Internet Writing as a New Literacy

          The other day, I was scrolling the internet and saw the video the the right that someone shared. I was struck by the moment in the video where a classroom of the past and the present are compared.  Despite the fact that I personally find a number of flaws in the comparisons made, I did start to think more about what really could be done to change the way our classrooms have progressed.  I’m sure we’ve all probably seen complaints like this before—the examples of how classrooms haven’t changed in a hundred years—and, though I don’t always agree with the point these kinds of memes are making, I think the voices are right in asserting that there are important advancements and resources of our era that many teachers fail to use, particularly available through the internet.  The internet is an incredible resource that I think we as teachers could do a much better job of using it in our classes. 

 The internet involves a whole new literacy in itself with a vast potential for new ideas and forms of work. If you step back and think about it, nearly everything we do on the internet involves some sort of reading, even if it’s only the description under the YouTube video we’ve clicked on.  The same is true for writing.  In order to interact in media, it is highly probable that your students compose daily.  The multimedia and social possibilities of the internet make this kind of literacy extremely valuable for students to learn and for teachers to incorporate. In Dana J. Wilber's book, iWrite,  she claims that, “For students in my class to be literate...they needed to know how to make meaning from different text forms and communication modes and how to communicate through those modes” (9).  The more technology grows, the greater influence being able to manage it will have on our students’ futures.  It is an English teacher’s duty to teach literacy and now we have an opportunity to reach into a whole new field.  
We also can teach students valuable skills in research, copyright, and general media use that will improve their literacy all around, in reading, writing, and critical thinking.    Wilber also states that “Students need to know what tools to use to use to find answers to their questions, not just how to research within a framework of a paper assignment” (83).  Often, that latter part is how research papers come across to High School students.  They learn the skill set only for that paper and move on to more interesting things.  With the internet, though, the skills become relevant. Combined with these skills, the internet allows us to incorporate more of social aspects of rhetorical training.  There are communities all over the internet dedicated to the very things the students are studying at it would be wrong to not at least consider the influence that these sources might have on a student's ability to craft and express their own ideas.  There  much more too that the internet can bring to the classroom as we use it to connect with students in and our of class. 
 So, as teachers, rather than staring at new and rising technology like some form of witchcraft, the time has come for us to embrace what it is making our students do, how it is luring them into the elements of writing and teaching them what writing can accomplish.  

Authenticity Online

Image from here

     Does something about this comic feel familiar?  It's easy to imagine how often students groan  when a teacher tries to bring internet instruction into a school setting.  After all, what in the world we could teach them about something that has been so central to their lives?  I know I've even been guilty of this king of moaning.   After reading and researching about internet use in the classroom, though, I started to suspect that a lot of these reactions stem from the way teachers are using the internet.  Teachers too often try to create internet experience out of curriculum that already exists rather than really tapping the internet for it's potential.

     A huge consideration rising in the English classroom is the need to incorporate more authentic writing for students - creating experiences that are real and useful.   It may be true that creating truly authentic writing is nearly impossible in the classroom, since we are still obligating our students to actually write in the first place, but certainly can do our best to get as close as we can.   In the book Authentic Learning in the Digital Age by Larissa Pahomov, she states very neatly that, "technology also provides constant access to both the information and the tools needed for authentic learning" (5).  I think she's right. In this age of digital information, students are no longer able to avoid reading and writing.  They must face it every day in real life situations as they engage with social media and other platforms on the internet.  We can take advantage of that need to expand their critical skills with the tools they already use.
      As technology effectively connects our students to the world, it also can connect our classroom to our students lives.  However, this is something that has to be done carefully or else you'll get just the response mentioned above.  Someone else said "our teaching can be more effective if we find ways to connect out-of-school practices with important language arts objectives"  (Hunt 1). The technology that we have today is not limited to being used as a faster way to get words on paper. If teachers are only using it as a post board for things that could normally have been done in class, then the assignment is really no different that any other and the teacher has failed to take advantage of the resources given them and the students will most definitely notice. 
     Dana J. Wilber also notes that, when it comes to writing, it is important to “choose the tool that fits the use” (43).  There are plenty of ways that the internet can be used, but it is important that we make sure we are using its in a way that is relevant to our students and actually increases student literacy.  Troy Hicks, and almost every other well-known authority on using the internet in the classroom, are concerned that teachers aren't using “new technologies for newer literacies, they are instead used to complete normal academic task in a slightly different manner” (27).  The tasks that we have students perform online need to be there for a reason.  Students will not learn any additional skills if they are just taking something written and transferring it to the internet.  It is important to both make use of the other tools offered by internet while also keeping in mind how our students are responding to the assignments.  We need to listen to them.  One student told a writer, “Typing a journal entry on a blog does not make it a blog post” (86).  Things that students found actually helpful or engaging were things such as using the blog format in following their interests and connecting with people. 
      The PIC-RAT model is a good way for teachers to evaluate their internet use.  According to this concept, there are numerous different ways to use technology in the classroom and each use has different implications for learning. Technology use can be passive, interactive, or creative  and it can be used to simply replace tasks that could be done in other ways, build off and increase the efficiency of traditional activities, or to introduce new learning activities.   Teachers can measure their assignments and use of technology according to these characteristics to judge how effective they are using their resources.  This kind of review is essential to making sure that we are actually helping students with our use of technology in the classroom by giving them some real world experience rather than just giving them more busy work.   I won't go into it too much more for now, but I highly recommend the video below, which explains this process in detail.  It would actually make a great follow up to the one I mentioned before.  

