Response to "Using Digital Tools for Formative and Summative Evaluation of Writing"

I have used the formative evaluation writing comment features in my newspaper writing class for several years now and can attest to its power. First, the comment feature enables me to provide sophisticated analysis and suggestions faster because I can type faster than I can physically write, and I can point to the EXACT text I am referring to. Additionally, my comments can easily be absorbed by the student and then X-ed off the page after they consider my thoughts. I really agree with the cautions the authors provide with the focus on providing positive, constructive feedback and limiting ourselves to strategic errors or one or two major ideas (e.g. organization, character development, etc.) It is soooooo easy to overevaluate using the comment feature, and the same horror students had when they received a red, ink-ed-up, bleeding paper from their teacher can occur digitally when we overcomment. I've definitely made this mistake. I've found it's better to focus on one issue at a time, have students resubmit, then focus on another issue. Pretty soon, students start to eliminate that issue in their writing because they get tired of fixing it. I understand that we can edit directly on the students' page, but I abhor that practice because it takes away the students' ownership as author and they don't really learn to fix their own mistakes--it's been done for them. I've found that my editors become "experts" in helping other students with the very mistakes they used to make over and over. Above all, I think it's important to remember that using digital tools does not replace our good judgement and practices as writing teachers. Everything we know to be true about fostering student writers still holds; we just have more and different tools at our disposal to help that fostering. I think it's very important not to lose the student writer in the media we choose to use.

I cannot see myself using the cell phone, IMing and other synchronous systems with my students at this point for two reasons: time and access. I recently read a study that university professors teaching online classes typically spend 20% more time per student than they do in a face-to-face classroom. This is great for the student, but the instructor still needs to make effective use of time. Being available online seems more time-intensive than what I can do at this point. Secondly, because I teach in a rural area with a generally low SES, many of my students do not have access to these technologies at home. I want to focus primarily on how I can help students while they are at school with some options for after-school teacher tutoring, but not to the extent that some students will be greatly advantaged over others.

I also liked the rubric ideas in this chapter and want to look more in-depth at CPR (calibrated peer review (p. 200)). This seems like a great opportunity to help students make good use of rubrics and internalize how they relate to specific writing assignments.