Student Voice and TEDxOntarioEd

I’ve sat down to type my reflection on TedxOntarioEd every evening since it took place on April 9th. I’ve written about what it was like to get to know the amazing organizing team of Jamie Weir, Ben Hazzard, Rodd Lucier, Sharon Drummond and Colin Jagoe. I’ve written about the speakers, motivation and meeting people from my PLN for the first time. My words cannot do any of this justice. They seem dry and flat.

So, inspired by Ben Hazzard’s blog post, I now choose to incorporate my thoughts on student voice and TEDx with images from the night and feedback on my writing, provided by my friend Stacy Someville @stacesome (seen below with her husband, Vince).


Me: Last Friday night educators gathered for TEDxOntarioEd. Throughout the evening we heard from adults, or former students. Tim Long, writer and executive producer for The Simpsons, reflected on his experiences as a student in the gifted program at South Huron District High School. Jesse Brown, host and co-producer for Search Engine, reflected on what it was like as a student who enjoyed and honored texts that weren’t valued by his high school teachers. Paul Finkelstein, Stratford Northwestern teacher and slow food advocate, shared his old report cards with us (and apparently with his principal) and recognized that he now creates a class that he would have enjoyed as a student.

















My friend, and Avon Maitland's student success co-ordinator, Stacy Somerville, wrote her master’s thesis on the ways that our school stories shape us as teachers and as people. At the TEDxOntarioEd after party, she spent a lot of time talking about this, but even more time talking about Tim Ludwig, a student presenter from Petrolia. Tim's story isn’t a reflection. It is now. It is his reality, his everyday life. The pause in his speech while he struggled to find words and his place was, for me, symbolic of the need to listen to our students.

Stacy: Yes! And not fill in the blanks with our thoughts and what we think he is thinking. And wait time. Someone else mentioned time - giving people the 'permission' to take time to learn.

Me: We were a room full of educators. If we had jumped in, if we had interrupted Tim while he struggled to find his thoughts, what would we have said? Would our words, thoughts or instructions have changed Tim’s narrative? Instead, we listened and let him find his way of constructing the story he wanted to tell us.


















Stacy: And I had goosebumps and a big lump in my throat. Love that kid. To speak fearlessly and honestly - very powerful.

Stacy is right. Our school stories shape who we are, and for our students, they will shape who they will become. We should spend more time listening.

Co-constructing Criteria? Try Developing an Acronym with Students

In an effort to improve student responses to lab questions, Peggy, a Science teacher at Stratford Central Secondary School, developed a strategy for co-constructing criteria. Instead of creating a large anchor chart or poster, Peggy had students create what she calls bumper stickers. These are small pieces of paper that students will use as anchors, but keep in their notebooks.

Here are the steps Peggy used to co-construct criteria with her grade 10 Science class, followed by a short video of Peggy explaining the activity.

1. Use an activity to create random groups or pairs.

2. In groups or pairs, students brainstorm 3 or 4 steps or strategies that they follow when answering questions. Students use small white boards and dry erase markers to record their brainstorming.

3. Once the group agrees on their criteria for answering questions, one group member transfers the steps or strategies to the blackboard.

4. As a class, the students and teacher organize the information, grouping like ideas with like ideas, until they have distilled the criteria to 6 points.

5. The class then comes up with a word for each point and they use these words to create an acronym.

Peggy's class came up with the acronym SPLASH

S – Snap the question (identify the given and requested information)
P- No pronouns. Be specific.
L – Language. Use scientific language.
A – What is the question asking? Am I answering the question?
S – Support my thinking with evidence like diagrams.
H – Use half of the question in my answer (wording).


Peggy explains her activity and SPLASH in this short video clip.

I'm very sad to share the news of Peggy's death just a little over a week after we filmed and posted this video. Please consider this blog post and video as a tribute to a truly exceptional teacher. Peggy, we will miss you.



Photo by

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_gin/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Will Our Digital Lives Become Digital Histories?

A recent episode of Spark on CBC radio made me think about the way we teach history. The program dealt, in part, with using digital technology to preserve memories, heritage and culture. In a particularly poignant story, Meryl Swiatek recalls finding a cassette tape of her mother reading children’s stories nearly nine years after her mother died of cancer. Meryl notes the importance of technology in preserving the memory of her mom and comments,

“. . . that got me thinking about how my life is preserved. I have almost 1000 twitter updates . . . and a handful of videos on YouTube. I preserve myself and my life digitally every single day without even thinking about it.”

