Remember when your students did not know how to create a PowerPoint presentation or Publisher document, save to a computer disk on the a: drive, a network folder, or, later, a jump drive that fits in the USB port?
Even my students who do not have a computer at home know how to do those basic functions on a computer now, but I remember a time not very long ago when my students were confused when I asked them to save their work to a disk so that it could be recalled again the following day.
Ten years ago, I began asking my students to participate in electronic exchanges via BreadNet, the online, private computer network of the Bread Loaf School of English. I was fortunate to receive a DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest fellowship in the summer of 1999 to study at Bread Loaf and become a part of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network. I met other teachers at Bread Loaf with whom I began planning online electronic exchanges. In these exchanges, my students would be paired with a partner or a small group of students from another school somewhere in the United States. The teacher of those far-removed (geographically) students and I would prepare a collaborative learning opportunity usually centered around a common text, theme, or genre our students were reading.
Students would begin by introducing themselves, their schools, and their communities in a short writing assignment that they would then save to a floppy disk (eventually we moved to a folder on our school network). My students were responsible for writing a response to a common prompt on the text and ending with a question for their exchange partners to encourage a conversation. Once the discourse began online, students would receive postings from their partners and respond. Their writing was created in a word processor and then saved in a file to a floppy disk which I would then take, open and read, and post into one or two single files on BreadNet, forwarding the writing of all of my students to the teacher whose class was participating in the exchange with us.
The technology we used then to conduct our exchanges (floppy disks, a: drives, early versions of Word, early version of First Class) are obsolete because of software improvements or developments in computer technology.
(ASIDE: I could go on and on about what happens within exchanges (my dissertation work), but that is not where I'm going with this post.)
Students are tech savvy, at least in the sense that what I would have to explain step-by-step ten years ago they can do without any instruction today. My students can easily create a PowerPoint with sound and animation. They can design a newsletter on Publisher. Some create videos and others can record podcasts. So what technologies do I need to be utilizing in my classroom today? What are important skills my students will need to utilize after high school? What technology can we incorporate within the English curriculum that will make our students better engagers, collaborators, discourse creators, learners?
I just started reading Literature and the Web: Reading and Responding with New Technologies, a new book by Robert Rozema and Allen Webb, in hopes that I will find some direction. I also hope that I will find affirmation that what I already do with technology in my classroom improves student learning. I also am constantly reading about and searching for new Web 2.0 applications and trying them out myself. What are you doing to utilize participatory technologies in your classroom?
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