Through listening to our students and evaluating our use of technology, we as teachers can do a much better job than we're doing to create more authentic experiences with more transforming uses of technology.   If we are using technology to its best advantage, the methods and skills students learn about it in the classroom will be things that they can carry on in the professional world. One researcher said, "Tapping into the power of the read/write Web can only improve your practice while enriching students and preparing them for a world where they will be judged not on the amount of knowledge they possess, but instead on the information management skills that they demonstrate" (Hunt 1).  So, as we do develop a more authentic use of writing, we are able to also reach into several more authentic uses of internet writing.  Students will be able to approach real audiences and gain skills that will be necessary for their future - skills that will actually hold meaning for their lives once they have left school and have gone off along their respective paths.

One Tool in Depth: The Blog

When it comes to how to use technology in the classroom, I did a little heavier research on blogging because I’ve had experience with it and have seen how it can be used to help students in the classroom.  Hopefully this posts will help you get started with a simple method of effective internet writing so that you can create valuable authentic experiences for your classroom.

For starters, what is a blog?  According to Dana j. Wilber, “A blog is simply a website that is authored by a single person or a group that allows the author or authors to post or publish writing in the reverse order  so that the most recent posts are first” (45).  Sounds simple enough doesn’t it?  Blogs, though can be powerful tools for student learning and they develop a new literacy through this medium.  The important things to know are how blogs work and how to use them effectively.  You must do your research, but despite the struggles that may come with learning and developing a new system for writing assignments, blogs offer many advantages that traditional writing lacks.   Sara Kajder, in Adolescents and Digital Literacy, tells us that, “In the publishing of their ideas, [students] closely engage with and possibly even remake content, but, more important to the eventual step to ‘information creation,’ they begin to develop and expert voice” (17).  The act of actually publishing work is something that isn’t offered students as often in other mediums, and it also calls for them to be more careful in their writing if they know it will be available to their peers.  Several sources tell us that students who engage in regular internet writing develop greater critical thinking skills.
Other advantages that Kajder mentions include that blogs can help with revision, conferring with others, and being aware of one’s audience.   It can “help them build more substantive texts both individually and collaboratively” (35).  Features such as the ability to search blogs and commenting allow students to engage with each other’s work and bounce ideas off one another as well as receive meaningful feedback. One way to use blogs is to allow students to work through final assignments in a series of posts that scaffold their thinking while also allowing them to receive early feedback.  An article by Denise Johnson states, "Blogging is a reciprocal process; it requires reading as much as writing; listening as much as speaking.” Writing is collaborative and blogging can help bring these aspects out for even more quiet students while building their own social skills.
As teachers, not only can we then use this medium to find ways to connect student learning and make it more authentic, but we will have an easier time responding to student’s needs.  Kajder again observed, “Digital response allows time to pause and reflect on each student’s needs” (37).  When you have set up your blog, you can use commenting and the student’s ability to revise to help them one on one in the processes in a way that might be a lot more difficult in a classroom full of students. 
This last semester, I somehow ended up in a "Smartphone Shakespeare" class.  I had no idea at all what to expect and was soon thrown into writing blog posts and using a chat app that I’d never heard of before.  Surprisingly, these things actually proved to be very effective in getting me to interact more with other students and build ideas off of them.  We were able to have a class blog where many of our assignments were turned in and where we were required to comment occasionally.  We also got to use this blog for pre-writing and other exercises that carried us through the writing processes and brought in the much needed social aspects of learning.  This blog is also something that I will be able to access when I have left the class or that other Shakespeare enthusiasts can access when doing their own informal research.  I'll admit though, this sort of teaching is something still being explored and comments felt a bit forced at times.  It also felt from time to time as though I was playing a guessing game of how much involvement was enough, but, once we all got into it, I realized that this sort of collaboration taught me some valuable communication skills. We eventually were given very clear directions that surprisingly spurred a great deal more conversation on important subjects and went beyond that in reaching out to other people on the internet for their input and research. We also were encouraged to use media sources in our posts and they turned out to be surprisingly effective tools for analysis.  Several of the assignments posted there are formative, building up to our final research paper by using an informal platform to express our idea and comment on others. I saw this as very effective blog use, but can view our blog here and judge for yourself.   (Maybe even try using the PIC-RAT model how well this teacher used the internet as a tool for research and communication.)