And that got me thinking about the first time I ventured down this thought path. It started as a conversation about narrative when Alec Couros @courosa helped me recognize how the digital medium changes story telling.

And that is where I was stuck for oh . . . 5 months.
Although we weren't discussing history in these tweets (above) , that is where this has ended up for me.

Digital History

The internet has no shortage of digital history resources. Digital history involves the use of digital media to preserve, present and study history. Scanned archives, audio files, timelines and interactive maps are examples of digital history and history teachers are using these resources to bring history to life for students. But there is no reason why history students shouldn’t contribute to the digital history ‘pool’. Ideally, they should be creating digital history resources by capturing oral histories and archiving documents and they should learn these research and archiving skills in their history classes. The CBC Spark episode referenced at the beginning of this post provides suggestions and ideas for scanning and capturing audio, including interviewing tips.

Currently, digital history seems confined to websites or blogs as public museums or places that house resources for the study of history. It has yet to fully embrace the idea of digital texts as primary sources. If we are preserving ourselves and our lives digitally every single day, these records will be the historical evidence we use tomorrow.

Shouldn’t students’ research skills shift to consider digital resources, like websites, blogs and tweets, as historical texts? If a diary entry is a primary source, a blog post is a primary source. Shouldn’t students understand how they differ (hint: audience and purpose) and how that shapes the reading of these texts?

Will political historians consider tweets? What will the future make of tweets like this one by President Obama (or his ghost tweeter) which may have been read by as many as 3, 477, 140 of his Twitter followers?

What happens to the study of history in a world of living documents?

What happens to social history in the world of social media?

What happens when our students ask “how do we reference twitter in an essay?”

Please share your thoughts on our digital lives becoming digital histories.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/danisarda/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Classroom Structure and Social Learning

Last week I was at St Marys DCVI for one of our board's teacher inquiry meetings. At the end of the session, Richard Farmer, an English teacher with an interest in technology and cooperative learning, asked me if I would like to see some of the structural changes he has made in his classroom.

Richard does not have expensive, new materials in his room. He has salvaged tables from around the school, but the arrangement of his classroom space speaks to the value he places on social learning. Here are two video clips and some pictures. Richard has given me permission to share.

Effective Teaching Practices for Reaching Boys

In the December/January issue of Phi Delta Kappan, Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley explore effective teaching practices for reaching boys.  In their study, they looked for common characteristics of effective practice reported by a large sample of teachers and boys.  Teachers were asked to recount the story of an effective practice they have used and male students were asked to tell “the story of a class experience that stood out as being especially memorable.”  Schools from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, South Africa and Australia participated in the study.
 

Reichert and Hawley note the following:

1.  Boys are relational learners.

Teachers who experience success with boys emphasize the relational dimension of teaching, “regardless of the subject”.  The boys Reichert and Hawley interviewed recognized and acknowledged when a teacher was open “to what interested, excited, and worried them.”  

2.  Boys elicit the kinds of teaching they need.

If either the content or the way it is conveyed to boys is not ‘right’ boys will disengage.  As Reichert and Hawley explain, “boys will engage in either passive inattention or diverting disruption.”  The teacher will know when he/she has made the proper adjustments when “better engagement, sustained effort and mastery on the boys’ part” is evident.  

3.   Lessons must have an element that interests students and holds that interest.  Examples include unexpected surprise, kinesthetic activities or competition. 

What can we do in Avon Maitland?
 

·    Continue to focus on knowing the learner through individualized conversations with students. 

·    Use class profiles, interest surveys and student feedback when designing lessons and activities.

·    Create fluid and flexible lessons that allow us to make the proper adjustments when we see that students are not engaged rather than expect students to conform to a specific teacher’s prescribed approach. 

·    Recognize that student interests and readiness may vary from semester to semester and from class to class.

·    Differentiate instruction based on student readiness and interest. 

In order for this to happen, the teacher must be an empathetic, reflective practitioner and willing to take risks and try new teaching and learning strategies.

Creativity and Critical Thinking: An Unlikely Comparison?

