Using online technology to create new audiences.

Abstract

The K-12 Connection offers online support for elementary and secondary students as they learn how to write, work on their writing, and share their writing with a potentially global audience. The site uses online technology as a venue where teachers can share and access teaching ideas and techniques with previously inaccessible audiences. The K-12 Connection uses online technology to create new audiences for student writing and for teaching techniques.

Introduction

The Writing Studio is an online learning environment where users can learn to write, revise, receive feedback on their writing, and save their work in a private, password-protected environment. Based on the metaphor of the artists' studio classroom, a place where creative minds produce, critique, rework, and revise their work, The Writing Studio supports writers as they brainstorm, draft, revise, and publish their writing. Moreover, The Writing Studio is virtually situated on Writing@CSU, currently the largest Web site supporting writing and writing instruction, receiving approximately 50 million hits in 2004.

Currently, both The Writing Studio and Writing@CSU_ are directed toward university writers. Classroom teachers who had used The Writing Studio during their undergraduate and graduate studies expressed a need for similar resources for the K-12 classroom. In response to this need, the researchers developed the K-12 Connection, virtually situated on Letters@CSU, extending the online support provided by the Writing@CSU site to K-12 teachers and students. The purpose of the K-12 Connection was to create a set of resources for K-12 students and teachers by working with teams of teachers from selected northern Colorado public schools to develop new online instructional materials, writing tools, and course tools which can be accessed by writing teachers around the world. Although the system shares some design features similar to Blackboard and WebCT, the K-12 Connection allows educators to use technology to enhance writing instruction ranging from a focus on specific skills to treatments of larger rhetorical issues (Palmquist, 2006). In addition to offering course management tools such as e-mail, discussion, and exam options, for example, teachers using the K12 Connection can access over thirty teaching guides, ranging in topic from teaching with technology to writing across the curriculum. They can access writing, library, and ESL resources. The site can also help teachers generate instructional topics and learn instructional strategies.

Rhetorical Knowledge: Audience Issues

The Writing Studio concept is important because, for many students and teachers, writing is a solitary activity. Students often draft in the privacy of their homes, share their writing only occasionally with peer reviewers, revise little, and often follow a first draft/final draft strategy (what first emerges becomes locked in place as the final text). When this model of writing predominates, teacher interventions often fail to have a significant impact on what students do as they write or revise. Tools like those captured on the K-12 Connection, however, help provide a supportive environment for teachers and students throughout the writing process. As Daiute (2000) notes,

   Writing in the context of communication technologies, where
   audiences are part of dynamic textual interactions, might help
   writers generate salient topics and learn strategies for getting
   readers' attention. Such contexts also raise issues of interpersonal
   and intergroup relations around specific texts. At the same time,
   acknowledging that writing evolves in communication contexts
   highlights the need for explicit instruction in the forms of writing
   required in unfamiliar contexts (Delpit, 1988).

In effect, then, the electronic environment itself builds for students a sense of an audience for their writing. Because electronic contexts often involve more student/student (or better yet, writer/writer) interactions, students begin to break out of the notion of the teacher as their sole audience for writing.

Likewise, teachers question whether students are the only audience for their teaching. What if a teacher wants to record and share a teaching idea with colleagues, or what if a teacher is seeking an innovative way to teach a new concept? Teachers across academic disciplines seek ways to access and share innovative teaching ideas with colleagues (Goerdt, 2004; Haberman, 2004; Allen, 2003). The K-12 Connection offers a space where elementary and secondary teachers can use online technology to create new audiences for writing lessons and assignments. Given this knowledge of the need for audience, the researchers wanted to learn:

1. What kinds of online writing support would be most helpful for K-12 students and teachers as they draft, write, revise, and publish?

2. How can students and teachers use online technology to create new audiences for writing and for teaching?

Methodology

The researchers met to discuss who would be the best audience for helping to develop the K-12 Connection, examining who would benefit most from a partnership between university researchers and K-12 teachers. To make the most of site visits, the researchers decided to cluster teachers by grade levels. Looking at the way area schools are structured, as well as considering how professional journals address and define teacher audiences, the researchers chose to organize site-based teacher groups as follows: kindergarten through second grade; third and fourth grade; fifth and sixth grade; seventh through ninth grades; and tenth through twelfth grades.

