Turner

=Kristen Turner's writing from the CEE 2010 Colloquium=

__My final project:__ We went to the woods...

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__My reflection on completing this writing:__

Though it wasn't the project I had planned when I left Orlando, after the webinar, I challenged myself to compile the video, pictures, and thoughts I had of my family's summer trip to the White Mountains. For my dad's 50th birthday, I wrote a series of memoirs focused on him that I bound in a booklet. This composition, a Christmas gift to honor my dad's 60th birthday, would be the next generation of writing for me. As I composed, worked through the technology, shared and revised my drafts, I learned that writing a digital story is in many ways similar to writing a traditional print story. Elements of story structure cross both. Transitions are needed. Attention to language is important. //How// I accomplished each of these, however, varied from that collection of memoirs I wrote 10 years ago.

As I think about digital writing and the teaching of English, I wonder whether I would require my students to compose a digital story - or whether I would teach narrative, showing them models of traditional texts and digital texts, and allow them to compose in either mode. My fear with requiring the digital story lies in my ability to teach the technology. I learned a lot in the last month as I compiled this project. And in order to scaffold students to the knowledge and skills I gained, I'm afraid class time would be consumed with teaching the technology. Allowing choice in product would enable students to experiment on their own, but it would not require that I teach all students the technology.

When I taught high school, the media teacher had students compose short films and digital slide shows set to music. She focused her curriculum on the technology. Perhaps digital writing presents an opportunity for collaboration, where I, as an English teacher, can help students understand elements of story structure, transitions, and language while the technology teacher focuses on the //how// of the final product.


 * INITIAL WRITING**

Digitalk snubs her nose at her parents' rules and embraces non-conformity. Secretly, however, she simply wants to belong. She relishes her individual identity, yet she holds the community in her arms. She is a wave of contradiction. She is selective, yet unprejudiced, and she years for Code-Switching to embrace her. To be recognized by Language is her ultimate goal. For now she lives on the Digital Divide.
 * Digitalk**

__**Capturing the Day**__


 * from Romano**

"experience my writing, not just understand my writing" "honor all kinds of genres... put them to work... in thinking" "Johnny one-genres" "big world mural of writing, not just a snapshot" "I'm against my own experience in public school" "consumer of genres, not maker of geners" "genre is a lens through which we see our subject, and it affects how we see the subject" "keeps at bay elitist notions of language and expression"

writer as noun, writer as verb Why do I keep my blog? To write in a genre that I like?


 * from participants**

"the ways the visual texts inform the composition", Timothy Shea


 * from Hicks**

"tech-comfy but not tech-savvy"


 * from Epcot**