Language Arts and the Internet

There are specific differences between traditional language arts and the reading/ writing that is done for the internet. Since the amount and variety of online materials is exploding, it's important to understand some of those differences.

1) Hyperlinks

This is perhaps the most significant difference between online and offline writing. In simplest terms, a hyperlink is something you can click on in order to bring you somewhere else. It could be a word, a paragraph, a picture or even just an area on a web page. It can bring you to a different part of the page or another website. A hyperlink can also tell your computer to start downloading a file or program. (Be careful with this!)

For students to use hyperlinked writing, they have to understand the broader idea of interconnection. Writing inherently contains words and phrases that refer to other ideas and other writing. Hyperlinks are a way to make those connections explicit. It is similar to the process of citation, but is more interactive and doesn’t interfere with the flow of reading.

2) Copy, Paste ( C,  V on Mac or Control-C, Control-V on PC)

Copying is as old as writing itself. However, until the advent of the copy/paste function in word processors, it has never been so effortless. Students don’t have to read everything they copy anymore. The intellectual theft doesn’t even result in the student looking at the material and (hopefully) absorbing some of it on accident. Worse yet, it confounds plagiarism issues. I’ve heard many students honestly state they believe they can just change a few words in a copied sentence and not worry about citations. These are dangers that need to be discussed carefully with students. Simply saying “don’t copy” is about as effective as saying “don’t cheat”.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Copy/paste is an important part of the editing process. Students just need guidance in using this important tool.

3) Embedding

Illustrations are common in writing. A simple, thoughtful sketch can help to illustrate a subtle idea. Online, these illustrations can be still pictures, videos or audio segments. This can be a complex process since it involves copyright, design principles and technical skills to pull off. The skills are valuable, though and worth teaching.

4) Social

While privacy and reputation issues are vitally important, I want to focus on how social networks affect the writing process. In most cases, these sites involve writing small, sensible and frequent notes. These mediums can help students understand the concept and importance of summary. Since there isn’t much room, students have write what is most important and leave the rest behind. This can serve as a good tie-in to quality note taking.

5) Mobile

Smartphones and tablets are changing the way a lot of the world works. That includes the way we write. Please don’t dismiss them as portable personal entertainment. These are powerful business tools and will become increasingly important to your students. (Check out the new app Snapguide.) One important issue is the small size of the screen. While text can be resized pretty easily, be careful with the pictures and diagrams.

Smartphones are not only used to consume content but to create it. Are your students able to put together a meaningful, coherent and professional message on a smartphone? Good writing is hard to produce using just your thumb especially for students who are used to using cryptic text shorthand. Professionals text important information to one another. Students need to learn how text well.

While this is certainly not a comprehensive list, I trust that it has provided you with a starting point. I would love to hear of other ways that writing online differs from its offline corollary.

Space for learning

One of the great things about word processors is the ability to manipulate documents in any way you see fit. Whichever program you use, you should be aware of the importance of blank space. Emptiness is not the same thing as "nothing". If you're purposeful about the way you use emptiness, it will work to promote learning in your students. Here are several ways blank space can help your students in the learning process.

1) Chunking information-

Emptiness takes up real estate which means less information can fit on a single page. You’ll be forced to put only the most important items there.  A handout ought to contain all the relevant material for a lesson and leave out all the fluff. This way, students can focus more easily on what matters.

2) Focus-

Blank space will guide students’ eyes to the right spot. Too many items on a sheet of paper confuses the reader. Grouping pictures and text boxes to one side not only makes your handout visually appealing, but also provides space for students to write in.

3) Note space-

As I just mentioned, kids need a place to write down important information. As you know, actively engaging with a handout is going to lead to greater understanding and retention than passively reading it. Emptiness also provides the space to jot down clarifications and questions they may have.

4) Interest-

Beauty isn’t your first aim. However, if something is more appealing, it becomes more interesting which in turn makes material more memorable. That in turn improves learning. Consider using white space to add asymmetry, depth and perspective to your materials.

The old adage that “less is more” still holds true. Try to include a bit more white space in your handouts and see what the results are. Please let me know if you see any improvements!

Take note...

Tablets are taking the academic world by storm. They're light, compact and extremely multifunctional. They also do things differently than a laptop. One of the really interesting areas tablets are being used is as a notebook.

