Preparing Students For The Demands Of Editing In The 21st Century

By Author: Amandda
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In pointing out the multilayered facets of Wikipedia participation, I do not mean to present editing on the site as unproblematic. Some members' suggested edits are trivial and some of their discourse dismissive. Just as the articles on Wikipedia are uneven in terms of quality, so are the discussions around their editing. Nor do I mean to suggest that instruction would be improved if teachers just asked students to write for the site. Instead, I advocate that teachers help adolescents acquire the skills and strategies required for successful participation in online communities such as Wikipedia.

I contrast activities on Wikipedia with the state test because I think assessments like this can distract us from providing the kind of writing instruction needed in today's multiliterate society. When students perform poorly on Tag Heuer Replica the state task, they typically receive a big dose of print-based drill and practice, leaving less time to learn the new literacies associated with digital technologies and further disadvantaging them compared ...
... with their often better-resourced peers (Mokhtari, Kymes, & Edwards, 2008). Furthermore, students who struggle on the editing task from the state test may not be the only ones unprepared for the demands of 21st-century editing. Students who score well on the test may still be poorly equipped to edit their own or others' writing in other contexts, particularly those mediated by technology. Even the low-level fixes required by the testing task become more complex online. A book title without italics can be underlined on the test booklet. For Web publishing, however, writers need to know whether they can make that same edit with software resembling word processing or whether they should apply HTML codes. Similarly, students who know how to make a specific change in a text may be unable to frame the need for that change in ways that others—be they Wikipedia users or colleagues in a workplace—can understand and accept.

If, as teachers, we dismiss examples of collaborative writing in digital environments such as Wikipedia because they do not fit traditional (and often hierarchical) conceptions of authorship and authority, we miss rich opportunities to consider new roles and relationships for writers. Worse, our students miss them, too.

Consider onsider the following scenarios that often occur in secondary classrooms: A mathematics teacher solves a series of problems on the board and then assigns the odd-numbered problems at the end of the chapter for homework. An English teacher reviews the previous chapter in the novel, lectures on the theme, and then assigns everyone to silent reading for the remainder of the period. A science teacher assigns Chapter 14 in the textbook and tells everyone to answer the questions at the end of the chapter (full sentences, please).

Are you asking where exactly did the instruction occur? While most agree that teaching is more than simply causing or assigning an activity, the teachers in the examples above moved almost immediately to independent work. Did you notice that students were not given an opportunity to try new content while being supported? If this is common practice, is it any wonder that the needs of so many adolescent students are not being met?

Our experience suggests that teachers who are addressing the learning needs of all students employ a recursive instructional process that includes:
1. Teacher modeling and guiding the acquisition of new content
2. Time for students to collaborate as they refine their understanding of the new content
3. Opportunities for students to try on the new content independently

In addition to thinking about the missing instruction in the first scenarios, also consider the prospect of the problem behaviors that could be anticipated because of the lack of student engagement. What is the likelihood that a student will write notes to a classmate in the math class, pull the hood of his sweatshirt up Tag Heuer Replica Watches over his head in English, or visit the pencil sharpener countless times in science? These students are often the "canary in the coal mine"; the ones who are the first to react negatively to a learning environment with little support. Unfortunately, too often the student is blamed, without regard to the circumstances in which the problem behavior occurred. In these cases, it is fair to say that the absence of purposeful and systematic instruction contributed to student misbehavior.