Let’s tackle the last one first.  I didn’t say that I’m unsympathetic to the idea that more writing would happen if there was less grading to do.  Certainly, one reason that writing isn’t happening enough in classrooms now is that there’s a perception that every piece written must be “marked” or “graded” or “bled upon” by a teacher.  That’s completely false and a terrible idea. #

What our students need isn’t so many end comments or suggestions for grammatical or technical correction, but they need to be responded to as writers by readers who are reading their work.  Peter Elbow says this far smarter than I ever could, but we teachers should be doing less evaluating and more responding. #

So, yes.  Teachers are taking too long with papers.  The answer isn’t to stop reading them. It’s to read them differently.  Or to have more teachers reading fewer students’ writing.  And we don’t need to read everything that a student writes.  We certainly don’t need to grade everything a student writes. #

Where I think this gets messy is, as evidenced by Justin’s comment, is the notion that students need more grading from us in order to get better as writers.  They do not.  They need for we teachers to write with them, and to create cultures of inquiry and reflection rather than regurgitation in our classrooms.  They need to be treated as apprentice writers and brought up accordingly. #

Robotic graders are for people too busy to read the work our students are investing in.  That’s not fair to our students. #

Now, to clarify.  I’ve ben in classrooms where existing writing assessment software has been used, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve seen.  My most recent experience with a writing assessment tool was in a middle school classroom in my school district, where a gifted teacher was using the tool as a starting place for her writing courses.  The software did free her up to be in conversation with her students about their writing.  That was just the right way for her and the class to be – the students drafting, the teacher conversing and reading and being with her students. #

The students wrote more and revised more.  In talking with them, they felt a connection to their teacher and that she was concerned for them as writers.  The software was a scaffold, and a place to start. #

I was okay with that.  More than okay.  The teacher made the classroom shine.  The software augmented the teacher.  She could’ve run a similar, maybe not as prolific, writing workshop with her students using only paper and pencil. #

And she read what they wrote.  And encouraged them to share their writing with each other. #

Writing for a machine to read all the time, though, is not really writing.  It’s pretending.  It’s make believe.  And not the good and playful kind.  It’s faking it when there’s not an other someone reading at least some of the work.  We want our students to write well not because they’ll need to do so in some far off future job.  We want them to write well because they have something important to say to the world right now. #

So let me clarify further.  I get how the computers do the “reading” that they do¹.  And I won’t completely knock it.  It’s handy if you need to score a bunch of tests in a hurry. And that’s one kind of writing – writing as proof of knowing.  But it’s writing that assumes unimportance. #

And it’s writing that suggests that the students could build their own robot essay writers to write their essays for them.  In fact, that’s what an awful lot of student “cheating” cases are – they’re crowdsourcing their homework.  Some students do that out of malicious intent.  Others out of ignorance.  But too many students fake their way through essays out of boredom, and out of the knowledge that the teacher’ll be in a hurry and probably not notice. #

You’ve got to notice what your students are doing.  And you’re going to miss some things.  But you can’t miss all of them.  Maybe even most. #

I don’t think a machine grading writing is the end-all of everything I hold dear.  I’m sympathetic to the argument that our students need to write more and perhaps the machines will encourage that.  But the fervor with which I suspect machine grading of writing will be adopted suggests the real problem – we don’t actually want to read and write with our students.  We want to do reading and writing to them.  And that’s wrong. #

1. By the way, Justin’s series on automated essay grading is worth your time if you want to understand the processes and processing involved.

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It’s a mixed message. #

I’m all for students writing more. There is not enough writing occurring in schools. But someone should be reading the precious texts we ask of our students. They are too important to be left to machines. #

Or, perhaps, we should be rethinking what we ask students to write. And when. And why. #

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It’s a common complaint – both that I hear and that I sometimes make – that the learning spaces that we want for children should at least attempt to be modeled by the conferences/meetings where we go to talk about and explore learning possibilities. And while I get that there’s a culture or cultures to academia, and that much of the DML community is rooted in research and dissemination practices that are fairly formal, well, I’m struck that the medium and the messages of the event seemed to be in slight conflict. Even on the mothership, the interesting stuff was still rather on the edge. #

Having run conferences and meetups and managed the learning of others’ both grown ups and children, I understand that it is a most difficult undertaking, so I should say right here that I found the DML event nothing short of wicked good. I learned a bunch and will be processing some powerful learning for a while to come. And yet. I’d gently suggest to the organizers of DML 2013 a few small points. #

