So what the heck have I been writing about?

Looking back on my blog posts was a good idea. I hadn't realized it, but I've gotten a lot more specific in my reflections on using these digital tools in writing instruction.

Early on, I focused most of my thoughts on how and when I might implement these different tools. Over the past few weeks, I noticed that I focused a lot more on some of the possible pitfalls of using these technologies, which then made it possible for me to anticipate instructional problems as I pushed my students forward.

I'm sure that a large part of this change in focus was due to my incorporation of the blog, wiki, and a bit of a chat session in class. A year ago, I would've been too scared to attempt these things, but in the past few months, the class has forced me to learn more about things like blogs, wikis, comic life, voice thread, etc. Granted, there have been a few disasters as my students and I stumbled though some technical difficulties, embarrassing mislinks, and a few hilarious misuses of our new tools, we have begun to reach a point where the technology is now working for us rather than being beaten into submission by a bunch of Neanderthals. It's really been an exciting professional development experience.

As far as feedback goes, I’ve been doing the tired old written comments and small conference setup that has worked well for so long. But I’m not happy with it. Ultimately, I would prefer to do all audio feedback, but at the present time, my students’ lack of technology expertise and access has made that rather difficult. I’ve done word comments before, but I find that even getting my students to email a copy of their paper I can actually read can be a rather daunting task. Some of them don’t even know how to compose an email unless I show them.

In their defense, they’re making progress. A science teacher and I have ganged up on our common students and are both using the same technologies in class in an effort to increase the students’ level of exposure. Our collective goal is to get our students to a point where we use very little paper, if any. We have a long way to go, but we’re going to try our best…and probably fail miserably. Oh well.