Using Technology to Enhance the Writing Process

The ISTE Standard 2 explains that students will use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Ultimately, a teacher's role is to engage a student in individual learning as well as full class learning, and technology can be one tool to help students achieve that learning. In the article we read from edutopia by Michelle Lampinen, she explains how blogging encouraged students to write more, allowed them to use their own voice, and also motivated them to have less writing errors. This idea helped me to think through my own questions about using technology to support students in the writing process.

Oftentimes, in both my ELA class and my ELL class, it is a struggle to have students reflect and revise works of writing. In ELA, oftentimes students feel this is an unnecessary step. In my ELL class, it can create anxiety when grammar and spelling are extreme, and trigger students with fixed mindsets to give up. What I love about both the article by Lampinen and an article I found from edutopia is it expressed the amount of student buy-in when students were able to share their work with a broad audience. I felt that Rusul Alrubail, the author of the article Blogging for English Language Learners, made it clear that implementing a blog in either my ELL class or even my ELA class is a viable option to improving students ability to revise their work (Alrubail, 2015).

This blogging would have great impacts on my students individual learning and group learning. First, students who are struggling with form and grammar can see exemplary students and grow from the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO). Students who are more advanced can assist their classmates and demonstrate their ability to think beyond spelling and grammar to meaning. Plus, it raises their affective filter as they support their peers. Overall, it requires all students to edit work every time they write, a skill many of my students to not use when writing informally. Moreover, blogging can create a strong way for students to build up each other's work and support one another through revision, which is the base of ISTE standard 2.

Lampinen, M. (2013). Blogging in the 21st Century Classroom. Edutopia.org. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/blogging-in-21st-century-classroom-michelle-lampinen

Alrubail, R. (2015). Blogging for English Language Learners. Edutopia.org. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/blogging-for-english-language-learners-rusul-alrubail