Digital Is...

The major benefit of having students publish their writing online, in my opinion, is that it gives them an authentic audience. Of course, the teacher is always an audience for student work, but students appreciate the ability to share their pieces with a wider audience. Unfortunately, there is barely enough time in the school day to incorporate a daily writer's workshop, much less to incorporate time for each student to share their pieces. This is an area where teachers can fully take advantage of the digital tools available to them today. Having students publish their pieces in an online blog allows their peers to read them whenever they have time and give feedback where they can. Beyond their peers, students can receive feedback from their families and people around the world as well.

When students publish their work online, they are constantly reminded that they are writing for an audience. When writing is published online, people WILL read it. If writing is published on a class blog, each student's classmates will have the opportunity to read ALL of their work. They can then help each other find their strengths and weaknesses and improve. Teachers in each grade and across grade levels at the school can collaborate so that their students can read work from students in other classes, increasing the opportunity for students to receive valuable feedback about their work. Teachers can make their blogs available to principals and other administration at the school, allowing them to give feedback to students as well as keeping them up to date with what is going on in the classroom. Parents, grandparents, and other members of the community can read the students' work, bringing them in to the classroom. Then, using resources like #comments4kids on Twitter, teachers can open up the blog to classrooms across the country and around the world.

Amazingly, with so many resources available, I have not seen many teachers incorporate technology like this in the classroom. My field placement is in a first grade classroom, where it would be extremely difficult to incorporate technology in this way (students have trouble typing ANYTHING, let alone publishing full pieces.) I have spent time in classrooms in higher grade levels, however, and I have not seen teachers taking advantage of the technological resources available to them. Meanwhile, students are struggling to find purpose for their writing. I am thankful that digital resources have been emphasized so much in this class. While I definitely understand the advantages of having students publish online, I was unaware of the amount of safe resources available for kids to use. I will undoubtably search for ways to incorporate these resources in to my classroom regardless of the age of the children that I am working with.