The Digital Revolution (or not…)

I’m just beginning to find out about all the web resources that are out there for teachers; a friend of mine posted this on Facebook, and I thought I’d pass it along.

Inside Higher Ed: “The Revolution Will Not Be Subscription-Based,” by Barbara Fister

This article isn’t necessarily the best discussion of the subject (or the most focused), but the stats further down the page about student technology use are deeply interesting:

“When project teams interviewed 560 undergraduates studying in libraries at ten institutions, they found students were keeping it simple. Most of them had only one or two electronic devices with them: a phone and a laptop. Most of them were focused on getting an assignment done or were studying for a class. Most of them had only a couple of webpages open in a browser, and they weren’t the same websites; they were browsing all over the place. Only a small percentage were on familiar sites like Facebook or Wikipedia. Few of the students interviewed (11%) had used a library databases in the previous hour and even fewer (9%) had used library books. Many of them were keeping an eye on text messages, email, and Facebook, but only when taking a break from their work. They weren’t multitasking in that legendary fashion we expect of this generation, nor were they enamored of trendy new digital devices. Only seven of the 560 students was using an iPad or other tablet device. Only three had a Kindle or other e-reader.”  -Barbara Fister

A Shift in Purpose (for the blog, anyway)

I recently moved both of my classes from a combination of the website and the wiki to just the wiki; it seemed clear to me that things would be less complicated and more efficient for the students that way.  I had them write about whether they thought it would be more convenient (got a surprising number of people who just didn’t care), and offer suggestions for any improvements they wanted to make.  We met in a S-Tech classroom the next day (one with a computer for each student), and moved things over and made the changes together, which, among other things, may have encouraged them to take more ownership of the wiki.  Surely it’s unambiguous that they’re allowed to make changes to it when the teacher supervised their doing so in class, right?

Anyway, this meant cutting the website loose, which was part of why I felt trepidation about making the changeover in the first place; considering how much teeth-gritting, brain-scrambling, hair-tearing self-training I did in order to build the damn thing, the idea of just not using it anymore was almost heart-breaking.  (I know, lots of hyphenated words, but that really is how bad it was.)  But, since it was clear that moving everything to the wiki was better for the students, I was powerless to resist, and move everything over we did.  Then a few days ago, I was thinking about just taking the website down, and it occurred to me that there was still something I could do with all that material: I could move it over here.  That is, I could attach all my class-associated materials to this blog, where I talk about my teaching experiences.  Visual aids!  Free handouts and syllabus advice!  Actual resources made available to composition teachers who need them, among my coworkers and beyond!  And then, this blog could actually have a purpose and an audience, instead of just rambling about my classes’ progress and whatever teacher-y thing is on my mind today.

Composition teachers usually don’t get enough support from their departments, not least because even the best-intentioned people aren’t sure what they need; most of the online resources for day-to-day logistics are either useless, or buried in expensive members-only archives.  I’m not saying my stuff is so super-fantastic that everyone should use it (I’m continually refining it myself), but it’s produced good results for me, and I’ve had to make it all up as I went along.  I’d like fewer composition teachers to have to do quite so much of that.  So, I’ve already started duplicating the other site’s structure, and I’ll be moving over material in the next week or so.  If it helps even one person teach their class better, it will have been worth all the teeth-gritting and brain-scrambling.