There are dozens of note-taking apps out there, each with it's particular pluses and minuses. I'm just going to touch on a few that I find particularly interesting.

1) PDF editors- iAnnotate PDF, PDF Notes, PDFpen, PDF Expert

These are apps which allow you to take notes on what you read. My professors would always tell me that in order to learn from a textbook, you really have to interact with it by underlining and writing in the margins. That's exactly what these apps allow you to do. By providing digital highlighters, pens and sticky notes, textbooks can be marked up in endless ways. Latter, the annotations can just as easily be erased.

2) Typing, sharing notes- Google docs, Microsoft Office Live, Evernote, Notability

These are all great options for typing and saving notes in class. The first three are actually just designed to save and share text. Notability really stands out though. At ten bucks, it gives you a lot more functionality like syncing your notes to audio recordings. This can be a lifesaver if you’re are in a fast-paced lecture. It also lets you draw in your notes- another great feature.

3) Document scanners- Camscanner, Photo to PDF, DocScanner

Having the ability to turn a picture into a PDF can come in quite handy. On the fly, you can turn any document into a PDF which you can then mark up or email to someone. Keep in mind that these would be best used in a pinch. Scanners and copy machines like Riso do a much better job of scanning your important papers.  

Like so much of what we've seen so far, tablets are providing students with options they've never had before. These are just a few of the ways tablets can (but just as often do not) outshine laptops. Please let me know if I've missed something important here. I'd love to get your feedback.

Digital reading and 'riting in education

Reading and writing used to be much simpler. We would get some sort of sharp stick (a pen or pencil) and scratch at paper until the marks we made could be interpreted by someone else. Well, our writing has evolved somewhat and along with it, so has our reading. Nowhere is this change more evident than in the home of reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic... academia.

Lets start by looking at our writing tools. Lets start off with PDF's. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, PDF's are files that can't (of themselves) be modified. Admittedly, this is kind of a strange place to start. After all, they're designed to be immutable. The funny thing is, that unchanging nature lets us write in a special way. On my iPad, I have an app called PDF notes free. With it, I can highlight, jot down notes, or add doodles. I can't call this idea new, really. I mean, students draw in the margins of books all the time. In my case, though, I can erase everything whenever I want.

Interactive whiteboards (IWB's) like Promethean and Smartboard are also great ways to work with PDF's. Most worksheets come in PDF form these days and can easily be imported and used on an IWB. If your favorite handout doesn't have a digital copy, you can make one by scanning the sheet and saving it as a PDF. You could either use a scanner or the scan function on your copier. That PDF can then be imported and projected onto the IWB so that students can write on or highlight the important parts of the worksheet. The process of working on a handout becomes far more participatory this way.

Digital tools are great, but has anyone really tried to make a better pen? Yes, as a matter of fact. Livescribe is an extraordinary tool that looks and writes like a regular pen, but records information like no other divice out there. Whatever you write with the pen is recorded along with the audio it picks up. Later you can relive your note-taking and watch as your words and drawings apear in time with the teacher's lecture. This adds two new dimensions to traditional note taking. Audio is one of them of course, and can help you keep up with fast talkers. The other (and less obvious) dimension is time. When you see when items are added you can put them in context.

 Reading, too has changed dramatically. Consider the flood of electronic textbooks that have come out in the last year or so:
iBooks
Chegg Etextbooks
Amazon's Kindle Fire books
Kno
Pearson success net
Glenco online additions
...or just Google eTextbooks to see a huge list pop up.

Students don't have haul 40 pounds of books around. Okay, so in theory they wouldn't have to if they all had iPads, Kindle Fire, Nook tablet or the Acer Iconia. Really, any tablet would do. Lets just pretend that school districts had all the political and financial capital to make that happen. With all of this digital material, kids no longer have to worry about forgetting to bring their book to class since it's always on the device. More importantly, these textbooks interact with the students as well as the outside world. Students can watch film clips. End of chapter reviews can be interactive games. And updates can happen overnight. Textbooks are notorious for getting out of date but if they are electronic, scientists can update the material as it becomes available.

