Reponse Class 6 T/Th

Class 6 Response
Betsy Gitelle
7/16/2009
ENWR600
Prof. Melinda Knight

Responses to:

Part 1, from Herrington, A., Hodgson, K., & Moran, C. (2009). Teaching the new writing: Technology, change, and assessment in the 21st-century classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Chapters 2, 3, 4 from Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

What I loved about the reading (Herrington et al) for Class 6 was the vivid way all three authors described their engagement with students through the creative and collaborative use of technology in the classroom. We peer into three elementary educators’ processes with students and in each case see a high degree of direct and personal interaction. Marva Solomon describes her very intimate relationship with three students during a summer intensive, when the group meets every day for the hours a day for 13 days in a row. Each day starts with circle time and good old-fashioned read-alouds. Glen Bledsoe goes to some trouble to describe the physical set-up of his classroom and the way students interact with him as he controls the mouse during their collaborative composition classes: “A computer projector or Smartboard is used to project the writing on a screen located where everyone can see it. I recommend that the teacher do the actual keyboarding” (p. 40). Finally, Kevin Hodgson tells us about “Digital Sharing Day” when “sixth graders wait for their second grade audience….I act as traffic controller, moving groups of readers to groups of writers” (p. 58). You can almost feel the sense of community and well-being in each room, and imagine the students elbow-to-elbow.

Wouldn’t these be great teachers even without their inspired use of technology? Aren’t they great at classroom management and quick thinking? And they are all self-aware, self-critical, and creative. I see each teacher as able to harness technology to help glue the community together and produce innovative, interesting work. I don’t think these interactions would have been as successful if it were not for the force of personality of the teachers, and the basic respect and reciprocity that each models in the classroom. The projects are the by-products of dedication, innovation and discipline on the part of the teachers. I also think they are examples of high-tech and high-touch at its best.

So these examples show how the tools and technologies can extend and reinforce good learning behaviors. And, Richardson’s almost breathless enthusiasm about the breadth and power of the tools and how to integrate them into teaching and learning makes great sense. I always wonder how kids, after a weekend at the mall, seeing five movies, playing hours of multiplayer games, texting, IM’ing, and downloading music, are supposed to feel when they get to school on Monday morning only to confront a worksheet with a pencil. It doesn’t make sense. Of course we need to bring the technology into the classroom, as we have to make school part of life, not an isolated sub-culture.

I also like the idea that the Internet – that media cloud that’s out there and that we’re part of – is an exact reflection of the world we live in, with as many luminaries and resources, and as many nefarious and underworld risks, as the physical world. We need kids to be able to negotiate the good and the bad, the true and the false, online and in real life.

This brings me to the topic of assessment and evaluation. Bledsoe says it isn’t fair to evaluate collaborative work on an individual basis (p. 50) and I would say that it doesn’t make sense to evaluate multimodal compositions using the same rubrics used for strictly alphabetic texts. I like Hodgson’s rubric (table 4.1, p. 67) but I don’t think it goes far enough it describing the aesthetics and functionality of an interactive project. I am not sure that “Book Presentation” (even though the work is modeled on the idea of a children’s book) is the right name for the category.

I suppose we need to develop a culture of critics. I love the example of the students rejecting the evaluation of their web project because they knew its intrinsic value and had the experience of creating something of quality (p. 50).

In some ways the expectations are at once unattainably high and shamefully low that a measured, even-handed practice of assessment would seem to be in order.

I am thinking about how to articulate my concerns about assessment and how to wrangle them into order for my final project. I think about the book and I am struck by how the focus remains on the teachers’ experiences more than the students – even though each author goes to great lengths to try to describe the student experience. I am beginning to think it would be more fruitful to evaluate the teachers than the students. I am also struck by MK’s exhortation: “seize authority.” If we put the authority in the students’ hands, maybe we would benefit as a culture.

A question:
Does a sense of community improve scholastic performance?

And a post-script:
It is way easier to write on time, in real time. Pacing and meeting deadlines (p. 43) is good advice.