The first being a softball. I’m sure that everyone noticed that the space where the conference was held seemed far smaller than the people of DML. I think the folks there were the right folks – it was a fascinating mix of students and teachers and professors and researchers and makers and geeks.¹ But the way the conference was set up – or at least my version of it² – the sessions were overcrowded and packed into too small rooms and I couldn’t get to many of the things I wanted to see. Even when I could get a seat in a room – and to do so I had to stake out a space early – there were two or three other concurrent sessions I didn’t want to miss. #

Here’s the tricky thing. At an event where the messages from the community and presenters and panelists were all about experiencing powerful participatory learning, well, we sure were expected, by design and practice and custom, to sit still and listen a lot. Certainly, we were listening to fascinating stories of promise and practice and learning and teaching and exploration and study and wonder – but we were listeners, and that’s a very particular kind of experience. #

I listened to Super Awesome Sylvia talk about making things that mattered. And I really enjoyed hearing from her, particularly when she raised the differences between her learning at home and at school. But might we have made something together? #

I listened to Jess Klein explain the potential of a HackJam. I love the tools and mindsets that Mozilla is building in that space. Having experienced a HackJam³, I know they are transformative. They are a Big Deal. Might we have done that together? At least a little bit? Perhaps this happened and I missed it. #

I came to one session where a presenter began to read from a paper – the same paper excerpted in the conference program – on the power of media for engaging students. The presenter read from the paper that was provided to me already. #

Even in our session on the multiplicity of composition – a session that we intentionally attempted to do differently than a talking head panel – we struggled to make it an active learning experience⁴. I don’t know if we were struggling against the Internet access in the hotel, or the expectations of the audience, or the limits of our imagination. Or maybe something else. #

There’s work to do. #

I thought the idea of the Mozilla Science Fair – an hour and a half long reception showcasing many of the institutions and organizations doing important learning work – was a great idea. But an hour or so of crowded tables meant we got short looks into thoughtful work. Those same twenty or so tables should’ve been parceled out over the entire event, with five at a time running engaging events modeling their fascinating and engaging practices. There was a big empty space in the conference area that cried out for us to use it for playing and making and exploring and doing together.⁵ #

How can we collectively do a better job of modeling the structures, habits, and aptitudes we want to see of learning and learners, particularly when DML learns together? And what can we do with the listening we’ve done to improve the experiences that are to come? Yeah, I’m saying “we” and “DML,” because, like Chad, I’m willing to say that I am engaged by this group of thoughtful people. I’d feel lucky to be counted as a member of the DML community. I so want them/us to do well. #

And there’s room to grow. #

1. That said, I didn’t see lots of IT folk there – but perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough. Or maybe operations types aren’t the crowd of DML. Oh. That’d be sad if it were true.
2. Everyone, you know, has their own conference experience, a collection of what they saw, with whom they spoke, and a variety of other factors. No two people have the same experience, of course. I may well have had the “bad” one.
3. That was masterfully facilitated at ISTE 2011 by Chad and Meenoo.
4. The writing some of the participants shared during that session, I thought, is worth more of my time.
5. The impromptu Occupy Badges session – a spillout of the overcrowded session on Badges – was a good example of what might’ve happened in that space.

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Actually, that’s not true. #

Her “problem” is that she has several really good and interesting areas where she might turn her attention and skills as a teacher researcher, but all of them are appealing to her.  She talked through three ideas that sounded fairly fleshed out and interesting, and two or three more that might workout, but are less developed.  I wanted her to tackle all of them.  And I think she did, too.  But she was stuck because, really, she could ultimately only spend the time and energy on one of them. #

I think she mostly needed to say that out loud, and to have me reinforce it.  I look forward to the one she picks. #

It came up in the conversation that she’d noticed that I was stuck lately in my own writing and exploration, as you might have noticed, too, Dear Reader.  It’s been rather quiet here on the blog, and all the other spaces where I’m writing in public lately.  It’s been rather quiet in the spaces where I write for just me, too. #

This fall’s been a busy one, and I’ve had a pretty full plate.  But that’s not really why I’ve been quiet.  See, I’ve been stuck, too. #

Maybe I’ve been distracted by all stuff I’ve been doing to see what it is that was worth doing, or maybe it’s that I’m just tired.  Or maybe it’s just that time of year for me, a time of quiet. #