Perhaps one of the most interesting changes in reading is the newspaper. News used to be delivered to the reader in one format. If you were interested, great. If not, you were out of luck. Zite has changed all that. This is an app that works with most tablet and smartphone devices. It brings the news to you based on the categories you select. Then it does something amazing. Based on what you say is good (thumbs up) or bad (thumbs down), it will seek out and find blogs and news stories you probably want to read.

How about that? Finally, there is a piece of software that helps you discover and learn exactly what you are interested in. This is the ultimate in differentiated instruction.

Reading and writing have come a long way. It's fascinating to see how they are still evolving!

Tech provides more usable time.

One of the reasons teachers use technology is that it saves time and effort. Of course many tools are designed to reduce the time and effort it takes for instructors to produce material. Examples of this include test generators and word processors. Today, though, I want to focus on our students during class time. Unfortunately, students can be left to stare into space as we take time to draw something out on the over head or sketch an equation on the whiteboard.

One of the greatest tools I have found for math teachers is the Desmos online calculator. The power of this application lies in the fact that a teacher can manipulate equations and the students can instantly see how the graph of that equation changes in response. A teacher told me recently how excited he is that he no longer has to sketch graphs out by hand while teaching. "And you know that half the kids start day dreaming when we do that", he added. With Desmos, he can use his time to explain concepts and cut down on the wandering minds.

There are also several interactive science sites that are very good. The Dynamic Periodic Table is excellent, for example. During a lesson, you need only hover over sections of the table to bring up important information. It's great for answering student questions or covering material clearly and quickly. Biology teachers love the Cells Alive online cellular models for the same reason.

For language arts, Google docs is a great time saver. This online suite of programs allows users to create presentations, documents and spreadsheets for free. It also allows users to collaborate on any of those files in real time.  The reason this cuts down on dead air is that no one has to wait around for group members to read over material and make comments. Everything in the document is written simultaneously, so everyone in the group can read everything while it is being typed. You as an instructor can also comment on student writing in real time. This means that an entire class can be writing while you make encouraging comments on each paper. All of this is done simultaneously and all without interrupting anyone's train of thought.

Class time should really be used for learning, not waiting for us to draw or read over material. The technology I've discussed is a great start, but there's so much more. What sorts of tools have you found to get more learning out of the limited time you have in class?

Effects on student writing

Student writing is taking an interesting turn, don't you think? There are currently far more forms of writing than ever before. It ranges from traditional hand writing to the recent social media phenomenon. These writing mediums are all influencing one another in subtle and not so subtle ways. Lets take a quick look at some of what's going on. Contrary to popular opinion, there is plenty of handwriting going on. For example, it's still taught in primary schools whereas students don't learn to type till much latter. Plus, nearly everyone handwrites their class notes largely because there aren't many alternatives to pen and paper (especially in math class!).

On the other hand, do kids even pass notes in the hallway anymore? I think they only text each other to keep up with the local gossip. Once they get home from school, they start working on homework... right after updating Facebook  and Tweeting a little. They let their friends know how they're doing in 140 characters or less. Texting and posting on social media is an amazing feat of of encapsulation. They take dozens of feelings and events and boil them down to just a few sentences! Imagine how great it would be if students would apply that ability to summarize our last lecture.

Of course, word processors are ubiquitous in education. Whether using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, students nearly always type essays or research papers. And it makes sense. Their teachers really don't want to deal with paper fringes or sloppy penmanship. Plus, there are no spell checkers in a pencil. What student would ever want to turn in a paper without a computer to proof read it for them.

So what are all of these writing forms doing to a student's ability to put thoughts down on a page? One clear effect is on spelling. In the past few years I've seen students inserting "cuz" instead of "because", "pple" instead of people or even "l8r" instead of "later". These text abbreviations are even put into graded essays. The other thing that I've noticed is a decline in complex sentences. Most of my students write in small, easy to read sentences. Since these are the same kids that send short blurbs to others everyday while texting, its little wonder that sentences should shrink. Word processors have actually improved student writing, though. Or at least they can. A word processor can allow students to easily brainstorm, manipulate text and edit on the fly. If they are using an online editor like Google Docs, students can also collaborate on writing and teach each other in real time.

So it's clear that student writing is going to continue to evolve. It also seems clear that much of that change will be driven by the multitude of writing media available today.