Sir Ken Robinson and Steve Martin

As I began sorting through the idea of creativity and critical thinking, I remembered watching Steve Martin’s biography. In 1993, Martin wrote a play called Picasso at the Lapin Agile in which he creates a fictional encounter between Picasso and Einstein in the year 1904. In Martin’s words, “the play attempts to explain, in a light-hearted way, the similarity of the creative process involved in great leaps of imagination in art and science.” Picasso brags about his artistic ability, commenting that it is all in the wrist and the wrist starts in the head. He says, “If I think it, I can draw it.” Einstein confesses that he works “the same way” and makes “beautiful things with a pencil.”

I started thinking about Picasso at the Lapin Agile after reading this statement by Sir Ken Robinson:

A big part of being creative is looking for new ways of doing things within whatever activity you’re involved in. 

Einstein and Picasso did this.

Robinson also states that you "can be creative in math, science, music, dance, cuisine, teaching, running a family or engineering. Because creativity is a process of having original ideas that have value."

Martin understands that the creative process applies to any activity (as well he should, since he is an art collector, musician, comedian, actor, author, director and playwright).

If you are interested, watch part of Charleston Stage’s version of Picasso at the Lapin Agile (a little explicit language at the beginning). If you cue the video to 8:35 you will see Picasso and Einstein compete to make something beautiful with their pencils. When they are done they argue.

Picasso: Mine touches the heart

Einstein: Mine touches the head

Picasso: Mine will change the future

Einstein: And mine won’t?


Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feuilllu/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Exploring the Relationship Between Creativity and Critical Thinking

One of the problems that I face in my job as a curriculum co-ordinator is making sense of large amounts of new information and research, particularly if the new information pushes against some of my previously held beliefs and understandings. I am also challenged to turn a sea of information into a clear picture or message I can share with others.  If I exposed my process for sorting through information, you would see that I take a lot of tangents, engage people in conversations that help me verbalize my thoughts, and make connections to texts that provide examples, or non examples, to help me clarify my thinking.

Over the next few posts, I am going to expose my thinking as I try to sort through something that Sir Ken Robinson said about creativity and critical thinking in his a September interview for ASCD’s Educational Leadership.  He stated that “people see creativity and critical thinking as being opposed.”  I am guilty of this.  When I think of critical thinking, I think of analyzing and deconstructing, questioning and challenging.  When I think of creativity I see inspiration and the formulation or making of something. I agree with Robinson when he says, “you can’t be creative if you don’t do something” and I also agree when he goes on to explain how creativity applies to any subject or activity.  In this particular interview, however, he alludes to the idea that creativity and critical thinking are not opposites, but he doesn’t help me reconcile my definitions of creativity and critical thinking.  Add to this all of the reading I have been doing about 21^st century skills (including creativity and critical thinking) and my thinking is muddy. 

If you want to wade through the mud with me, click here to listen to an excerpt of Why Creativity Now? A Conversation with Sir Ken Robinson or click here for the full interview.  


Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfv/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Wordle - Key Words from all 2009 Open School Network Posts

To Reflect on our work in 2009, I created a wordle from all 2009 Open School Network posts. I simply pasted the text from all 2009 posts into wordle.  The more frequently a word occurs, the larger the word appears in the image. I think that this wordle image speaks to our focus on improving student writing in the Avon Maitland DSB.  It is also interesting that the word "students" ended up at the centre, since students are at the centre of all that we do in education.

Click on the image for a closer look and try playing with wordle yourself.  Many teachers are using it in the classroom to help students edit for overused words or to create poetry.  How could you use wordle?


Image by http://www.wordle.net/.

Big Ideas: Character, Environmental Education and Equity should include conversations about Technology

Beginning last spring, a group of board consultants, administrators and curriculum resource teachers, met to explore how we would implement the big ideas coming forward in many of the Ontario Ministry of Education documents.  Our guiding question for our work is: What are the skills, knowledge, and principles needed to live and to work for sustainable development?  Although technology does not have its own ministry document and receives remarkably little attention in any of the ministry materials, we felt it was crucial to our conversations about sustainability.  My sense is that if the ministry is rolling out documents around character education, environmental education and equity, to name a few, the internet should be a significant part of these conversations.