Or maybe, on my worst days perhaps certainly, I’m losing my way.  Maybe I’m losing hope.  But I try to work through that.  Being without hope, in the long term, isn’t a productive place to be. #

I gave that teacher a little suggestion as we ended our conversation yesterday, and I’m thinking I might take my own advice.  She was having trouble getting started because she didn’t know what project to choose.  I’m stuck because I don’t know where I want to go next, either.  What I suggested to her was that perhaps she might start writing her way through her topics and questions, and that, along the way, she might discover what it was that was worth her doing and seeing through.  I know that’s helped me in the past, and, in fact, is pretty much why I write in spaces like this. #

She responded that she might not know who’d want to read about that, or if what she’d be writing about would be obvious to everyone else¹. #

That pushed me to one more suggestion.  I’m certainly interested in what she’s up to, and I’d like to hear from her when she thinks she’s something to say.  So, I told her, write to me.  Just do it in public.  She’s going to try. #

And that helped.  Both her and me.   I think. #

I forgot for a while.  One of the ways that I’ve always gotten myself unstuck is to try to write with one person in mind.  Writing for one person is better than writing for a universe of people.  Writing for one person might make sense.²
So I’m writing today for just one or two people that might be interested in this update.  And I’m going to try to come to the blog for a while with one or two people in mind and see where that gets me. #

Because, for so many reasons,  I can’t stay stuck for long.  Just can’t.  So maybe this will help. #

It’s certainly worth a try. #

1. In her case, as in most cases, that’s certainly not true. She has things to say that no one else can.  I bet you do, too.
2. When I wrote music, something I wish I were doing more of, and have been thinking about starting again lately, I found that the best songs I had within me were written in the second person. Maybe there’s something to that here, or at least right now.  Or maybe this is a self-indulgent post.  For the moment, to get unstuck, I’m quite content whichever it happens to be.

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I shared this with them, a distillation of some of the descriptive and prescriptive ideas I’ve written about blogs and blogging and bloggers.  I tried to emphasize that good blogging, is a simple set of skills: reading, writing and thinking, although not necessarily in that order.  Good blogging is a continuation of the tradition of good writers and folks from pre-digital times, too.  Good blogging is paying attention and asking good questions. Thomas Paine’s name came up. #

Good blogging, too, is hard to do well.  It’s play dressed up to look like work.¹ #

My comments were nested in some of my thinking over at P2PU about the Common Core standards and what they have to say about reading and writing.  I dropped the s-bomb a few times.  Not because I wanted to, but because David Coleman, one of the architects of the standards, who’s now out on the road teaching folks what the CCSS are about, did in a talk a while back.  The larger talk he gave was about how the CCSS shifts the focus from some areas of literacy² to others, namely more emphasis on informational text and close reading and writing. #

I don’t mind that shift.  And I think some others have over exaggerated it.  But what I do mind very much is when he says this: #

Do people know the two most popular forms of writing in the American high school today? Texting someone said; I don’t think that’s for credit though yet. But I would say that as someone said it is personal writing. It is either the exposition of a personal opinion or it is the presentation of a personal matter. The only problem, forgive me for saying this so bluntly, the only problem with those two forms of writing is as you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think. What they instead care about is can you make an argument with evidence, is there something verifiable behind what you’re saying or what you think or feel that you can demonstrate to me. It is rare in a working environment that someone says, “Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.”³ #

Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter. #

Sounds great, and there’s only one problem. #

Suppose the students whom you want to blog and write and bleed their passions on a digital page somewhere as a way of learning to read and write and think just don’t care? #

Suppose they’re indifferent about learning?   Or at least appear to be.  What do we do about that?  And what did we do to make that happen? #

1. Sometimes, with footnotes.  Footnotes look much too workish to be fun, right?
2. Read: the personal.
3. Link to the video – about 8:30 on the time code.  The unofficial transcript I’m quoting from is here.  The off the cuff reference to not giving a shit, surprisingly, isn’t in the “official transcript.”
4. One concern I do have about the CCSS is the same that I do about education policy in general right now; who decides “what counts?”
5. Which I think is the right model to aim for.

