Text message, #Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
We all know these digital based programs; in fact, we probably have an account of own for most of them. I'll admit, I have all four. I text daily, Twitter occasionally (#slacker #wannabe #don'tseethepoint), Facebook constantly, and check Instagram at least once a day. How about you? If your text messages, tweets, pictures and status updates were just deleted for a week, how would you communicate outside of the spoken word? We'd be back to snail mail and knocking on doors.
We do not live in a traditional world anymore, and even more so than us, our students live in an almost solely digital world. It is time we implement digital writing into our curricula. When we tweet, we are writing for our followers (#ihavenofollowersbesidesmymom). We post on Facebook to reach out to our friends, acquaintances and occasionally people we don't even remember how we know them anymore. However, in the classroom our students write papers, respones, poems and short stories for one person: the teacher. By simply searching Google we have hundreds of people's opinions at our fingertips, but our classrooms are still designed for one person.
It is time we include digital writing in our lessons. It is an injustice to our students if we do otherwise.
There is a place for technological means such as blogs, videos, picture essays and social media in writing, but the key here is, in my opinion, they should be supplemental not fundamental. There is a place for improvement and innovation, but why try to fix what isn’t broken. In my opinion, students now days need more basics and less complication.
ReplyDelete[I] spend the beginning of the school year teaching my 7th grade students to use organized, even formulaic, writing structures. Once they're comfortable with the structure, students can "focus on creativity and analysis instead of worrying about where to put each sentence. When asked to write in digital format, students tend to instinctively return to that structure.
DeleteThe nature of writing has shifted in recent years. There are very few—if any—jobs these days for which employees produce lengthy handwritten reports. News stories are an integration of words, images, audio, and website links. College applications are all online, and some schools are beginning to accept videos in place of essays. A friendly letter is more likely composed on a smartphone than on stationary.
ReplyDeleteTo me the basic purpose of writing is to convey ideas to people. However, with the innovation and proliferation of technology in our lives, our ability to convey ideas to others has grown. The best example of this evolution to me is Pinterest. The amount of ideas that are shared daily through Pinterest is astonishing. While I completely agree that kids need to learn the fundamentals in school, it might be just as beneficial for kids to also learn how to use these alternative methods to convey their ideas in an effective manner. Technology is only going to become more integrated in every aspect of our lives and those that can successfully use these tools will be a step ahead of those that cannot. As an accountant, the best example I can give is how we have evolved our methods of accounting. We went from counting on our fingers to the abacus to the calculator and now to Excel spreadsheets and beyond. The basic purpose of it all is to count things, but as the tools have advanced our ability to count things has increased exponentially. I believe that our ability to convey ideas will increase in a similar manner with these new technologies. If we can incorporate these tools into our educational system our children will be better prepared to excel in the world of the future.
ReplyDeleteI love your perspective on mathematics. That is a perfect example of how technology has been integrated into other subjects of education. Without further technology in math, we'd all still be counting on our fingers as adults, but because we accepted and integrated a calculator and more into our math classes we can do so much more than just count with fingers. So, why hasn't the English department advanced? English teachers need to take a look at their classes and content and realize that they can benefit just as the math department has because of the use of technology.
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