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+.
