Professional Piece

.....title to be developed...

Two visions of the writing workshop

Mary, leans into the old rocking chair, hears the familiar crack of the wicker beneath her.

The paper in her hands trembles, as she looks up to see the 23 sets of eyes upon her, waiting for

to begin reading. Her piece, a definition essay on love, was inspired by a free write she did

earlier on the year about breaking up with her boyfriend. She read it to her writing group, and

after hearing their response to her, their sharing of similar experiences and perspectives about

relationships that she had not thought about before, inspired Mary to explore the topic of love

further. She talked with the group of her peers throughout the drafting and revision process,

using their feedback to revise her words to accurately capture the essence of her message. And

now, even though several in her audience already knew what she was about to read, she was

anxious about sharing such a personal aspect of her life with the rest of the class. She wanted to,

though, because she felt part of this classroom, this community, and she knew her words would

connect her in new ways to others, just they had with those in her writing group. She deeply

inhaled, and began.

Miles away, typing at his computer, Bill puts on the finishing touches. His piece, titled

“Learning through Pain,” began as a blog about the time his mother came home drunk one night

and hit him. Wanting to explore the topic further, he subscribed to a feed of articles about child

abuse, and began a social bookmarking group with several other students interested in finding

more information about the topic. His initial blog, which he pasted into an online word

processor, served as an introduction to his piece, which examines facts and real life stories about
about child abuse that he had gathered through his research. The link to this draft, he shared with

his classmates, who offered responses to the writing and suggestions for Bill. Now, after

multiple revisions of it, Bill had pasted the piece into his latest blog, and clicked the “publish”

key, making his work, his life, public to the world.

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The Shift in Writing Instruction

In the narratives above, both fiction, are two different versions of students engaging in

meaningful writing activities founded upon the core values that underlie the best practices

writing instruction. In both, students have choice in what they write about, the environment

engenders the recursive nature of writing, collaboration is used to help the writer develop his or

her ideas, and the writer’s words are written for an audience that extends far beyond the teacher

and her red pen. Both classes are writing workshops, the first existing traditionally in the

physical world, and the second is its digital counterpart. In recent years, an increased interest as

been expressed in the later approach, and rightly so.

(Insert paragraph on research on current trends in writing and new literacies)

The area of digital writing is indeed exciting. No longer is writing outside of class

assignments limited to love letters and scribbled notes. Today’s students regularly employ

technology to communicate and compose, not just through text, but with multimedia as well.

Portable ditigal technologies and Web 2.0 have revolutionized the way in which we, and our

students, write. Troy Hicks, in his recently published his book, The Digital Writing Workshop

(2009), explains that technology has changed the way in which we write so significantly that

now, nearly all writing is digital, from the places where we find our ideas, to the manner in
which we compose and share them(10). As teachers, if we are to prepare students as writers,

whether in our present society or in the future society that does not yet exist, then we must, as

stated by Hicks, “adopt a perspective that honors and integrates digital writing into our

classroom” (11).

Of course, our integration of the digital world in our instruction should be consistent in

our most current understanding of best practices. If technology is used as a means of carrying

out traditional teacher-centered practices, or as Troy Hicks (2009) states, to “put old wine in new

bottles,” technology will not serve to deepen students’ understandings, critical awareness, or

literacy in digital technologies. The process by which we engage students in using technology

to facilitate the writing process should result in their development of critical and technical skills

that not only would be impossible in the absence of technology, but also engages students in

developing the new sets of literacy skills that they need to function as citizens of a world lived in

both digital and physical spaces.

Many of the writing tools discussed in recent publications, such as The Digital Writing

Workshop, do afford students opportunities to develop as writers and carry out processes that

could not be carried out in the absence of technology, for example, real time collaboration and

publishing to a global audience. As teachers consider transitioning their writing workshop into

the digital age, it is important that they do so being aware of the tools that exist and understand

the effects of these technologies on their students’ development as writers. But they also must

consider what it lost.

While the term “21st Century Learning” is based primarily in the development of digital

literacies, being a citizen, a human citizen, of our modern society requires more than the ability

to use technology, and the same is true with developing rhetorical skills. Today’s students need
to be literate in both digital and physical space and be able to communicate seamlessly between

them. The writing workshop can be an environment that shapes such a learner, but doing so

requires teachers to have a new understanding, one that facilitates students’ development as

writers, provides them with the literacy skills needed in modern society, and includes them in a

writing community that extends into both the digital and physical worlds.

The Digital Writing Workshop (2009) provides an excellent starting place for guiding

teachers in the selecting the right tools to get students started with digital writing, showing how

the entire process can be moved online. The author also mentions that for some aspects of

writing, such as conferencing, digital tools are, “no substitute for face-to-face response” (37), but

he does not go into any depth about why and how one should implement a model of such

balance. It is my intention in this article to build off the contributions of the Digital Writing

Workshop and other contemporary research. Doing so, I will to provide a foundation of

pedagogy and practical tools, of which teachers can use to revise writing instruction for the

context of the 21st century.

The Balanced Writing Classroom

To be addressed, researched
I organizing information—
A. The day book and RSS feeds
II—Composing
A. The pen, the word processor, the blog,
B. Multimedia composition
III—the writing group
A. The group
1. Meetings in person
A. The nature of social interactions
B.
2. Meetings online
A. Online relationships
 B. Creating online identities
IV—Publishing/Sharing
A. The author’s chair
-giving the piece a voice
-creating classroom community
B. The possibilities of online publishing.

IV. The revised vision of 21st century writing instruction