Can I Call That Good Writing?

If you've spent time teaching students the proper format for writing anything, be it an essay or a lab report, you have probably noticed that it is impossible to separate the thinking from the form. Teachers have a lot of questions about this, because in Ontario the subject achievement charts used to guide assessment and evaluation, separate thinking from communication.

Let's use procedural writing as an example. When we teach students the format for writing a recipe or a lab report, we are teaching them a framework for communicating information and ideas (thinking). However, as a science teacher from one Writing Across the Curriculum team noted,

I have a student who uses all of the appropriate terminology and flawless format
when writing a lab, but when I read what she has written it's obvious that she doesn't understand the concepts that she's writing about. Her critical thinking and analysis is flawed, so her lab doesn't make sense. Under communication, I have to give her a reasonable mark, but can I call that good writing?

No. If writing is indeed thinking through the end of a pen, or thinking through the keys of a computer, then writing is about organizing thought into words and into a form. The thinking is what the writing is all about. We cannot divorce the thinking from the form, even if our achievement chart suggests we do this for assessment purposes.

Can you think of any exceptions?

Teacher Inquiry Groups Narrow their Focus

In the first semester, AMDSB Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) teams established inquiry questions, practiced protocols, and expanded their understanding of the issues and challenges facing teachers in various subject areas. As teacher groups examined student work, themes and patterns began to emerge. Based on their inquiry questions and on the collaborative examination of student writing, teachers aim to improve

• how students explain and support their thinking in writing;


• student use of the writing process;


• students’ summarization skills;


• student use of subject specific vocabulary/terminology;


• students’ written responses to questions;


• student writing of conclusions in science labs;


• students’ report writing skills;


• the transfer of student knowledge of writing forms (from one context to another).

In second semester, the work of the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) inquiry teams is more focused as teacher give diagnostic assessments and gather results that will inform their teaching and their selection of instructional strategies. Over the coming weeks, I will post items that relate to the topics, activities and instructional strategies explored by the WAC teams.

How do we Harness Collective Intelligence?

A video clip of Professor Michael Wesch of Kansas State University inspired me to research the term Collective Intelligence.

When Michael Wesch looks out at his large classes of 400 students, he asks himself, "How can I get all of their intelligence to work together so that we can do something really amazing? If you think about what one person can do, that's interesting, but when you think about what 400 people can do when they all work together, that's really interesting."

Wesch's Question: How do we help student learning by harnessing the collective intelligence of students instead of just lecturing to them?

Watch this short video clip of Mike Wesch talking about what he calls his anti-teaching method.

Collective Intelligence Defined (by Wikipedia)

Collective Intelligence (C.I.) is a group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals. It is important to distinguish Collective Intelligence (C.I.) from shared intelligence. Collective Intelligence is the knowledge available to all members of a community, while shared intelligence is knowledge known by all members of a community. C.I. is not merely a quantitative contribution, but qualitative as well.

MIT's Centre for Collective Intelligence

The Webpage for MIT's Centre for Collective Intelligence says the following:

While people have talked about collective intelligence for decades, new communication technologies—especially the Internet—now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways. The recent successes of systems like Google and Wikipedia suggest that the time is now ripe for many more such systems, and the goal of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is to understand how to take advantage of these possibilities.

MIT's Question: How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?'

My Question: How do we harness the collective intelligence of our teachers?

Visit Wesch's blog, Digital Ethnography

Watch The Machine is us/ing us

Watch a Presentation by Wesch, A Portal to Media Literacy

Watch An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube by Michael Wesch

Connecting Teachers with Online Resources

To add to recent posts about resources, here are some links to connect teachers to online resources that will help them in their quest to integrate technology into the classroom.

Paper Blog – this lesson has students blog using sticky notes. It helps to scaffold student understanding of the difference between academic and social blogging and about online safety, netiquette, and commenting guidelines before students move to the online version. I love this idea.

In Plain English - On our last PA Day, the system principal of information services shared the In Plain English videos on blogs, wikis and googledocs with English and Canadian World Studies teachers. If you have wondered about blogs, wikis and googledocs or struggle to explain them to your students, these short, entertaining videos created by Common Craft and posted on YouTube will help.

Twitter - In The Open Classroom, Jo McLeay from Melbourne Australia, lists a variety of links about using Twitter in the classroom.

Appropriate Online Presence - Do your students use Facebook? This article, entitled Three Rules for Stalking Potential Employees on Facebook, might be a revelation for students who don’t think about how they present themselves online. Will Richardson would argue that it is our responsibility as educators to teach students how to maintain an appropriate online 'presence'.

In my November 30th blog I wrote about teachers wanting hands-on time to learn how to use technology in the classroom and on the December 5th PA day, many teachers received valuable PD about Web 2.0 tools, software and SMARTboards. More importantly, they had time to do what their students do with technology – experiment. The conversation shouldn’t end here, however. If you want some hands-on time to work with an IT trainer, Avon Maitland teachers can arrange a visit from a trainer who specializes in Web 2.0 applications. She will spend some time with a small group of teachers, or even one-on-one. You can use the system tech help on FirstClass to make this request or, if you would like more information, contact me at kimmcgi@fc.amdsb.ca