Week Six Personal Post
This week, technology in the classroom has my students sharing editing documents on their iPad's.
I work with honors sophomores and juniors, and I a principle goal of the course is to build their capacity as editors. Because we are 1:1, students can complete drafting and revising anywhere. They can also exchange essays and conduct an editing and revising process the department has devised.
For our first edit of the year, the students will print their essays and bring them in. (I like to start with paper so that I can monitor their progress more fluidly and move among them more swiftly).
Exchanging with a random partner, as a class we go through six checkpoints (or ten, for the juniors) while they are also encouraged to note and edit any surface errors they notice.
This lets them try the editing process with hands-on help and build their confidence.
That night, I will ask them to pick one edit they recognize from previous experience as a writer, and a separate mistake that they did not know was a rule, or don't understand. They add their reader's comment to the digital document, highlight the edited portion, and email me a pdf of the marked-up document. We share 3-4 of these samples to discuss any number of problems in a workshopping / clinic model.
From then on, the students will work from their peers digital texts for each essay, and each time, they will send me highlights (or nominees for their Not Top Ten) of the editing process, and we will take writing notes across the array of error samples they produce.
Through the course of the year, they are exposed to dozens of various errors; when the exposure is redundant, many of them begin to recognize them on sight, and we discuss telltale signs to build their radar capacity.
While this was all possible before the iPad's, the immediate access and transfer makes for better realtime feedback. This process not only builds their proficiency as editors and writers, but it also makes for some genuine progress between the rough draft and final draft for most of the participants.
I work with honors sophomores and juniors, and I a principle goal of the course is to build their capacity as editors. Because we are 1:1, students can complete drafting and revising anywhere. They can also exchange essays and conduct an editing and revising process the department has devised.
For our first edit of the year, the students will print their essays and bring them in. (I like to start with paper so that I can monitor their progress more fluidly and move among them more swiftly).
Exchanging with a random partner, as a class we go through six checkpoints (or ten, for the juniors) while they are also encouraged to note and edit any surface errors they notice.
This lets them try the editing process with hands-on help and build their confidence.
That night, I will ask them to pick one edit they recognize from previous experience as a writer, and a separate mistake that they did not know was a rule, or don't understand. They add their reader's comment to the digital document, highlight the edited portion, and email me a pdf of the marked-up document. We share 3-4 of these samples to discuss any number of problems in a workshopping / clinic model.
From then on, the students will work from their peers digital texts for each essay, and each time, they will send me highlights (or nominees for their Not Top Ten) of the editing process, and we will take writing notes across the array of error samples they produce.
Through the course of the year, they are exposed to dozens of various errors; when the exposure is redundant, many of them begin to recognize them on sight, and we discuss telltale signs to build their radar capacity.
While this was all possible before the iPad's, the immediate access and transfer makes for better realtime feedback. This process not only builds their proficiency as editors and writers, but it also makes for some genuine progress between the rough draft and final draft for most of the participants.
I love the way you have approached editing. You have figured out how to make it authentic and relevant to them. The iPads are a great way to provide quick access and feedback. By keeping many of the drafts digital, it is also helping to reduce the amount of paper being used. I always hated having to print out multiple copies of my paper so I could trade during peer editing.
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