Response 7 T/Th

Class 7 Response
Betsy Gitelle
7/21/2009
ENWR600
Prof. Melinda Knight

Response to Part II:
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.

Each project featured in Part II of the book required both teachers and students to become completely immersed in digital technology to produce high-quality, multimodal compositions. I now see how teachers are instrumental in helping students assimilate and use the technology in breathtaking ways. In the process of making the projects, students became better composers and editors, found their voices, and found a way to take charge of their own assessment. Paradox seems to be part of the process:

• Teachers relinquish control to assume control.
• They had to create a community of trust.
• They had to provide students with sophisticated compositional and editing tools.
• They had to push students to find an original voice, and an authentic viewpoint, and then use technology to get out of the way.
• They had to create stringent rubrics and make standards known in advance.
• They had to trust that the technology would hold up a mirror to the students, forcing them to do their best.

Here are some quotations I like:

• Chapter 5, Paul Allison: “This shift, this turning point from teacher-centered to student-centered self-assessment...” (p. 79).
• Chapter 6, Jeffrey Schwartz: “…they are more in charge, and I am more a passenger on this excursion into words.”
• Chapter 7, Bryan Ripley Crandall:“Although overwhelming to me at times, I’ve grown comfortable with allowing technological digression in my classroom.” (p. 120)
• Chapter 8, Dawn Reed and Troy Hicks: “…a view that embraces multimodal composing is recursive, networked, and collaborative.” (p.136)

Here are a few links related to the readings. I love the idea of controlled chaos, the studiolike quality of each of the environments described here. I love how the students got to know themselves and their peers, and connected to the larger community. And I’d like to be able to say that I can check off each of the cells in the self-assessment matrix (Figure 5.1, pp. 84-85) but I can’t yet.

However, here are at least a few relevant links:

Bread Loaf
Coalition for Essential Schools
Jonathan Kozol
NPR: This I Believe

There’s more to say and I will post again.