Book+Club+Response

=Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts Across Media and Genres by Troy Hicks= July 9th, 2013

This response is based off the readings for chapters 1-3 in the text.

“Students today may be “born digital,” but it is our job to help them become purposeful and creative digital writers (25).”

I am so excited to have picked this particular text for my book club reading. It is practical, teacher friendly, and relevant. This text is surely a guide and a resource! It is one of the missing puzzle pieces I have been looking for throughout the course. It is necessary to read about the theory, but this text is full of practical use for the classroom. These texts acknowledges the shortcomings and challenges of composing digital writing as a new literacy, as well as provide specific examples, case studies, and ideas for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. The author shows intention and purpose with the use of technology-integrated writing, and avoids the use of technology in writing just for the heck of it. It is the effective use of technology that is the concern of both the author and myself and I am appreciative that it is referenced in the text. I am able to link my familiarity with certain concepts in the text to the new material I’m learning. For example, mentor texts (a familiar concept) and digitally convenient and digitally enhanced writing (new material). It is also real world, as the author says, “technology provides the real audiences, purposes, and publication venues that allow them to grow their communities of writers…(2)”

“The question is no longer whether we should use technology to teach writing, instead we must focus on the many ways that we must use technology to teach writing (2).”I found it interesting the way he switched the thinking process around for educators. The focus is not on the technology itself but the writing. To improve the writing, we infuse technology.

I must say prior to this text, I never pictured allowing students to share their work with audiences that they may never meet. “Yet it is clear that student writers in the twenty-first century are doing much more than alphabetic print on paper; they are increasingly exploring images, videos, slideshows, wikis, podcasts, digital stories, and other types of digital writing that allow them to share their work beyond their classroom walls with other students, their parents, and the broader audiences the Internet allows (2).” The Internet is very broad and the potential audiences are so vast that it provides a type of engagement and purpose that couldn’t exist with in class peers. The only thing my students have experienced on this mass level of audiences would be voice thread.

Question:

How on board are administrations with the idea of students being taught visual literacy in low performing schools, title 1 schools, and how are they different and alike from non title 1 schools or schools of excellence?