Literature Study January 22, 2011

This week's article study is on using new literacies to teach writing in secondary schools.

Sweeny, Sheelah M. (2010). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy Vol 54 Issue 2, p121-130


Highlights of the study:

• Relates ELA standards to Technology standands.
• Many students are already experimenting with "new" online communication (especially for creative and collaborative purposes and self expression) and the key is translating that experimentation into useful skills for learning.
• Suggested strategies for using technology for writing (from the piece):

1. Using songs (from an iPod, etc) to set a mood for a writing piece (immersion into emotion),
2. Using the internet to find a painting that has an untold story,
3. Internet workshops for collaborative writing,
4. Receiving mentorship from authors, and
5. Learning how to critique their and others' papers

• When students post their work online it goes from an audience of one (teacher) to many (the world).
• Text messaging as a paraphrasing tool.
• Twitter as a means of building community.
• Social sharing of content creates positive peer pressure to do a good job.
• Students still take it seriously as they understand the different roles.
• Teens who have their own blogs tend to be prolific writers.
• Wikis and cloud computing are good good options for housing community knowledge or a collaborative writing piece (the author suggests assigning members specific roles).
• When using new technology in the classroom we must do two things:

1. Expect to make mistakes.  Make sure you learn from them, and
2. Remove distinctions that you might have about in-school technology and out-of-school technology.

What do you think?