Now I regret not
learning how to create an ePortfolio before starting to write this blog entry—
And I must do some more
R&D on ePortfolios…Gonna have to make one for myself one of these days….
One of the
subdivisions of Language & Literacy is “Writing for the Workplace,” a field I am very interested
to learn more about since I have spent so much time in corporate (or
corporatized) environments—might as well learn the academic lingo to describe
my time in the cubicle farm (the Squaresville Death Trip?).
Having written memos,
reports, news articles, market analysis, and so on, I think I could pass on
some information, or at least have a leg to stand on when critiquing students’
efforts.
(putting my money
where my mouth is…)
Some Hints for
Writing in the Workplace:
GET TO THE POINT.
STICK TO BUSINESS.
Jack, be a dull boy.
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| Proofreading also means taking a look at the layout and seeing if your boss is being made fun of... |
PROOFREAD. In tHe
name of all that is holy, read and re-read your missive if it is work-related.
But how to teach “writing a memo”?
(Take away all signs of humanity? We’ll see…)
This comes to mind
with a portion of Klages & Clark’s (K&C) “New Worlds of Error and
Expectations: Basic Writers and Digital Assumptions” (2009):
K&C:
Too often, basic writers are
asked to write simple essays that don’t engage their intellectual interests or
their critical thinking abilities. (p39)
(This seems to tie in
with adult learners needing a reason to learn something, as well as its having
an immediate relevance to their lives.)
Synchronicity alert:
As I am brushing up on my adult education terminology in preparation for next
semester; I discovered an article that touched on some of these things—
“Why Trust Is a Crucial Ingredient in Shaping Independent Learners,” by Katrina Schwartz (Nov.
14, 2014)
While Schwartz’s
story deals primarily with what is blocked from some school’s computers and the
trust issues involved between students and administrators, from what K&C
note regarding “basic writing as punishment—”
Let’s recap (BTW, it
is weird reading about CUNY this way…)
K&C: Nearly half of all students entering
LaGuardia (44% in 2006) are placed in basic writing. Like most basic writers,
they are uncomfortable with writing and experience high levels of writing
anxiety in academic situations. They have little or no confidence in their
writing, reading, and critical thinking abilities. For most of these students,
academic writing is seen as a one-way communication in which they seek to
demonstrate acquired knowledge to a teacher-authority. In an era of No Child
Left Behind, students educated in American public schools often understand
writing as high-stakes and test-driven. These students often have little
investment in education as a means toward cultural and social empowerment,
rather seeing it as an end to economic advancement.
In most situations, including
their placement into a basic writing course in college, writing has served as a
basis for punishment. (p37)
When you write
academically, think like you were talking to a cop seems to be the suggestion.
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| A wonderful remix/twist on a classic punk rock design; part of a world many teachers are severely alienated from. |
Schwartz notes on the
KQED.org site:
The millennial generation of
students is often criticized for being impatient, unfocused, entitled and lazy,
but [Michelle Luhtala,
head librarian at New Canaan High School in Connecticut] said that’s an old-school way of looking at a group of kids who have
grown up in a dramatically different world than their teachers. “I don’t think
kids are unfocused,” she said. “I think they can be super focused if you give
them something to do. And I really mean DO, not listening or watching, but
really physically doing something.”
Creating learning opportunities
that don’t rely on lectures, textbooks or sitting quietly goes against
established educational patterns and can feel foreign to many adults who
learned that way themselves. It requires trust, but once given, can often
produce incredible projects from students that might never have materialized
without giving them the freedom to think and act independently, Luhtala said.
“Passive learning is really not
an effective way to teach these kids,” Luhtala said. “The reality is that kids
will retain less than ten percent of what we say in a lecture setting. So we
need to empower them to become independent learners.”
The librarian
concludes by saying,
“If we trust them to engage with
the content, then we have the power to teach them the digital citizenship,”
Luhtala said. As with most learning, students understand the necessity of
responsible behavior online when they are confronted with real choices as part
of their school work. “We have to let them go to places that may feel scary at
a lot of levels, but digital citizenship is an important part of 21st century
learning,” Luhtala said.
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| It's not just what you say, but how you say it. |
K&C already have
data that may be of interest to Ms. Luhtala:
For some, “developmental skills”
is a phrasal code for “not college able.” And all too often, basic writers are
marginalized within a larger college curriculum that uses the issue of “standards”
as a weapon against them….In our classrooms, we seek to use the ePortfolio as a
tool to suggest to students that the world they write is the world they will claim,
as authors and as citizens. In our basic writing classrooms, we strive to shift
students’ perspectives of themselves as non-writers as they compile ePortfolios
documenting their development as writers and reflecting on the tangible
progress as evidenced by their collected writing.
This practice significantly
challenges the other measures of student achievement in the course—two
high-stakes exams imposed by the university system and our department—to help
students document their emerging authorship and to claim authority over their
own writing, and, ultimately, their own education.
Which brings us to
our second synchronicity alert!
Another article
discovered while reading extracurricularly…
"Why the Best Teachers Don’t Give Tests," by Alfie Kohn, Oct.
30, 2014, Huffington Post—
“Not only do tests
assess the intellectual proficiencies that matter least, however -- they also
have the potential to alter students' goals and the way they approach learning.
The more you're led to focus on what you're going to have to know for a test,
the less likely you are to plunge into a story or engage fully with the design
of a project or experiment. And intellectual immersion can be all but smothered
if those tests are given, or even talked about, frequently. Learning in order
to pass a test is qualitatively different from learning for its own sake.”
K&C:
The ePortfolio, and students’
understanding of their progress and their limitations as writers, serves to
provide them with a powerful counternarrative within an otherwise anonymous and
punitive writing context. As they develop rich multimodal ePortfolios
characterized by an intensive use of visual rhetoric to complement their written
and oral productions in the course, students build on their technological
dexterity and begin to understand their emerging writing skills as equally
important components of their digital literacy.
(p39)
Yancey is a great
booster of e-portfolios, and sees their use growing, as well as their impact on
students:
Given that many e-portfolio
practitioners and researchers understand reflection as the connective tissue for
the intellectual work and exhibits we see in electronic portfolios, the next
generation of electronic portfolio research is likely to focus on questions
around reflection…And because e-portfolios link curriculum and assessment in
ways that acknowledge and build on students’ experiences, they provide new
sites for learning about how we assess, about how we teach, and perhaps most importantly,
about how we all learn.
(p32)
Returning to
something mentioned by K&C, what can we do to make basic writing less of a
punishment?
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| Remix, prank or social commentary? Uhhhh....Yes? |
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