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If a badge’s purpose is to motivate folks who are doing interesting work on the fringe of school or teaching and learning, well, that’s very tricky business for a couple of reasons. #

It’s possible, likely even, that the folks already doing the work on the fringe don’t need the motivation. They are, of course, already doing the work.  And the institutionalization of the fringe work may well kill the work that you were trying to cultivate.  It might be that the fringe was what made the work, ahem, work. #

And so the badge saps the motivation from those who were already motivated and kills the thing they were motivated to do before the badge came along.  That’s before it may, or likely may not, bring new folks to the work to witness its horrible death¹. #

That wouldn’t really help. #

But, because I believe badges are here to stay, and they’ll likely be with us for some time, and I hope in my better moments that my cynical self is ultimately wrong about them, then it makes sense to take advantage of the opportunity.  The trick, in supporting badges, then, is to think about badges that wouldn’t actually be motivational enough to start folks doing the work, but would be handy to have for other reasons.  Credentialing, perhaps, or community discovery.  And you’d want to focus those badges on work that can live in the mainstream, and won’t die when brought from the fringe. #

If you’re counting on a badge to serve as a motivator, a reason to get students into the game, then I’m thinking you’re miscounting.  But, if you’re wanting to use a badge much in the same way as Pac-Man uses power pellets, or Sonic uses rings, or Mario gold coins, then you may well be on to something.  Don’t let the badge be the carrot.  Let it serve as a map or a pointer.  Don’t let the badge sell the game – but let it add to the gameplay.² #

And make sure that the organizations that are supporting the badges are the ones that you want pointing the way. #

In my next post, I’m going to lay out why I believe that the National Writing Project, or some organization like them, should be pushing hard to propose a teacher inquiry or practitioner research badge.  They’re they right people to do so, and teacher research is certainly worth of more attention in our schools.  And teacher researchers could use tools like badges to help them find one another. #

But that’s not the best reason to badge teacher researchers.  I’ll tell you about that in the next post. #

In the meantime, what other stuff might you add to the list of useful badges? #

1. I recognize this is a cynical-sounding viewpoint.  I would enjoy being proven wrong here.
2. I also recognize that using a game metaphor here might be a bad idea – because plenty of the folks who are eager to see badges in play would also like to turn school into a big game.  That school, in many ways, already is a big game, just not a very engaging one, is another conversation for a different day.

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So maybe I’ll just try to do a little bit of freewriting here and see how it goes.  Here’s what I think I know right now as it relates to my research. #

To start with, here are my research questions: #

• What does reading and writing for school-related purposes look like in school-sponsored online writing spaces?
• Who is doing the writing in these spaces? The reading?
• Are the new tools and affordances of online digital writing, tools like hyperlinks, and affordances like immediate publication and world-wide audience, a factor in these spaces?  If so, how?

And, to start with, there’s just not enough of it.  In three weeks, I can count on both hands the number of classrooms doing public writing in this space.  And that leaves me with three fingers left to count other things. #

Are students and teachers blogging or writing online² in other spaces?  Certainly.  One of the limitations of my study, one that I knew would be a problem for some of what I was wondering about, was that I am limited to public stuff.  If I wanted a fuller picture of what the writing that’s happening online in my school district looks like, I need to interrogate our district’s Moodle.  I need to peer into our district implementation of Google Docs.  On Thursday, a teacher in our district started sharing a Google Docs collection with me from one of his classes.  He was excited about the number of texts they were producing together.  I’ve not yet opened the folder – but I’ve watched a hundred or so documents enter into my document list.  Sometimes in real time, I’ve seen them drop into place. #

Writing is happening. But why not here?³ #

Here’s what I know about the writiing that I am seeing: #

• Students and teachers aren’t talking to each other, for the most part, via the blog engine.  I suspect they are talking in class, but they’re not writing back and forth in these spaces.  Three quarters of the posts I saw during the period of the study contained no comments.  Of the ones that held comments, only another large handful could be considered any sort of conversation – back and forth between the author of the post and the commenter(s).  If these students are writing because they expect an audience, well, then they’re still waiting.
• Because no one’s responding, there’s a sense that no one’s reading.  Multiple times, I saw little snippets of text, clearly put up as tests, or left behind as mistakes, that weren’t taken down or adjusted.  Why bother, if no one’s looking – or it doesn’t seem like anyone is?
• The kind of writing that’s being asked of students in these spaces?  Well, it’s interesting – I can break it down into three types – daily summaries, written collectively by elementary school classes; reflective essays about various topics; and responses to teacher questions.  Lots of it is writing that doesn’t require a blog.  And it’s writing that involves very, very, very little source material.  Very few quotes.  Very few links.  And the links, when they’re present, are not  embedded in the text.  They lie naked and open in the text.  And that seems problematic to me⁴
• The writing that staff are doing is a little bit better⁵ – like students, they’re writing reflective essays, and sharing lots of newslettery information.  But I can’t be sure, from this data set, if the folks they want to reach are being reached through this vehicle.

