Sunday, November 20, 2011

Wiki Project, Part II: Practice Wikis

As student groups developed ideas for their wiki sites, they workshopped the use of the wiki technology. To facilitate this process, I created a wiki site designated as our practice wiki. We used the site to analyze and reflect upon class readings, while consciously monitoring the technical moves necessary to create, edit, and link on the wiki.

A workshop like this one does not have to take place in a computer lab. In one section, enough students had laptops so that we were able to collaborate on the practice wiki from their small group circles. In another section, students took turns using my laptop. I logged in to the wiki and let students make edits from my computer. The classroom projector screen displayed the action, allowing us to hold a conversation about how to use the wiki features.

Here is the practice wiki from the section that used my computer: http://section66practicewiki.wikispaces.com/

One of the best results from the practice wiki workshops was the way the wiki allowed students to develop an understanding of difficult readings and plan for their project. In two in-class assignments, students had to create and publish new pages which were linked to the home page. In the first case, the students’ job was to explain the author Keith Grant-Davie’s opinions concerning rhetorical situations and their constituents: exigence, rhetors, audience, and constraints. In the second case, students identified an idea from a class reading that related to their wiki project. It was a very productive session as student groups searched the text, extracted quotes, discussed interpretations, published a wiki page, and learned to use the wiki technology.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Wiki Project, Part I

My classes used wiki technology to create writings that were both group collaborations and individual reflections. Wikis allow users to create, edit, and monitor changes from any computer. Distance collaboration offers additional opportunities for group work, altering the boundaries between in-class work and out-of-class engagements. Similarly, wikis can be used so that they alter the boundaries between group and individual work.

Here is the link to one of the wikis: http://section56group3.wikispaces.com/

Students created group wiki pages that defined a particular writing construct and explored its impact on student writing practices. We developed an understanding of constructs by reading and reacting to articles in our course textbook Writing about Writing: In our class, constructs are concepts about writing that appear natural but are in fact created by social and cultural practices. Students related with Joseph William’s article “Phenomenology of Error” because of their past experiences with grading. The majority of the students felt that error was the dominant practice in the evaluation of student writing. Several groups in each section chose to write about error. Other groups chose writing constructs such as plagiarism, perspective, and writing itself. In some cases it wasn’t clear that the students understood their “construct” when they made these decisions. The process of building the wiki shows how their ideas developed.

The wiki writings were organized through home pages that defined the construct and its effects on student writing practices. Individual students linked additional pages to key words featured on the home page. These individual pages featured student narratives about personal encounters with the writing construct. In most cases these narratives developed a stronger articulation of how the construct works. As they analyzed their experiences, students appeared to understand what is at stake for their own literacy. The home pages, however, demonstrated a clearer definitional statement.

What I really like about these writings is how the dialogic voices of the individual writings support the group authored home page. You can use the “History” function to monitor all changes to the wiki. The times logged for each edit show that the collaborative work was nearly complete before the individual pages were created. The group first came to understand the construct through collaboration which then allowed individuals to write more analytical reflections about their own literacy experiences. The final result displays a unified consensus supported by individual expressions.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Error in the Blog!

Every other week a group from each composition section blogs on an article from Writing about Writing. One article that generated excellent blogs and commentary was Joseph Williams’ “Phenomenology of Error.” Of course, it didn’t surprise me that students reveled in and related to Williams’ almost devious inquiry into the meaning and consequences of error. He takes the position that error is a long-held construct that is perpetuated in a concatenation of texts ranging from Strunk and White’s classic style guide to student essays. In fact, he presents error as a culture. Students laugh when he asks whether the misused substitution of “that” for “which” is really equal to social errors such as breaking wind at a dinner party. They get a kick out of his deliberate inclusion of 100 errors in his published essay.

For some students, the article is a welcome indictment of the culture of error and an opportunity to ask teachers to read writing for its content, puh-leasssse. A substantial number of students recoil at the thought of teachers abandoning the red pen markups and simultaneously cry against the landslide of text-speak and its complete disregard for grammatical conventions. One of my favorite student comments was when a female challenged a string of comments that claimed that young writers sported a post-error ethos, that no one cared anymore, and that the error apocalypse had stripped away the need for constraining rules of writing. She exclaimed, “I am willing to bet that Mr. Wray cares about grammar as much as any English teacher you’ve ever had. They are English majors after all!” How could I help but smile as the students emerged from the commentary as punks, trads, and pedagogues? The writing was changing the way they thought, how they expressed their ideas, and even how they presented their identities! I witnessed blogging at its best.

