Chapter 4 Reading Response

Chapter 4 Reading Response

Chapter four focused on how to support writing with technology. Technology was integrated into the writing process as students used technology to organize and plan their writing, compose, present and edit their texts, collaborate on texts and finally peer review texts. The chapter focuses on explaining and illustrating how technology can help in setting writing goals, planning, organizing ideas, composing texts, and editing texts. During the organizing and planning stage of writing students have the opportunity to use technology in creating concepts maps.
http://cmap.ihmc.us/conceptmap.html is one site I found that allows students to download a program that allows teachers and students alike to create concepts maps. The main feature of CMAP Tools is that it forces students to enter linking words between concepts so students have to visualize the connections among ideas. Creating linking words and ideas between concepts is an essential part of creating concept maps.
http://www.mywebspiration.com/ is another site that allows students to digitally map out their ideas to make them visual and to organize the connections among them. Webspiration is unique in that students can upload and insert pictures into their concepts maps to further visual their thinking. Webspiration would be good to use in the earlier grades since there is also less of a focus on linking words between the concepts. Thus, if students were being introduced into the idea of concept mapping webspiration would be more inviting and easier to use than CMAP Tools.
http://www.inspiration.com/Kidspiration is even more kid friendly. Webspiration, kidspiration and inspiration are all made by the same company and can be used for different purposes. Kidspiration is geared towards allowing students to choose different shapes and pictures to represent their ideas. This site also offers some ideas for how to integrate kidspiration into the curriculum.
The important thing to realize when choosing concept mapping technology to use in the classroom is to make sure the technology is not too confusing that students cannot students create their own maps. Concept mapping is to help the students, thus teachers should give students plenty of time to explore the software on their own and create their own understanding of how to map their ideas.
Another main part of this chapter focused on presenting one’s writing via technology. PowerPoint is one tool the book references. However, although PowerPoint is a great tool to use since it allows plenty of student freedom in design and creation, it can also be too free. There are too many options for students to chose from that students can get distracted from what is important, the actual writing.
http://prezi.com/ is another unique presentation tool that allows students to showcase their writing in unique and interesting ways. The good thing about Prezi.com is that students can access these presentations from anywhere as they are put on the web.
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/ is a site that allows students to present their writing using headings, subheadings and outlines. Unique to this site is the fact that students can allow people to see as much or as little as they want of their presentation as each heading can be minimized or expanded upon. Omni Outliner can also be used in the organizing and planning portion of the writing process.
http://show.zoho.com/login.do is another online site where students can create, edit, share and present their writing online. Zoho show is like PowerPoint but rather than only being able to be viewed on computers with PowerPoint, Zoho can be viewed anywhere on the Internet. Zoho also promotes collaboration in writing as multiple students are able to view and edit presentations and writing online.
Publishing one’s writing is also an important feature that technology helps make possible.
http://www.kidpub.com/ is a site that allows students to share their stories, poetry, and other creative writings with others. Students have the ability to read other stories, write their own, talk about and review stories and even publish their stories. There is a bookstore available that allows students to buy other students books. Although this site requires a yearly fee this would be a great site to use in a classroom so multiple children will have access to sharing their stories.
Sites such as www.fanfiction.net also allow students to share their creative writings with others and receive reviews and feedback from peers. http://brightinvisiblegreen.com/kidscribe/index.html#writing is an interesting site that promotes bilingual writing. This site would be good to use in an ESOL classroom with ELLs since students can read and write stories in both English and Spanish. This site is good in that everything is in both English and Spanish, thus Spanish speakers could easily navigate the site without too much hassle. English speakers also learn about the Spanish language and culture through this site as students read the various stories.
Collaborating with others on stories and peer reviewing stories is also made easier with the addition of technology. http://writeboard.com/ is one site that allows students to share their writing with others. Multiple people are allowed to help compose and edit the same document. This site also helps keep track of previous versions of the documents to go back to later.
http://docs.google.com is another site that allows one to create, edit and share writing online with others.
http://turnitin.com/static/index.html also has features that allow collaboration and peer reviewing. Collaboration and peer reviewing are essential aspects of the writing process as students learn from one another to create something ultimately better. Students also learn how to actively help others out so everyone is benefited rather than just one person. I think peer reviewing is an essential step in the writing process.
Overall, I found this chapter a very valuable resource to use in the future. Since writing is an essential skill that students need to learn it is important we expose students to quality resources they can use in this new technology driven era.