The researchers contacted principals by telephone to explain the project and to inquire about school interest and availability. The researchers arranged individual on-site meetings with school principals to explain the project, to identify how this project might be integrated into existing school curricular goals, and to address any questions. Each of the schools had already outlined curricular goals for the school year based on student needs, standardized test results, and other criteria. The researchers wanted to learn how the K-12 Connection could help schools meet curricular goals such as integrating writing into the content areas and developing publishable electronic portfolios.

After assessing each school's curricular goals, the researchers met with teacher groups individually, to establish what types of technological resources would be most valuable for them and for their students. Each site-based group of teachers selected one or two tangible projects to work on over the course of a semester. The intention was not for teachers to create new lesson plans. Rather, it was to examine what teachers were already creating in their classrooms and to develop ways to share their teaching ideas with other teachers around the globe via online technology.

The researchers then met with individual teachers to brainstorm how technology might enhance a particular classroom lesson or a course project the teachers were already using. The researchers observed class sessions and studied course handouts. Together, the researchers and the individual classroom teachers examined how technology would allow the teachers to share their teaching ideas.

Pedagogical Audience: Interactive Summary

When a teacher does want to share an effective teaching idea, how can she best share that information with an audience of colleagues, particularly colleagues from across the globe? As part of No Child Left Behind and a national trend toward standardized testing, teachers are actively seeking teaching ideas that help them meet state and national standards, as well as district goals and objectives. Gail Baker, principal at Monroe Elementary School in Loveland, CO, was eager to be involved with the K-12 Connection to help address her school's needs of supporting state and national standards and developing students' higher level thinking skills. Before committing to a project focus, Baker wanted to meet with teachers, discuss writing instruction goals and needs, and examine standardized testing information. She explained that one of the school goals was to integrate writing into the content areas, and the K-12 Connection offered some possibilities for using technology to achieve this goal.

In the researchers' second meeting with Baker, after she had met with her teachers, she was eager to share how her teachers were applying what they had learned about using interactive summary to improve student writing. Baker had recently sent teachers to a conference in California where they learned about using interactive summary with students, a close reading and writing technique designed to help students develop summary skills in writing. Standardized testing scores had indicated students needed to improve their summary skills, and Baker believed the interactive summary approach was something other teachers might want to know about. The researchers talked with Baker and Lisa Kennedy, a third grade teacher at Monroe, about how to best share this process with other educators.

Lisa Kennedy and her students agreed to allow the researchers to videotape an interactive summary lesson. As part of the interactive summary, students read a text selection about bones and identified the vocabulary words they did not know, including osteons, cancellous, and marrow. Mrs. Kennedy recorded the words on an easel, and the students looked up the definitions of the words in the dictionary. The students reread the passage, underlining seven to nine key words and phrases that were seminal to understanding the passage. This list included some of the same vocabulary words mentioned previously, along with such words and phrases as three layers, blood cells, and compact. With the teacher's guidance, the students used the key words to write the following summary of the passage: "Your bones have three layers, the compact, the cancellous, and the marrow. The marrow makes the blood cells for your body." The summary contains all of the key words and helps students to focus only on the main ideas of the passage, which was the instructional goal.

After Mrs. Kennedy finished teaching the lesson, the researchers asked her to reflect upon the lesson, analyzing her teaching methodology and what she perceived her student audience had gained from the lesson. The researchers taped this reflection so that a collegial audience could understand what she did during the lesson, why she did it, and what she thought students had learned.

The researchers used this video to create streaming video of the lesson to post on the online writing site. Writing teachers and students can view the lesson in its entirety on the site. Teachers from around the world can see the teaching technique in action, and students can use the video as an opportunity to learn how to write an effective summary of a text selection. Before using this online technology, these would have been untapped audiences for sharing pedagogy and extending learning opportunities.

Writing Audience: Electronic Portfolios

The K-12 Connection helps create online audiences for content as well as pedagogy. Jan Borman, Principal at Dunn IB World School in Fort Collins, CO, was also excited about inviting her teachers to be part of the K-12 Connection. She explained how the focus of student writing at Dunn is creative writing, adding that they need to incorporate other types of writing as well. Borman noted that teachers had voted writing as the number one priority for teachers and students for the 2005-2006 school year.

Amy Black, the school media specialist, is actively involved in helping teachers discover ways to address curricular priorities. Black was intrigued by the opportunity the K-12 Connection presented for developing student electronic portfolios. Black described why the Dunn learning community wanted to focus on electronic portfolios:

1. Philosophically, Dunn teachers and staff believe that portfolio assessment is a powerful communication and reflection tool for parents, students, and teachers.