The real teaching moment was yet to come. It sat there, posted on the blog, radiating from our monitors, but did anyone actually see it? I admit to doing a double take when I read a blog titled “Joseph Williams’ ‘Phenomenology of Error’” as it proceeded to offer a well-written explication of Michael Kleine’s article on research methods. The students really understood Kleine’s challenge to teachers and students to strive for discovery and inquiry in their research, but wasn’t the post supposed to be about Williams’ article? I considered writing an email to point out the mistake. After deciding against such an authoritative interference—it is their blog after all—I began to type a comment that questioned the bizarre gaff, but I canceled it instead. Let the student readers call out this misguided group, I thought. So I sat back and glanced at my laptop screen between commercials on the Monday Night Football broadcast. As they started coming in, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Comment after comment, students wrote complimentary agreements with the bloggers’ text. This was surprising since the class had thoroughly discussed Kleine’s article on research; they should have recognized that this was Kleine’s argument. Ten comments came in and no one saw the error. When the class met for our next session, I asked the students to reread the blog on the big screen and write about its most striking feature. We formed a circle and began to share our observations. It wasn’t until the ninth speaker, that a student finally uttered the comment I had been waiting for: “The blog is on the wrong article.” The room fell silent, the bloggers blushed, and then everyone started smiling. From there, we began a meaningful conversation about William’s point about reading. The blog audience read the article with open minds, truly seeking the “good” in their peers writing and they found it even though it was attributed to the wrong writer. While everyone, including the bloggers, agreed that the error substantially affected the meaning of the writing, we all realized that peer to peer reading sometimes works beyond the construct of error. The real question was, “How can we use this to our advantage as readers of student writing?” According to the students in the circle, we might read more globally, help our peers with the formation of ideas, and discuss error in a low-stakes environment so that peer writing groups can create a better sense of collaboration and trust.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Digital Rhetorical Situations

The students in my composition classes contribute to our class blog. The goal is to allow them to publish various writings to an audience that includes classmates but reaches far beyond the traditional audience of college writing. I am the chief moderator of the blog while the students operate as contributors. They have authorship privileges and can log on and post without my permission. Of course, I have the ability to remove any inappropriate posts or to block student access. One thing I did not expect was that my first act of censorship would happen in the initial week of blogging, or that the censored post would be removed, not by me, but by a student.

One thing that became apparent as students began to sign in and use the blog is that they had a very different sense of how to use the space than I did. For example, students left such introductory comments such as “Woot let’s blog!” or “Let’s do some blogging WOOO!” The apparent enthusiasm pleased me and I chalked up the students’ informal approach to the similarities between blogging and social media. After all, I had requested that all users use a head shot photo as their profile image so that the site would indeed be more social.

As a teacher, I intended the blog to be an active class text, a place of collaboration, and, I thought, a slightly more relaxed rhetorical environment. What I did not realize was how traditional expectations for college writing were so ingrained in my understanding of this rhetorical situation. The big moment came as I prepared for class one evening. The class reading was a challenging article about, of all things, rhetorical situations. In the article, Keith Grant-Davie proposes that the rhetor is a constituent of the rhetorical situation. Many traditional descriptions of rhetorical situations conceive of the rhetor (writer or speaker) as approaching a situation constituted by exigence, audience, and constraints. Grant-Davie’s model shows an active relationship in which the audience is one of the rhetors and a rhetor is at times her own audience. Therefore, the rhetor must be a constituent of the situation. I read it. I agreed with it. I did not, however, recognize it when I read the class blog comments.

My misunderstanding emerged as I read the following comment left by a female student: “I play world of warcraft and read comic books in my free time . . . jus’ sayin.” I felt sure the students were taking over the site with their own digital obsessions and rhetoric. Then two more comments came in, the first a male student congratulating the female on playing video games, and then the female responding that she was indeed “blood elf warlock level 8” in the game World of Warcraft. I immediately posted the following comment:

“Just a word about the rhetorical situation of this blog. We want to be social, but as a research community. There have been some comments here that are more appropriate for the rhetorical situation of an email or Facebook. I absolutely want the class to find common bonds and foster friendships. Let’s use this space, however, to discuss literacy. No worries!”

No sooner had I posted my comment than I found myself rereading the questionable comments. To my horror I saw two things I had not previously realized. First, the video game comments, even though they discussed media that was alien to me, were absolutely about literacy. The female student expressed her intense literacy in gaming media. Next, I failed to recognize a student’s digital literacy because of my misunderstanding of the rhetorical situation. As Grant-Davie proposes, the rhetor and audience are so intertwined that at many times they are the same person. In a blog, the comment writer is also a rhetor. The blog is, after all, a circular rhetorical space. As the moderator, I was as more of an audience member than an author. Clearly, I would have to allow more freedom than my comment suggested.

In a few minutes my actions saw the consequences: the student removed her post. In the space where her vibrant claim to digital literacy had once rested, stood words of a much different voice: “This post has been removed by the author.” Yes, the student initiated the removal, but the writing was a default statement generated by the computer as she clicked the delete icon. Essentially, my misunderstanding of the rhetorical situation had taken away her voice.

