Analytics

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Widgets

Guest Post: Using Technology to Teach Writing



Guide for Teachers: How to Teach Writing Through Technology?
As a teacher, you can either choose to assign pointless papers to your students or inspire them to think and facilitate their ability to write. The current writing crisis in our schools comes from one main cause: academic writing being taught as a mechanical process of research, writing and editing. If you want to teach your students to start learning through the writing process, then you need to adjust your teaching style to their needs and learning potential.

As part of every student’s life, technology should not be excluded from the teaching process. By forcing your students to research the library and neglect online tools and resources when writing papers, you are making the entire process boring right from the start. Since your students are being engaged by infographics, videos, hyperlinks and images, you should infuse that digital world to bring some fun and more effectiveness into the classroom.

Although technology doesn’t have all answers to the writing crisis, the right tools can still help you inspire your students to write more and write better. These awesome tools will help you start the revolution:

Your students will love collaborating on writing projects through this platform. The features for instant editing and sharing make the process easier than ever, and you can join the process and monitor their progress in real time. There are eight distinctive author colors to choose from, so the input of each student will be clearly recognizable.

As a teacher, you can also rely on the assistance of NinjaEssays when you need to create perfect coursework material.Carissa's Note: I would NOT give this site to students as they essentially are given the option to buy essays.

This is another online tool you can recommend for collaborative work. It enables the users to perform bulk uploads and save a lot of time on the go. The other features include: secure file sharing, online file storage, presentation, file synchronization, spreadsheet, Word document, task management, and more. 

Even though there are many writing tools and platforms you can start using, sometimes it is better to start from the basics. No, that doesn’t mean Microsoft Word! Google Docs has a simplistic, clean interface that makes the writing process distraction-free. In addition, your students can also use Google Docs to collaborate on a team project in real time. 

Your students love reading blogs about the things that interest them, so why not use that potential to teach them something really useful? Edublogs is a student-friendly blogging platform that can replace the paper newsletter. You can inspire your students to find interesting online material associated to the concepts they learn at class and write weekly blogs. That is the best way to inspire your students to write, but you’ll also find that the best blogs will lead to fantastic discussions. 

This is another great platform that enables its users to explore and create educational content online. You can use some great posts from Glogster to show your students that writing can be fun, and then inspire them to create their own blogs. You can also create teams and assign blogging as a team project.

Improve your teaching methods with the help of technology!


Educational technology offers endless benefits for both teachers and students. It’s no secret that today’s schooling system is burdening students with more writing assignments than they can handle. The only way to help them approach academic writing with enthusiasm is to start relying on technology and infuse some elements of fun and effective collaboration throughout the process.
  
Robert Morris is an English teacher from New York. Find him on Google+.
                  

2 comments:

  1. I like Titan pad. thanks for sharing. It seems easier then Google docs but with Google docs you can correct work using apps etc. Is there a way you could correct some writing errors on Titan pad. Also, would you just introduce a topic, a few sentences and then let students work on it. It's encouraging them to write but is that all we want them to do?? Could we go a step further and make sure they are writing well?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think that's part of the reason the technology is great! Titan pad for example lets students work together. This form of peer editing is awesome. I would give students a specific rubric of questions and have them check off that they have checked for this area before submitting it to me. I can always help them later, but learning to catch their own mistakes is a key skill

      Delete

Thanks so much for commenting. Due to spam, your comment may not show up right away, but as soon as I get a chance to approve it I will. I promise to be as fast as possible!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...