Digital Writer Workshop

Background | MAPS | Videos

As writing has changed with computer -mediated, networked environments. so too have our conceptions about what it means to be literate. Troy HIcks

Web2.0 has featured an intensified level of interaction of what has become to be called
"social networking." This kind of community building across interest groups, demographics, and nationalities has transformed the way we connect with strangers, loved ones, friends, colleagues, and even ourselves. - William Kist

Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies," shares Steve Douglas, "to
transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).

Background

New technologies and social norms are changing what it means to be literate. Troy Hicks takes the traditional writer’s workshop, introduced by well-known educators, such as, Donald Graves and Nancie Atwell, and reinvents it to include the all important digital element.

In this hands-on session, participants will focus on how students can use digital tools during the writing process. You will learn how you can digitize the writing workshop with sage, free, easy-to-use Web 2.0 technologies and software.
Without digital writing and networked spaces, certain types of dialogue would have lacked the immediacy that an authentic purpose and audience can bring to the task
There is no single technological solution that applies for every teacher, every course or every view of teaching. Quality teaching requires developing a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between technology, content and pedagogy and using this understanding to develop appropriate, context-specific strategies and representations (Punya Mishra and Matt Koehler)

Transliteracy
The ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media

What would a "new literacies classroom" look like?

features assignments in multiple forms of representation
students have opportunities to read and write in diverse mediums
think-alouds by the teacher who models working through problems using certain medias such as video production, Web design, and print writing
a mix of individual and collaborative activities

Core principles for writing workshop approach include:

student choice about topic and genre
active revision (constant feedback between peer and teacher)
author's craft as a basis for instruction (through minilessons and conferences)
publication beyond classroom walls
broad visions of assessment that include both process and product

A digital writer constantly questions the ways in which a text is being produced--from the purpose and audience to whom she is writing, to the choice of technologies used to compose a text, to how that text is distributed--and MAPS helps writers make those decisions.

MAPS

MAPS = Mode, Audience, Purpose and Situation...add a second M for media.

Mode refers to the genre of the text, an essay, for instance.
Media refers to the way in which the text is presented.
Audience refers to the characteristics of those who are most likely to receive your work and what they value in good writing; the difference in expectations between writing an email to a friend as compared with your supervisor, for instance.
Purpose refers to the specific action that a writer aims to accomplish with a piece
Situation for the Writer: as writers, we each have particular strengths and weaknesses in terms of our work habits; this ranges from the genres we prefer to write in, to the type of environment we create for writing, to the technologies that we are comfortable composing with.
Situation of the writing: Particular writing tasks make demands of us...deadlines, genre expectations, the implementation of new media such as audio or video and those with whom we are collaborating can all influence how well we work.

Videos

social skills discuss in video below

Digital Writing Workshop