Purposes for Using Web 2.0 Tools in the Classroom: Use of Digital Writing Tools to Teach Literature and Writing

Rick BeachUniversity of Minnesota

 

Jeff Uteckt: Literacy Curriculum Models

Tools Purposes Reading/Writing/Communicating

Purpose: Acquiring and subscribing to/sharing information

• Social Bookmarking and sharing links/tags

• Sharing links in class Diigo groups • Adding annotations to online literary

texts for sharing responses to literature

Social bookmarking: Diigo.com

• Set up Groups based on classes• Students share bookmarks to the class• Students tag bookmarks• Students annotate online texts/sites

using sticky notes

Using Diigo for adding a sticky-note response

1. Add Diigo to your toolbar

2. Find a an online text--a poem

3. Highlight sections of the text

4. Click on the icon to add a Sticky Note response

5. Have other students in Diigo groups add their responses

“Womanhood,” Catherine Anderson

She slides overthe hot upholsteryof her mother's car,this schoolgirl of fifteenwho loves humming & swayingwith the radio.Her entry into womanhoodwill be like all the other girls'—a cigarette and a joke,as she strides up with the restto a brick factorywhere she'll sew rag rugsfrom textile strips of kelly green,bright red, aqua.

When she enters,and the millgate closes,final as a slap,there'll be silence.She'll see fifteen high windowscemented over to cut out light.Inside, a constant, deafening noiseand warm air smelling of oil,the shifts continuing on ...All day she'll guide cloth along a lineof whirring needles, her arms & shouldersrocking back & forthwith the machines—200 porch size rugs behind herbefore she can stopto reach up, like her mother,and pick the lintout of her hair.

Highlighting and adding a Sticky Note to the poem

Purpose: Uses of mapping for responding to literature

• Visually portray performances according to three units of analysis: oEvents |oSpaces |oSocial worlds/systems

digital mind-mapping -->defining topics/connections

• Inspiration• Bubbl.us• Compendium• Freemind• OpenMind• VYM (View Your Mind)

Event as unit of analysis:

• Characters act and react to current and future acts to create an event or context o Utterances have consequenceso Uptake of speech acts or lack of action

• Events have boundarieso People “in” the event o People/forces “outside” the event but still

influencing the event “the elephant in the room”

Space as unit of analysis• Spaces as gendered, raced, or classed • Gendered worlds as mediated by language use

o Thorne: children on playground space: practices not necessarily gendered

o Teacher: tells children to group up by “boys” and “girls”

o Playground space becomes gendered as a binary space

Social Worlds/Institutional Systems• Social worlds/systems

o schooling, workplace/economic, family, health care, justice, government/political, media, etc.,

• Driven by larger objects or outcomes o School: enhanced students’ literacyo Workplace: higher profits

Map of “Womanhood”

Mapping storyline development: Film: O Brother Where Art Thou?

Purpose: blogs and wikis: voice opinions and share knowledge

• Blogs:o Individual expression of

ideas/personal accounts

o Hyperlinking of textso Comments from peerso Multimodal writing

• Wikis:o Collaborative writing of

reports/essayso Shared revision o Hyperlinking of textso Multimodal writing

Blogs as individual expression: Response to Speak

Rather than using a traditional journal, you can use blogs. This student uses written words, oral expression and a video to guide us through a comparison of her room and Melinda's.

Melinda is the main character in the novel Speak.

http://darkcheeze.blogspot.com/2008/11/response-to-charlies-letter-on-january.htmlhttp://darkcheeze.blogspot.com/2008/11/response-to-charlies-letter-on-january.html

Students used personal blogs to write letters from their character in our role-play to a character in the book we read. This allowed them to use voice and audience in their posting. Students also were required to hyperlink their suggestions for support and coping strategies to this

character in preparation for a Problem-Solution Essay.

Students use blogs to hyperlink

Purpose: Blog comments for dialogic exchange• Creating “blog partners” to insure responses

• Comments: Descriptive feedback

• Comments: Challenge positions

Collaborative Construction of Knowledge: Wikis

• PBWorks (http://pbworks.com)

• Wikispaces (http://www.wikispaces.com)

• Wetpaint (http://www.wetpaint.com)

• Rhetoric and Composition wikibook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki

Students used the experience of collaborative writing to write papers and post them to their wikis

http://watsonmontana1948.pbwiki.com/Compare+and+Contrast

Shared revision is easy to do and to see in the page history

We used Toni Morrison's Beloved to create a wiki where we collected information on the author and book, as well as research, notes and papers on literary theory in order

to write a college-level, formal literary analysis using one of several lenses.

http://tellmeyourdiamonds.pbwiki.com/Paper-Directions 

Hyperlinking of texts and MulitModal Writing

Purpose: Virtual collaboration: Literary Worlds site

• http://www.literaryworlds.org• Students engage in synchronous chat

about frequently taught texts such as Brave New World, Things Fall Apart, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, and 1984.