Character Education

If teaching students about respect, citizenship and leadership is important in our brick and mortar spaces, it is just as important in our virtual spaces.  I recently received a letter home from my daughter’s school explaining that someone had generated an email with a list of girls’ names (called a ‘hoe list’ note the spelling).  This list had circulated online inviting students to add new names and ‘rank’ the girls. The students involved are in grade 7 and many were very upset.  I am pleased to report that the school is treating this as a learning experience for the children and an opportunity to talk about character and online behaviour.  Personally, I’m interested in how this event differs from a note being passed around the school.  It isn’t quite the same thing.  The action of passing the email version of a note takes place outside of school time.  It would be interesting if the outcome saw these same students participate in a online activity to reinforce positive character attributes.  Anytime, anywhere learning applies to the unwritten curriculum too. 

Environment: Our Ecological Footprint

This is not an area of strength for me.  I rarely reflect on where my possessions ‘go to die’.  Yet, in the past 8 years we, as a family, have gone through 1 Personal Computer, 3 laptops, a netbook, a number of cell phones, satellite radio devices, and much more if I move into what we did with our VCRs or the many MP3 players that were lost.  So, there is an issue around materials consumption and waste when we make a connection between the environment and technology, but also around the energy required to operate home/office computers and data centres.  Internet data centres require energy to operate and to run cooling systems.  Bill St. Arnaud claims that the internet is the fastest growing source of CO2 to the atmosphere.  This doesn’t mean that companies aren’t taking a green approach; many, such as google have developed zero-carbon policies. 

Equity and Universal Access: Who gets access and how?

There are many logistical issues that impact internet access, such as limited bandwidth in remote areas (Northern Ontario is a local example).  When we think globally, Africa is an example of a continent with limited internet access.  According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, “Africa’s only connection to the internet backbone is an undersea cable running from Portugal along Africa’s west coast.”  Add to this that

• monopolies held by telecommunications companies make internet access very expensive;
• the hope of another fiber optics project was stalled for political reasons;
• East Africa is primarily dependent on satellite connections for internet access;
• “land-locked countries” such as Rwanda, “face a special challenge as they will only be able to access bandwidth via an intermediary country.”

When we talk about equity and internet access, we have to ask, “who gets what content and how?”  Even when we reflect on recent events in Iran we recognize that this is an issue as countries develop different regulations around accessing content on the internet. Our schools are a microcosm of this issue when they block sites like YouTube.  They are doing more than inconveniencing teachers and students, more than sending a message about internet safety and undesirable content. They are embodying the kind censorship that we fear and that we would not tolerate if imposed on a national level in Canada.  They are preventing the students who need internet access the most from learning with and about the internet (I am referring to those students who may not have internet access at home, or may not have permission to use the home computer). 

Other Equity Questions

• In what languages is content available?
• Will all countries be supportive of the free use of knowledge?

I want to mention that our Big Ideas group doesn’t focus on technology alone.  We delve into ministry documents that we are expected to implement and topics like student voice, aboriginal education and inclusivity. The important part is that we are working at making connections and trying to incorporate these big ideas into our work with teachers, but we would be remiss if we did not make connections to technology.  I welcome your thoughts on the big ideas and hope that you will push my thinking.

Compare internet world statistics

Read more about internet access in Rwanda

Listen to Bill St. Arnaud on CBC Radio as he discusses how Canada’s broadband access compares to the rest of the world. 

See how Google is reducing their footprint

Picture by http://www.flickr.com/photos/kubina/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Avon Maitland Web 2.0 Experts at ECOO – Second String Steps-Up for PD Day

Tomorrow I'm giving a presentation on using Jing, Bitstrips, Google Apps and Glogster in the classroom. This wouldn't be an issue if I felt confident about it. But, it's a board PA day, our Web 2.0 experts (like @msjweir) are at the ECOO conference and teachers want PD that fits with 21^st century learning (surprise). When I expressed my concern about the level of my knowledge with these programs I was told (by a few teachers) that teachers don't want to hear from an 'expert'. They want to hear from someone who is learning and closer to understanding the challenges that teachers face with using technology (the truth is, their choices are limited this week).

Is this true? I began thinking about the people whom I admire for their use of technology in the classroom and to generalize about their characteristics and teaching styles.

Our tech adopters are willing to take risks. They are reflective practitioners, so when something does not go as planned with their teaching, they are able to problem solve and try again without any major blows to their egos. They believe in the pedagogy behind 21^st century learning and work for inquiry-based lessons; collaborative learning; and the analysis and creation of media. But they would never call themselves experts. They see themselves as continually learning and they have a genuine interest in doing so. If a challenge arises, they would use their Personal Learning Networks (PLN) to tap into or co-create the expertise required for a given question or situation. They use the internet to access people, and people, collectively, offer expertise.

