Jonathan York’s Action Research Plan
Question: How can I explore, make use of, and learn about digital media options to enrich and expand my student’s experience with writing? I am at a place where I need to collect as many ideas as possible and see what can be done.
Plan of execution: The plan is to gather new ideas and implement as many as possible while simultaneously developing my own, and/ or synthesizing ideas from other sources. I have already spent the last several weeks with my Freshman preparing an autobiography assignment, which offered my students an array of options – some digital – some more traditional for them to explore. I heard my first class today as they read their work in small groups, and when several students read for the whole class. They were the best ones that I have received thus far, so I think I am getting better at supporting and facilitating this activity so that my students can be increasingly more successful.
With both my Freshman and Juniors I plan on expanding the research projects that I started last year. The project had students create web pages as a group. Students researched their topics in the traditional way, creating works cited pages etc. But instead of writing the standard research paper, they each wrote multiple articles for their web pages – covering different angles of their over arching topic. This year I want to expand this project to include more varied types of media presentation – such as video. I also will be searching for ideas to use and expand upon.
What I will need: More than anything I will need ideas, ideas, ideas! I also will need a good sounding board to bounce ideas off of. This forum has already provided that service, and I benefitted quite a bit from earlier discussion leading up to my Freshman’s autobiographies.
I also need ideas about creative ways to handle SAT prep, and boost scores/ readiness. I use the SAT online course with my students, but more is always required.
Maybe introduce one program as an option for them to use on the research project. The students will probably be your best go to person for examples of different media they would like to use. i would feel the class out and then decide.
ReplyDeleteJon,
ReplyDeleteI also want to publish student work on a webpage but have been struggling with how I might frame that task. Your idea of having several students working on the same issue but perhaps focusing on different facets or angles of that issue is an awesome one.
In addition to "just" writing articles, could students create podcasts with their work? Public Service Announcements? Conduct interview with people affected by the issue? Take a "side" of the issue and create dueling PSA's as candidates do in nearing election?
Just ideas that I thought might fit nicely inside your existing framework.
Jon - Some questions and ideas for thought - sorry to toss out more questions than comments (and they're all for you to think about, not necessarily answer).
ReplyDeleteIn your question you mention the potential "digital media options to enrich and expand my student’s experience with writing."
What you might be curious about is how these options play out in the classroom in terms of effectiveness of teaching and quality of learning, so you might consider looking at things from that viewpoint.
I was wondering what the research web pages were like compared to the traditional papers? Was the quality and depth there? Does it get there with digital approaches? Or is there a risk of lightness (that unbearable lightness of a pithy website?) - or is the depth more assured with that audience a website potentially promises? I wonder too about the students' choices. Do they choose digital approaches when they're offered - and if they do, is there a difference in what they create compared to the traditional?
And as someone who has students create video extensively, I'd be curious to hear what you're hoping students will do with the medium. How will video contribute to the students' writing experience?
You're also writing about - if I'm getting it right - a bit of a trend from the individual, private piece, the autobiography, to a more public, collaborative piece. That's real interesting. I wonder if a good inquiry question might explore whether student writing changes as it moves from the private/ individual to the public/collaborative using digital media? It might be an interesting study, blending your thoughts and journal reflections (hint), your students' words, student work, even an analysis of a piece of student work by you.
Hey thanks Dave - great questions. I just spent the last three days writing my response letters to my freshmen students' autobiographies. One trend I noticed is that many of my students write much more effective, sometimes even more sophisticated sentences in their "informal" writing than in their academic essays. This is common, but the difference was quite striking this year. When I read their summer essays analyzing Life of Pi I thought - man this is going to be a weak group of kids this year. Then I read their autobiographies, and I can't help but think , here's a group of students who can really express themselves in a sophisticated way in writing. The task from here on out is to motivate them to bring their communicative abilities to their academic writing.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of research I wouldn't say I notice the same level of divergence. Students' research writing tends to be quite underwhelming, and their web pages, while more visually appealing, tend to suffer from the same issues.
This year I'm putting together a new strategy for the freshmen that I am adapting from the AP synthesis essay. This time I will present them with a packet including a central question and pre selected pieces of research. The objective will be to isolate the aspect of the research papers that is the weakest - students don't have trouble finding sources - they have trouble engaging the arguments of those sources and creating a dynamic, interesting exploration of their topic. Usually what I get is a leaden, superficial gloss of the topic, with slim details plucked out of context from their sources. What I want is engagement with the arguments of each source, not just stray bits of info plucked for convenience. If this experiment with the freshman goes well, we can then move to the web page research project, and it will be interesting to see if our work with the pre selected sources gives them the skills needed to write more meaningful research papers in general. I was going to do this anyway - but now I realize that this process will also constitute some action research, so it dovetails with this course nicely I think....