It all worked out in the end. The incident provided a fascinating and moving introduction to the article, one that I shared with all three sections of the composition course. The student held no hard feelings, and all students appeared intrigued that I would own such a mistake. We all learned from this. I, however, still feel the pain of my actions. It opened my eyes to the vast difference of the rhetorical spaces encountered in the digital world. If I insist on approaching composition studies from a digital perspective, then I must ask myself the very questions I encourage my students to pose. What does digital literacy mean? What does it look like? Why do we want to move beyond traditional modes of writing? How does it change the rhetorical situation?

Friday, September 16, 2011

Multimodal Collaborations

One learning outcome in the First Year Writing curriculum at my university states that students should understand that meaning is socially constructed. I try to model this understanding by engaging students in activities in which the social interaction is conspicuous. Collaborative multimodal discussion can depict the social interactions that are part of the composition process.

The site www.voicethread.com offers the ability to create and publish multimodal discussions. One can upload any sort of document and then others can comment in several forms: text, webcam recording, and audio recording. My classes use this technology to share ideas about collaborative documents and for peer critiques. Another way I use Voicethread is to have students create and publish multimodal discussion in-class.

Since we do not meet in a computer lab, we use my laptop with students taking turns recording their understandings or questions about a class text. This method has one drawback due to the fact that I am logged in as the user: all comments appear to originate from my avatar. At first it is strange to see a student’s video emerge as an extension of my profile photo. This is actually an opportunity to explain the idea of literacy sponsorship. My user identity sponsors their use of the technology in a way similar to how teachers sponsor students’ discourse within the class. For me this is not ideal, but it allows us to collaborate in a non-lab classroom as well as talk about issues and problems with sponsorship.

Below is an example of a Voicethread collaboration that students created in the classroom. The students’ task was to address the three learning outcomes for our first three readings. They were asked to state ideas that they understood or ideas that they still needed to consider, share these in small groups, and enter a statement into our Voicethread discussion.



The artifact shows various levels of understanding. Some are uneasy statements read from spiral notebooks, while others are confident orations of complex ideas. Once we published the Voicethread, we observed it as a class. Students raised important questions about the multiple modes of discourse and the ways that each mode demonstrated authority. They also wondered whether the quality of a student groups’ understanding of a learning outcome affected the choice of mode. In fact, we raised many more questions than we answered. At this early time in the semester, that was more than OK. Students were working together to identify important lines of inquiry about the social aspects of discourse and writing technologies. In activities like this, students can clearly see their role in the ongoing research of rhetoric and composition.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Collaboration

The first few classes in a semester are a busy time in a composition course. Not only do teachers have the difficult task of jumpstarting students into a mode of high production and risk-taking, we have so much to explain, demonstrate, and model. In the past, these efforts led me to talk too much. How could I introduce students to course procedures, technologies, and conversations by involving them in these very practices?

On the second meeting, I asked the classes to create in-class collaborative visual presentations. The exercise asked students to:

1. write reflectively about their writing experiences.
2. share writing experiences in small groups.
3. contribute to a class-wide collaborative presentation.
4. experience a potentially unfamiliar digital composing technology.
5. raise problems and questions concerning “what we know about writing and how we know it.”

What I liked about this exercise was that it involved the students in most of the practices important to the course: reflection, composition, collaboration, use of digital technology, publication, and presentation. On the second day of class, they were modeling the course practices to each other.

We used Prezi (www.prezi.com) for the collaborative presentations. Prezi allows users to create and publish non-linear presentations on a large canvas that can be navigated in numerous ways. One of the best features is the zoom which allows a holistic look at the presentation. We used my laptop to create the Prezis. Below is an example from one class. Use the arrow and zoom to navigate.



As groups wrapped up discussion, they sent representatives to the laptop to enter their information into the presentation. At least one member of each group experienced hands-on use of the technology. The action was broadcast on the large screen for the class to see, and students paid attention to the fluid construction of the presentation. In the third section, questions from the viewers emerged, leading to an impromptu whole-class discussion while the representatives were still creating. In fact, it was the spontaneous, unexpected moments of the collaborations which were most profound and occurred at real points of inquiry, places where the dialogic communications demanded the immediate address of questions and problems. The final digital product was interesting as an object of analysis, but the Prezi’s big payoff was the rich discussion and meaningful inquiry that emerged as we used the technology to map our understanding of writing.

Incidentally, the internet connection in the third section wouldn’t allow Prezi to operate, so we made a lightning fast switch to good ol’ PowerPoint. The less exciting format still created the spontaneity of collaboration that made the Prezis so useful in the earlier classes.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Tutorials

Video tutorials are a great way to offer students intuitive and explicit instructions on how to access and use technologies. It sure beats drawn-out text instructions or constantly re-explaining the directions. I made video tutorials for using www.voicethread.com. The free software CamStudio enabled me to record the action on my computer screen. It syncs with the computer’s microphone which let me narrate the keystrokes and clicks.

Here a tutorial on how to register:



I share these videos with the students by creating a YouTube page and linking that to our course website. You can also embed the videos in an email. Easy to make; easy to share. I like it!