So, in the spirit of the collective, my PD day audience and I will explore Jing, Bitstrips, Google Apps and Glogster together, using my fake class wiki, new netbooks and the wireless access now available in many of our high schools. Words of wisdom and student work samples are welcome @kimmcgill

What Does Reading Look Like?

Literacy activities look different in subjects across the curriculum and I have done a poor job of modeling literacy strategies in subjects other than English or arts-based courses.

A few years ago I was invited to present the think aloud strategy to my colleagues at a staff meeting. A think aloud is a strategy where teachers model their thinking and decoding while reading aloud to students. For the presentation, I wanted the reader to be unfamiliar with the text they were reading, so I found an English teacher to perform the strategy for the staff. That part was easy. The difficulty was in finding a text that would challenge the English teacher and be relevant to non-English teachers. It was important that the text not be too 'Englishy'. My audience represented various subject disciplines, and therefore expertise in different types of texts. Since the high school I taught at had an amazing Technical Education program I decided to find a 'tech text' for the think aloud.

Transportation Tech Class

I approached the Transportation Tech teacher in his classroom, car on hoist, kids in coveralls, music playing and me in my high heels stepping over tools and looking concerned – a funny picture I'm sure. The teacher welcomed me and I explained the upcoming presentation. Then I asked him, "What does reading and writing look like in your class?" He walked over to an area of the shop with desks, a blackboard, and a shelf holding a class set of textbooks. He pulled one textbook off the shelf and opened it to a chapter.

"This is what we read," he said. I scanned the text noting that key vocabulary words were bolded and notated in the margins. I could work with this. "And this is what we write." He turned the pages to the end of the chapter to show me chapter questions, but as he did, the book cracked like the spine had never been broken in.

"How long have you had these books for?" I asked.

"4 years."

"They've never been used?"

"Yes they have. When the kids do something wrong I make them read and answer questions for their detention."

I found this funny and disheartening at the same time. So I asked, "Why did you tell me that the textbook was what you read in class?"

He confessed, "I thought it was what you wanted to hear."

Then, the teacher walked out into the shop and picked up a piece of paper from the floor. He looked doubtful. It had a footprint on it and greasy smudges. He handed it to me and I couldn't understand the diagram, the vocabulary or the instructions. I could make out the image of a tire, but all of the other items on the diagram meant nothing to me. "This is what we read. We download it off the database, print it and put it on the floor because we're working under the car. This isn't going to help your presentation."

But it Did

The teacher had provided me with a text that was authentic to Transportation Tech. Since then I have learned about other literacy activities that Transportation Tech teachers use, like work orders, log books and diagnostic trees. These are all texts that students would never learn from me, an English teacher.

Personally, I want to understand what communication looks like in disciplines other than my own (History and English). Literacy activities look different in subjects across the curriculum and I have done a poor job of modeling literacy strategies in subjects other than English or arts-based courses. It's no wonder some teachers resist the idea that they are teachers of literacy. Many have never seen themselves in the examples provided and often secondary school literacy coaches and literacy consultants are former English teachers who are not comfortable modeling instructional strategies in subjects outside of their own disciplines.

Back to the Think Aloud

Admittedly, the think aloud did not go well for the poor English teacher who did not have any background knowledge that would allow her to decode the text used in the Transportation Tech class. But the discussion with the whole staff was incredible. We talked about background knowledge, making meaning and the importance of subject area teachers in teaching discipline-specific literacy skills to students. Most importantly, we valued the literacy skills the Transportation Tech teachers possess and the fact that only these teachers can impart their subject-specific literacy skills to their students. We need to do more of this.

What does reading look like in your class and what is happening in your school to support all teachers becoming literacy teachers?

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfala/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

First Meetings with Writing Across the Curriculum Teams Underway

I am almost through my first round of visits with our school's Writing Across the Curriculum teams and, while it feels comfortable and familiar for me as a facilitator, most participating teachers did not take part in the project last year. This is an opportunity to bring job embedded professional learning to an entirely new group of Avon Maitland teachers and to build on the learning from last year's groups.

What do you need to know about our WAC teams this year?

1. Every high school has a Writing Across the Curriculum team.
   
2. Teams are comprised of 5 – 8 teachers representing different subjects. 3 of the teams within our board have cross panel representation (7-12 teachers).
   