2. Dunn teachers and staff use student portfolios as a key focus during student-led conferences.

Black notes Dunn students still maintain "portfolio binders" that are sent home when they complete the Primary Year Program in 5th grade. She comments,

   There are several obstacles to a full migration, one being that so
   far we only have experimented with the electronic portfolios in 4th
   grade. The portfolio (binder version) accompanies the child from
   kindergarten through grade 5. Students obviously very much like the
   electronic portfolios and they certainly acquire some excellent
   tech-related skills when building them. While those two factors are
   certainly appealing to us, we also like the accessibility that a
   web-based portfolio offers to distant parents and other family
   members (A. Black, personal communication: e-mail, March 23, 2006).

At Dunn, students use electronic portfolios as a tool for drafting, revising, and reflecting on their learning goals for reading, math, writing, and the arts. Students can also keep an online reading journal, add sample math problems, draft and save their writing, and upload their work in the arts. In addition, students reflect on their quarterly goals.

The question becomes, "Who are the possible audiences for this work?" The students themselves are one audience. The teacher, as reader and assessor, is another audience. As Black mentioned above, however, other audiences are interested in student work, such as parents and other family members. The purpose of Dunn's involvement with the K-12 Connection was to find a way to use online technology to allow all of these varied audiences secure access to the students' electronic portfolios.

Through the K-12 Connection, the researchers helped Black to upload the electronic portfolios and to provide online, password-protected access to students' electronic portfolios, successfully creating previously inaccessible audiences for student work.

This ability to share student writing with wider audiences than the immediate school community provides further evidence of how online technologies are creating new audiences for teaching ideas and for student writing.

Conclusion

From the initial work with classroom teachers and their students, the researchers are learning valuable ways to adapt The Writing Studio and Writiug@CSU sites, currently targeted toward college and university audiences, to create the K-12 Connection, a user-friendly site for K-12 teachers and students. Using streaming video to capture ideas that teachers are already using in their classrooms and using electronic portfolios to showcase work that students are already creating for print-based portfolios are just two ways that the researchers have found to be beneficial. What sets these uses of technology apart is their attention to audience.

Because this study is still in its initial phase, the researchers are still examining the kinds of writing resources that will prove most helpful for K-12 teachers to share with other teachers around the globe, but initial findings indicate a need for teachers and writers to connect with wider audiences. "Real" writers write for an audience, often an audience beyond themselves. As Kixmiller (2004) asserts, "Students can write for real audiences and purposes and still meet state and national standards." Finding such real audiences and purposes can be challenging, and the researchers are hoping to develop further resources to help teachers and students to connect with audiences beyond themselves.

Having taught junior high English, the researchers know how challenging it can be to develop authentic audiences beyond the student writer and the teacher. It can be equally challenging to keep up with new technology. In particular, it can be difficult and time consuming to sift through all of the technology that is available to teachers and decide which forms of technology would be most beneficial for your students and for you. The K-12 Connection uses new technologies (and existing technologies in new ways) to help provide opportunities for K-12 students to draft and share their writing with a variety of audiences. It also provides a way for elementary and secondary teachers to use online technology to create and share writing resources--including teaching strategies, classroom projects, and student writing--with new audiences as well.

References

Allen, J. (2003). Sharing ideas for the tools of our trade. Voices from the Middle, 10(4), 46-47.

Daiute, C. (2000). Writing and Communication Technologies. In R. Indrisano, & J.R. Squire (Eds.), Perspectives on Writing (pp. 251-276). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 58,280-298.

Goerdt, S. L. (2004). Sharing teaching ideas: Identifying features of functions stated in graph form or equation form. Mathematics Teacher, 97(5), 358-359.

Haberman, M. (2004). Can star teachers create learning communities? Educational Leadership, 61 (8), 52-56.

Kixmiller, L. A. S. (2004). Standards without sacrifice: The case for authentic writing. English Journal, 94(1), 29-33.

Letters@CSU. Retrieved August 23, 2006, from http://letters.colostate.edu/.

Palmquist, Mike. (2006). Rethinking Instructional Metaphors for Web-Based Writing Environments. In Luuk Van Waes, Marielle Leijten and Christine M. Neuwirth (Eds.), Writing and Digital Media (pp. 199-219). Amsterdam:Elsevier.

Writing@CSU. Retrieved August 23, 2006, from http://writing.colostate.edu/.

Pamela K. Coke, Colorado State University 

Coke, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of English Education in the College of Liberal Arts