Blogs can be used in the classroom for a variety of purposes, whether you merely run a class blog for posting announcements and instruction, create place to collect and discuss work, or have for your students to run their own.   (Here is a selection of examples of classroom blogs).  They are something that teachers should really become familiar with.  But of course, it will always be important to judge the relevance that these projects will have to our students. We learn from Kadjer that “We must think carefully about how and why we want students to engage with digital writing,” meaning we need to confer with students and use their knowledge without research to find out the best ways to help with digital learning.  As we carefully consider how to blog, though, we can use this powerful tool to transform the way learning happened for our classes.

Teacher Concerns

What do we do about privacy?  How do we make sure these assignments are really authentic?  How are we supposed to teach students to cite their work?  These were all questions that I thought of when researching this subject, and I’m sure you could come up with a thousand more.  Hopefully, I've addressed some of them in other posts, but I’d like to hit a few others below.

Commenting: It can be a concern that some students may not comment or that the commenting will be very forced, but Wilber speculates that “Even if only a few comments are made, this represents tangible evidence that a blog is being read (64).  Thus, students are still learning valuable skills and are responding to a live audience.  This is something that you may have to figure out through trial and error, but it will be worth it to see students really engaging in each other's works.

Privacy:  Most blog options require a sign in that can keep others from altering or misusing the students’ works.  If other concerns come up about work being public, I noticed in my searches though that it has been suggested that  students post under a nickname or number.  As a teacher you can also monitor these posts to makes sure students are keeping to safety guidelines.  It’s probably a good idea to ensure that students have a background in internet safety.  There is also a website called Kidblog that is create specifically for this kind of assignment.  It's important to recognize, though, that the platform used for posting may effect the authenticity and audience of the blog.

Abusing Technology:  Not all schools are welcome to the idea of technology in the classroom because students may abuse it or use it as a distraction, but there is plenty of evidence to support it as a valuable tool.  As one researcher said on the subject, "Unfortunately, many school administrations respond to this new dynamic by attempting to restrict or ban online contact between teachers and students, when it would be more useful and instructive to model appropriate behavior and etiquette before students become adults" (Pahomov).   Even though technology can be distracting, it's a distraction that these students are going to have to deal with and learn to use wisely their entire lives. Embracing and using technology in healthy ways will help students develop good habits with this resource that will be invaluable in the future.  

Welcoming the internet into the classroom is not going to be easy for many teachers.  “Opening up what counts as valuable communication requires thinking differently about the ways in which we evaluate and respond our students’ work” (Wilber 76).   This isn't how things have been done before.  It's new, and new can be good.  It's this kind of thinking differently is what will help us to transform our classrooms and find more authentic experiences for students to engage in.  So, go out there, take a little risk, and try your hand at bringing the amazing technology we have into the classroom.  

Sources

Here, I've posted the articles referenced throughout the blog as well as some links to help you get started on your own as you work to implement technology in the classroom:

Hicks, Troy. The Digital Writing Workshop. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2009. [available here]

Hunt, Tiffany J., and Bud Hunt. "Linkin' (B)logs: A New Literacy of Hyperlinks."National Council of English Teachers, 2007.

Johnson, Denise. "Teaching with Authors' Blogs: Connections, Collaborations, Creativity." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literature, 2010. [available here]
Kajder, Sara B. Adolescents and Digital Literacies: Learning alongside Our Students. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2010. [available here]

Pahomov, Larissa. Authentic Learning In The Digital Age : Engaging Students Through Inquiry. Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD, 2014. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 27                          Oct. 2016. [available here]

Wilber, Dana J. iWrite: Using Blogs, Wikis, and Digital Stories in the English Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2010.  [available here]