3. Each team has a Science teacher, Tech Ed teacher and Canada World Studies teacher.
   
4. Although we call ourselves Writing Across the Curriculum Teams, teachers explore written communication within the context of their discipline.
   
5. Teachers develop an inquiry question that focuses on improving student writing. This question may change in second semester as timetables change.
   
6. The work is integrated into to what the teachers are already teaching and where they are in their curriculum (content).
   
7. The focus in on the 'how' of teaching and assessing.
   
8. Teachers focus on one of their classes, so the work is manageable.
   
9. Teachers will select 3 students for whom they will collect a continuum of work. This work, with student names removed, will ground our discussions at inquiry team meetings.
   
10. Teachers will try new instructional strategies and differentiate instruction.
    

Goals for the first meeting:

1. Establish an understanding of the kind of work we will be doing.
   

   Inquiry-based; critical friends; developed from real needs/dilemmas in our classes; focused on writing; examining records of practice.
   

2. Broaden our definition of literacy, reading, text and writing and establish a common understanding of these terms.
   

   Teams have decided that reading is decoding, understanding, interpreting and making connections. Text is anything a student has to decode, interpret and understand. Text could be a novel, handout, film, plans, a map, art, dance, etc. Writing can occur to help students acquire information (input), such as note making. Writing can occur when students process information (we call this 'writing to learn' or writing for learning) and writing can be a product that reveals what the student knows and can do (output).
   

Teachers will spend the remainder of October

1. Honing their inquiry questions and direction.
   
2. Developing and implementing diagnostic assessments that relate to their inquiries.
   
3. Collecting work for their selected three students.
   

More Process Writing (I’m Writing to Learn)

I'm still stuck on the writing process question: does the changing nature of text alter the writing process, or does it merely alter how we teach the writing process. Today I grabbed a copy of Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools (by National Writing Project and Carl Nagin) from the bookshelf at work. The following three excerpts (quoted directly from the book) stood out for me.

Excerpt One
The writing process is anything a writer does from the time the idea came until the piece is completed or abandoned. There is no particular order. So it's not effective to teach writing process in a lock-step, rigid manner.
- Donald Graves

Excerpt Two
Most research today supports the view that writing is recursive, that it does not proceed linearly but instead cycles and recycles through subprocesses that can be described this way:

1. Planning (generating ideas, setting goals and organizing)
   
2. Translating (turning plans into written language)
   
3. Reviewing (evaluating and revising)

Excerpt Three

A mark of the writing process movement was that it grappled with the messiness of composing itself. Many writers don't know their subject well until they've written a draft. . . As author Tracy Kidder has said, "I write because I don't know what I really think about anything until I get it down on paper."

Perhaps the writing process hasn't changed with technology, but the way we teach it should. I'm flooded with a wave of ideas for modeling the writing process, for explicitly showing how ideas evolve and focus narrows with each piece or revision. As that focus becomes a clearer, language and word choice change. . . I still wonder about what needs to be at the heart of a writing assignment for this process to be authentic?

Rethinking the Writing Process

When I talk with English teachers about how they teach the writing process, they outline various methods of brainstorming and planning and then share samples of graphic organizers. Students are expected to create first drafts (often written by hand, but sometimes typed) and final drafts typed with corrections and improvements. Most English teachers in our school board require students to submit all of their process work with the final product and the process work is assessed as part of the assignment (included on the rubric).

But I don’t write this way. Why would I expect my students to?

I think it is because I can’t imagine or understand the alternative.

When I was in university (the first time) I used the ‘traditional’ writing process, because I didn’t grow up writing on a computer. I was taught how to plan and draft and when I completed that process I booked time in the school’s computer lab. Upon my return to university 6 years later, I typed everything on my PC, but I still had to print copies so I could revise and edit. I couldn’t read my errors on the screen. Now, writing just seems ‘to happen’ on my laptop. I know I am using a process, but it seems fluid and keeps pace with my thoughts. I revise. I move text around, but I don’t think of this as happening in stages or steps. My writing process has changed with technology. As the nature of text has changed, so has the nature of writing.

I’m honestly struggling to envision the teaching of this new writing process.

My questions are:

1. What does your writing process look like?

2. Is it the same as it was ten years ago?

3. What does this mean for English teachers who teach students the writing process?

4. How might we teach this explicitly?

5. How might we model it?