1. And, yeah, I suppose that means that I’ve a significant bias about blogs and the power of blogging that, if I haven’t yet, I need to be sure to disclose somewhere in the thesis.
2. Oddly, in my world, and perhaps in yours, the word “blogging” has come to mean anything written in a Web browser that isn’t an email, no matter where it ends up.  Isn’t that interesting?  I might be a blog snob, but that bugs me.  And it probably shouldn’t.  It’s less of a problem for me than it used to be – I don’t correct people now when they say that.  I used to.
3. That’s not one of my research questions.  So what?
4. But, again, I may well be a blog snob.  But if the potential of the “writing of the 21st Century” is that it happens online and organically and is connected to other texts and blah blah blah – suppose it’s not.  Is that *bad* or *problematic* or just unfortunate?  Or is it just so?  As I’m in the middle of arguing that we need to make sure students have the tools to do this sort of work, a body of data that suggests, nah, it’s not so important,” is a little bit problematic.
5. Oops – judgement again.  Might need a better word than, ahem, “better.”

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An added wrinkle is that one of the folks that I originally started asking the question of is now, apparently, unwilling to talk to me at all. Here’s the story. #

Every day this week, before and after work, I’ve left a message with the Press Office of the Department of Education asking for an answer to my question for the rationale behind the elimination of the National Writing Project from the 2011 proposed education budget. On Tuesday morning, I had a very nice and pleasant exchange with one of the women who answers the phones at that line. She was polite as I explained my request, as she read it back to me, and confirmed my phone number and e-mail address. She asked me when I’d like a response. I told her five PM that day, which is a typical turnaround for a media response. She said someone would get back to me prior to that time. She also asked me what news organization I was with. I informed her that I was a blogger, and she said okay. #

No one returned that call. #

But I’m stubborn I understand how busy people are. So, Wednesday morning, I called the press office back and, as luck would have it, the phone was answered by the same person. She remembered my question, and pulled up her notes. She had my phone number right. But I didn’t get a call back. I asked her why. That’s when she informed me that, as I wasn’t a member of the press, I wasn’t entitled to a response from their office. That floored me a bit. #

I asked her to explain who told her that. She put me on hold, and after a few moments, returned and explained that Sandra Abrevaya, one of the folks who manages the office’s Twitter presence, fielded the request and informed the kind phone answerer that she should “only pass along (messages) if he is a reporter.” #

I asked the receptionist, who again would not give me her name, so far the only person in the entire Education Department who has actually spoken to me on the phone, if she would get a definition from Ms. Abrevaya as to what constitutes a “reporter.” (I’m thinking that I sure am “reporting” this conversation and my experience.) I have yet to hear back. #

I was referred to a general question and information line, which was actually quite helpful. If you’d like to inquire about an educational issue, you may have the best results by calling 1-800-872-5327 and pressing 3. Then again, it might not be THAT useful, because I’m still waiting to hear back from the person to whom I was referred from there, too. #

I guess I’d have to express my disappointment in the Department of Education’s Press Office, and specifically Sandra Abrevaya. As one of the folks behind the @EdPressSec Twitter account, she has been, presumably, receiving my replies and requests for information about the National Writing Project rationale for more than two weeks. My voice messages for about a week. And she chose to ignore them. Because I’m not a “reporter.” #

We cannot accept a government that simultaneously leverages social media to get their message out but ignores the messages of its constituents. I’m not willing to quit asking my question because I’m not a “reporter.” So, again, here’s what I’d like to know: #

What is the rationale for the elimination of the National Writing Project? What is the information that was used to make the decision? Who is the person or persons who ultimately made the decision, and how would they answer others’ data that suggest strong results? #

Why is that such a hard collection of questions to get an answer to? Seems like they’d certainly like to hear from us, but not talk to us. #

I’ll keep trying. Maybe you will, too. #

photo credit: Bud the Teacher #

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Are there worksheets on the upside of slavery? #

And yet. #

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