Chapter 7 of Teaching Writing focuses on "sonic literacies" that can be practiced in many different ways and in diverse contexts. To me, podcasts and vlogs have great potential in encouraging students to share their responses to what they have read with one another.
In the past (as inspired by my time in the NWI Writing Project), I have asked a class to collaborate on a Daily Log while reading a novel (just one unit a year). Each student in the class would be assigned a day for which he/she would be responsible for synthesizing what was discussed and learned that day in class. These entries were written or typed and shared with the class at the beginning of the next class period before being placed in a binder in chronological order. This assignment has worked well to keep students attuned to class discussions and provided a convenient resource for students who were absent. Traditionally, I would assign this during May, also known as "Field Trip Month" when I could expect as much as 3/4 of my juniors to be away on any given day.
I would love to do this assignment as a vlog instead. The time parameters would have to be adjusted, because it's too much to ask students to create a vlog post in the course of a single evening during which they also have many other academic, athletic, and extracurricular obligations. Creating the vlog would have several benefits over the old daily log: 1) students would be much more interested in the videos than in the reading of the log 2) authors of the vlog would have to think carefully about how best to present the previous day's information 3) students would be more invested in making a good vlog and might even compete with one another to be creative and funny 4) these vlogs could be available online so that absent students could access them 24 hours a day.
It might also be interesting and a good class project for students (in a different unit, of course) record 30-60 second responses to the reading assignment with Audacity prior to coming to class. The teacher can find "highlights" to share as a warm-up activity for the discussion for the day. Ultimately, the class could take that vast collection of audio clips and collaborate on a podcast, video, wiki, blog--anything, really--to summarize and synthesize the class' reactions to a novel, collection of short stories, etc.
I appreciated very much that Beach et. al addressed the concerns we all have for students with learning disabilities. These students are in our classes at all levels, labeled or not, and the suggestions given could really make a difference for a student. One possibility suggested in the text was that a student could record themselves in an audio essay instead of composing an alphabetic text. There are many times when this option would have been useful to me in the past, if only I had thought of it! Sometimes students have the necessary mastery of the content, but are horribly hindered by the act of writing itself. When the writing itself is not being graded, but instead the focus and purpose of testing is the content, and audio essay is an excellent work-around for those with disabilities.
For all students, being able to listen to their alphabetic text read aloud could be greatly beneficial in the study of voice. We often advise students to read their writing aloud to themselves, but they feel foolish doing it and/or do not allow themselves enough time for proper revision. Depending on the sophistication of these programs, Text to Speech tools could be invaluable in helping students to hear the rhythms their words and sentences create.
All in all, I am encouraged to see new (to me) ways of integrating digital tools in the classroom that will address the ongoing difficulties that traditional approaches have not been able to solve.
Hey Laura,
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of students recording 30-60 second responses to their readings and then collaborating with the rest of their peers in class. This is a way for them to familiarize themselves with the reading material even further and assures your standing on what their comprehension of the material they have just read.
In fact, I think it's sometimes easier for students to verbalize what they retained from the reading than to write a typical essay response. Additionally, by hearing their peers responses to the material, they can gain a more intrinsic understanding in order to then perhaps write a formal composition or reflection later on if you chose to assign one, based on the skills they gathered from listening to each other through audio, in classroom discussion, and then the collaboration of those audio texts.
I'm also happy about the potential that technology has to help students with disabilities participate in class. I take this optimism one step further by also considering that the ability to actually physically write might become increasingly less important as speech to text technology becomes more advanced. Individuals who cannot physically type can instead speak and have this speech converted into text.
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ReplyDeleteHey Laura,
ReplyDeleteYes. I think that it would be a wonderful way to look at how students use their voices. It can also be used to compare their voice to their writing style. There is this interesting research where the author of a text records the reading of the text and then analysis the differences between what was written and how he/she wrote it. It is interesting because students can see how what they are writing and what they are saying are two different things, even when they are reading directly from what they wrote.
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI know we discussed that we'd both been through the project before, but I forgot about it until I read your blog this week! I think the daily log during the project was a great way for us to use creative writing skills to synthesize our experiences from the day before. Allowing students to choose from many forms makes this project special. For this reason, I don't know that I would force them to choose the vlog, but I would definitely make it an option. Also, I love the idea of the 30-60 second responses. I might require a log (in any format) and these 30-60 second responses as sonic elements. This way, when the teacher edits the sound, students can see how sound recording makes a difference. Finally, I think it would be very interesting if you could blend all of these projects, making them into montage for each novel you read, a montage that includes visual, sonic, and textual elements. It's certainly a different way of reading and reporting on a novel!