THE COMPUTER LABBoth of the programs being used in this series of lessons use the word "space" in their titles. Of course this is no accident. Electronic technologies are changing both the physical environments in which we learn and the spatial environments in which we read and compose. This second lesson asks students to bring in a piece of their own writing, completed at home with paper and pen/pencil, and see how it is transformed through an electronic space.
Using CommonSpace for Self-Reflection and Peer Review on Introductory Paragraphs
--Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and Tobias Wolff's "Powder" (anthology)
--CommonSpace Documents (constructed by students)
A. This week we are focusing on family, and how voice gets constructed within (or without) a family unit. For today students will have read a short story (Wolff's "Powder") and a poem (Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays"), both dealing with father/son relationships. For homework, students were to have written a rough introductory paragraph for an upcoming essay on the two texts, focusing specific attention on their thesis statements (the "what, how, and so what?", as described to students in class). Upon arriving to class, students are to open a "New Workspace" in CommonSpace and copy over their introductory paragraph verbatim. 10 minutes maximum.
B. Once students have their intrdouctory paragraph on the computer screen, they should follow the same procedures for switching computers and creating new columns as described last week. Students will comment on their partner's introductory paragraph, with regard to three questions:
1. Does the student's introduction get right to the point? Do you know exactly what texts he/she is going to discuss?
2. Is there a clear "what, how, and so what?" in the introduction? Can you pick each of them out? Is the "so what?" implicit or explicit?
3. Pay careful attention to your partner's writing style. Are there any fragments or run-ons? Does the paragraph have good transitions and move logically to its last sentence? What about his/her diction (word choice)? Any grammatical errors?
Students should not feel that they need to limit their reactions to these three questions, but should use them as a quide to stay on-task and respond concretely. 10-15 minutes.
Sample Student Responses to an Introductory Paragraph.
C. Next, students will be asked to read over their partner's comments and talk for a few minutes about their reactions. Students should come to understand why each comment was made and help one another brainstorm ideas for revision. Students will then create a third column on their own computer screen, in which they will rewrite/REVISE their introductory paragraph (I place the word "REVISE" in all caps because this activity involves more than simple editing or spell-checking). 20 minutes.
D. Finally, students will be asked to move their cursor up to the "Columns" menu and select the "Compare Columns" function. The computer will automtically illustrate the changes made from the original paragraph to the revised version. (Note: if the changes are too significant, the computer will not be able to register exactly how the paragraph has changed; it will simply say that the original has been entirely replaced. Such is the case in my sample version. But I think this is good for students to see as well, for it shows how much progress they have made in a short period of time.)
"Interactivity" is one of the most over-used words when talking about electronic technologies, but it provides a good starting point for describing the pedagogical goals of this lesson. In our first class session of the semester (that is, for Randy Bass' "Text, Knowledge, and Pedagogy" course at Georgetown University), Professor Bass said that we would be examining "dialogic technologies" and studying how we "talk" to one another in electronic mediums. I had little idea what he meant then (dia-who?), but over the course of the semester I have seen this theoretcial course objective come to life. Peer review/feedback in CommonSpace is one example of a "dialogic technology." It provides students with the opportunity to "interact" with one another in different ways. Of course, there is still the face-to-face conversation that goes on while students are switching computers and talking (out loud) about one another's writings. But students are also "interacting" or "dialoguing" with one another on the computer screen, adding to/reducing/altering/transforming each other's text and using those comments to create new writings. A.R. Stone might describe this as the separation of the body (the social self?) from some other identity (the "written" self?), but in CommonSpace both of these are allowed to exist simultaneously.
Peer review and collaborative writing (that is, "classroom interactivity") have become more and more common in the past twenty years, but many educators still find faults in these methodologies. In 1994, I wrote a paper on peer review/collaboration for an education seminar at Boston College. After reading excerpts from Donald Murray's A Writer Teaches Writing and several articles from the January 1994 English Journal, I concluded that most educators share three major concerns when deciding if they should implement peer groups and/or collaborative "writing" in their classes:
1. How will students stay "on-task"?
2. How can students be effectively grouped?
3. How can we ensure that all students will be involved with the writing process?
I have copied these questions directly from my paper to make one specific point: that all three of these concerns are no longer "concerns" in the electronic medium of CommonSpace. Surely, there are new things we need to be concerned about when using technology in the classroom ("Who is going to train teachers to use these programs? Which schools will be able to afford technologies like CommonSpace? What will be sacrificed in our curriculums as a result of these new programs?), but student engagement, active involvment of all class members, and mulitple grouping possibilities are almost sure-things in the medium of CommonSpace. This is not because CommonSpace is a computer program and kids are just more interested in technology than books, but because CommonSpace provides teachers and students with a profoundly new "space" in which to read, write, think, and learn. Students are given the opportunity to see their own writings on the computer screen, and are responsible for assessing (which many students understand as "grading") each other's work. Here students assume the role of both reader and writer, of both student and teacher. Again, we see how electronic mediums can fulfill contemporary critical and pedagogical theories.
Finally, this activity begins to engage students in sophisticated levels of metacognition. In the training manuals for using CommonSpace in the classroom, there is actually an activity where students are asked to create a column and reflect on a piece of their writing. But by reading another student's comments about their work (which provide students with excellent cognitive models) and engaging in the act of revision, students can trace their own thought process and print a tangible record of the changes in their thinking and writing. In addition to interacting within electronic mediums and with other students in the classroom, technologies like CommonSpace also provide students with the opportunity to interact or "dialogue" with their own thought processes.