Purpose: Creating multimodal texts: Digital comics

• Comic Life/Bitstrips• Brent Eckoff, West Jr. High:

o “I had students to a rough storyboard of what they planned to create. Some of the speech bubbles and text boxes they wrote were both surprising, and innovative. The students then exported the Comic Life presentations as quicktime files, uploaded them to YouTube, and then embedded them on the class wiki.”

Purpose: Parodying/remixing images and videos

• Remix America (remix historical speeches/words with contemporary events)

• Adbusters spoofs/parodies

Decontextualizing or defamiliarizing images

Decontextualizing or defamiliarizing images

Purpose: Creating digital poems: http://eliterature.org/1

Purpose: Share responses to images/video:VoiceThread

• http://voicethread.com/ • Audio and text commentaries of

slideshows• Place-based writing

o Images foster use of the descriptive details

VoiceThread: Multiple audio/written commends on same image

Purpose: Formulating arguments: online role-play

• Select an issue• Formulate a primary argument• Choose roles and conduct research• Post arguments on a blog or online

forum• Step out of roles and reflect

Using a Class Blog: UMD: “Fighting Sioux” Mascot

Issue: School internet policies

• Blocking of websitesoNRA site blocked

• Administrators accessing FacebookoDetermining if students are drinking oViolation of the state’s athletic code

Using Social Networks (Ning):

Using Bubbl.us mapping to identify roles and relationships between roles

Read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother

• 17-year-old Marcus, a computer hacker, takes on the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to control society

• Issues of Internet privacy/control

Creating Avatars: taking stances on an issue

“Emo Girl”Critique of school Internet policies

I think the internet usage policies are ridiculous. The policies are almost impossible to find. I spent half an hour trying to find them and I'm a young, computer savvy person. 

“Strict Father” cultural model: Charles Hammerstein

• The issue with sites like YouTube is that it is a helpful site when used correctly, but the ratio of students who would use it to the students who would abuse it would greatly favor the later of the two. R-rated sites are not ok because they usually contain information and content that may be considered offensive. The internet policies are very clear, if your grandmother would not appreciate it, then you probably shouldn't be doing those kind of things at school.

Facebook: Character profiles

Post Role-Play Reflection:

• Use of arguments• Comfort in role• Targeted audiences/alliances• Who has power?

(Reasons & strategies)

• Sense of potential change

Student’s reflection

• I think it was a valuable learning experience because we actually got to argue back and forth with other people.  If this had just been a writing assignment, it would have only been one-sided.  You can use persuasive arguments in a paper but you can’t have a back and forth conversation on it.  I really felt like it helped me get into someone else’s shoes and think like someone different from myself.

Purpose: Developing a Sense of Voice: Podcasting

• Book talks• Spoken word poetry• Readers’ theater productions• Radio shows• Skype interviews

Using Garageband (Mac) to record and edit

• Recording podcast in tracks• Editing podcasts

o Remove unnecessary materialo Alter sound levels o Add music

• Export to iTunes

Using Audacity (Mac & Windows) to record and edit

• Recording podcast in tracks• Editing podcasts

o Remove unnecessary materialo Alter sound levels o Add music

• Export

Using Skype to conduct podcast interviews

• Skype as a free Internet phone service• Skype can be used for

o Single person interviewso Multiple person conference call interviews

Purpose: Giving Feedback

• Audio files as feedback to writing• VoiceThread comments• VideoAnt: annotations for video

productions• Using Jing to record audio comments

Feedback to videos: VideoAnt http://ant.umn.edu

• Annotations specific to a clip or scene

• Teacher and peer feedback

• Feedback to micro-teaching videos

Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools http://digitalwriting.pbworks.comLiterary Tools in the Classroom: Teaching through Critical Inquiry, Grades 5-12 http://literacytooluses.pbworks.com

Picture of new books here?