said. Oh, to be young again...

The files I've uploaded confirm Pam's hunches and have also helped me think about what this means for us as teachers. They're worth checking out.

"Writing in the 21st Century" is by Kathleen Blake Yancey, a past president of the National Council of English. She traces the historical development of writing instruction by using some pretty cool images--old textbooks, photographs, facebook images, screenshots.

The other--"Writing, Technology, and Teens"--is a report by the National Commission on Writing that goes straight to the source by asking kids about the impact of technology on their writing as well as their feelings about writing instruction.

Both are pretty enlightening.

[Bud Hunt]

I'm about to start work on a resource for the National Writing Project on the subject of connective writing - what is it and how might we teach it. I'm so excited and so freaking scared about the idea of creating this resource that I don't know quite where to begin.

I thought I'd share a resource that is the core of what I'll be working from. Might be useful to you - and perhaps you'll have some thoughts about what bits of this work would be important to make it into the NWP resource. Here's a link to my current thinking on connective writing.

[Cindy O'Donnell-Allen]

Always fun to read a piece of connective writing about, well, connective writing.

This is interesting stuff, Bud. I especially like the final section because it elegantly distills many of the posts you'd listed above.

A question: Will the NWP resource before for teachers' thinking or teachers' teaching or both? I'm sure you've already thought about this, but Will and I have some version of this discussion occasionally about teachers' need for naming things (i.e., a blog is a place for remembering, connecting, etc.) and kids' more intuitive sense of a given technological tool's purpose that they get just from playing around with it.

A case in point: Last year, I was working with some of Beth Lewis's kids on editing podcasts using Garage Band. I'd played around on it quite a bit myself, and since we had a limited time to help the kids learn how to use it, I thought I'd make a little 2-page handout called "Tech Talk" to explain the basics (attached). I think Beth found it useful, but the kids basically looked at it, smiled politely, and set it aside. They then proceeded to teach themselves how to use Garage Band on their own and only asked us for help on a need-to-know basis.

From that experience, I think I learned that the resource I created was probably more useful for teachers' thinking than it was for actual use in teaching, so that's how I'm contextualizing it in my book.
Tech Talk.doc
Does that make sense? I guess the question I keep coming back to is how much of our thinking about a given tool (e.g., a blog) and its purposes do we need to make explicit in our teaching, and how much do kids pick up implicitly through actually playing around with a blog?

I wonder if this in some ways may be parallel to the research on teaching writing that shows that every form of instruction, except for decontextualized grammar instruction, improves student writing, though some forms are more effective than others. (I think they go in this order from least to most effective: models, scales, process approaches, and environmental mode--which is a task-based, process/product combo). If this is also the case with technology, then just telling or trying wouldn't be sufficient, would it?

Do you see any connections here, Bud? What do you think?

Bud Hunt said:

I'm about to start work on a resource for the National Writing Project on the subject of connective writing - what is it and how might we teach it. I'm so excited and so freaking scared about the idea of creating this resource that I don't know quite where to begin.
I thought I'd share a resource that is the core of what I'll be working from. Might be useful to you - and perhaps you'll have some thoughts about what bits of this work would be important to make it into the NWP resource. Here's a link to my current thinking on connective writing.

[Lowell Wightman]

I believe role modeling and holding students accountable are the strongest most lasting influences on writing for any century. Therefore if students are writing (and they are) I have more questions.

Are enough students writing? Who defines what is the right number of students to be writing? Should the number of students writing be simply stated as "everyone"? Would students write without a model? Is reading the works of a good author enough to motivate one to writing?

I have answers to some of my questions and none of my answers are complete or bring me resolution. I know only what does not work for me. I still use a pencil and paper and I do my best writing when I can see someone practice and gain insights and motivation.

So I will not give students the excuse- I don't have a computer, so give me your best printing. I will also not let them give up because they think they are not good at writing (academic) so the student says to me, "When will I ever have to do this?". So I give them practical examples about where they will be asked to write or better yet communicate.

Are students writing? My answer is yes. Are enough students writing? I say no. What students should be writing? I say every student should be with any and every tool they can get their hands on. Why should students write? Students should write because they can and more importantly the student who writes is asking questions, connecting thoughts and exploring.