Chapter 4: Writing and Technology

Supporting Writing Organization and Planning
This section was very informative. I know from my own experience I usually benefit by putting information into concepts maps. By making concept maps students can link information and identify important concepts. An online concept map program that I would use in the classroom is “CMaps” or cmap.com. This website/computer program is an excellent tool for students to use and for teachers. Students can use this program to help with their writing and reading. Students can put their main ideas on a concept map to help organize their ideas. Teachers can use this program to teach lessons and organize important thoughts for students. I think that concepts maps are important for students and their writing. When students use concepts maps they are beginning their writing strong and should be organizing all their important thoughts.

Supporting Presentation Writing
This section was more of a review for me. It focused a lot on PowerPoint and making presentations with this program. I think that PowerPoint is an excellent resource for students and teachers to use to present information. Presenting information can involve lots of steps and PowerPoint can help with those steps. Some of the things that I did not realize were some of the features that PowerPoint has to help students create presentations. I think each of these features can be helpful for students and can help to make excellent presentations. Another presentation website that can be used instead of PowerPoint is “Prezi” or prezi.com. I have learned to enjoy this website and find it to be enjoyable to use. PowerPoint can become a little boring when that is all I have known to use. Since I have began this class I have realized other resources to use for presentations. I think teachers need to branch out and use different outlets to present information. The main reason for this is because students will be more interested in the information because it may be presented in a way that they have never seen before.

Supporting Creative Writing with Technology
This section was very interesting to me. My first impression was how could I help to support my students and encourage them to write creatively. Internet publishing is something that is very new to me, but I think it can be very useful for students and their writings. This allows students to be more reflective which in turn makes them think about their work and the work of others. The website Kidscribe is a neat website to use for students to post their work. It is kind of nice because students can have their own world of writing and post their own creative writing for others to read. Since this is their own things students will take pride in their writing “space” and put much thought and creativity into their work. I will definitely use this in my classroom in the future. Not only can student benefit from this website but parents can also. This website can be used as a portfolio for each of my students and students can also see how well they have improved by viewing their online work. Not only can this website be useful but also a “BLOG” can be help with this as well. Students can post their own work on this and reflect on their work as time goes on.

Supporting Collaborative Writing with Technology
This was also a new concept for me. Initially I didn’t know what to think when writing and working with others was mentioned. After reading this section I realized that working and writing collaboratively can benefit all students. One of the examples that the books gives is Wikipedia. The one thing that came to mind when this website was mentioned was that students need to be careful in determining if this information is correct. Since anyone can edit or add information to different topics it’s hard to know what is factual and what isn’t. The other example that the book gives is Writerly. This is an excellent website for students and teachers to use in the classroom. It can give students a chance to share and work collaboratively on writings.

Supporting Peer Feedback on Writing
Student feedback can be more beneficial than teacher feedback. I had not thought about this but after I did I realized that students do value the feedback from their peers more than from adults or teachers. Peer feedback can help students improve on their writings. The website SWoRD is a great web-based review system that students can learn from. I will use this in the classroom so that students can go and review others work and have their own work reviewed. Most teachers don’t realize that students can benefit from others opinion. They often think that they are the only ones that can give effective feedback to students about their writings.

Overall this chapter was very informative and will definitely help in the future. I enjoyed reading this chapter and learned new techniques on how to improve students writing by the use of technology. I think the reason I learned so much in this chapter is because I didn’t realize how writing and technology can be intertwined.