Category Archives: Writing Pedagogy

Adventures in E-Learning

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Poynter writes in a recent newsletter about the succes of online training (read: e-learning) of journalists.
The online training takes place at NewsU and boasts more than 14.000 students from 157 countries.
According to the FAQ the teaching uses a blend of learning and teaching modes:

  1. Self-Directed Learning Modules. (In e-learning language, they’re called “asynchronous” modules.) These are the ultimate in e-learning flexibility. Participants can start and stop whenever they like, progressing entirely at their own pace and going back as many times as they want to review the material. The modules make use of interactive technology, so they’re more engaging than a mere collection of Web pages.
  2. Group (or “semi-synchronous”) Seminars. Participants gather in a virtual space, logging in from anywhere, day or night, over the course of several days or several weeks. A faculty member guides the group through new material, moderates discussions and provides individual feedback.
  3. eSeminars (“synchronous” modules). These are live seminars or events broadcast over the Web; participants can tune in from their computer at work or at home and ask questions in real-time. And if they can’t join us live, we make recordings of these seminars available as self-directed learning modules.

The web word processor

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Writely is a free online service that bills itself as a “web word processor” with “Simple & SECURE web document sharing.” Once a user has registered for an account, she can create word processing documents using the online WYSIWYG interface. Those documents can be published to a blog via the blog API. The system tracks revisions, and documents can be shared with selected collaborators.

Haven’t tested it yet, but it looks really interresting…

[Via Kairosnews]

Kairos and online writing

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The current issue of Kairos has a couple of articles focusing on wiki and weblog technology in online collaboration and writing pedagogy. Very interresting – I shold have made an english article of my master thesis.

[thanks to Jens for notifying]

Weblogs og skrivedidaktik

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Da jeg skrev mit speciale i slutningen af 2003, var jeg utroligt opslugt af emnet og håbede at jeg kunne skabe noget ud fra den viden jeg havde samlet i specialet. Jeg så mig selv i rollen som rådgiver og udvikler i forhold til at bruge weblogs og andre appikationer på nettet til at styrke og udvikle samarbejdet mellem flere individer. Nu arbejder jeg med optimering af tekstflader og indhold på websites og synes det er gevaldig spændende. Men et kursus i kreativitet og blandt andet dette indlæg gjorde mig opmærksom på at viden og idéer i skuffen ikke gavner andet end min frustration over at de ikke kommer ud i verden.
Nu er jeg jeg kommet så langt at jeg kan slippe specialet og lægge ud til dem der måtte være interesserede i det. Læs, brug og spørg hvis det er.
Her er under alle omstændigheder: Abstract og bilag (400 kb).
Speciale: weblogs og skrivedidaktik (1,2 mb).
og en opgave i skrivedidaktik som specialet tog afsæt i: skrivediddaktik, cscl og weblogs (500 kb).

Dersom du dowloader og læser dette speciale, håber jeg du lægger en kommentar her eller på anden vis gør mig opmærksom på at mine darlings er kommet videre ud i verden :-) . Hvis det har videre interesse, rummer min gamle blog (som er i en sørgelig stand) en del af de tanker og oplevelser der opstod under skriveriet.

assessing weblog writing

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Kairosnews.org has yet a contribution in the discussion of weblogs as a medium in teaching writing. This post has some good thoughts on how to assess weblogs in writing courses, and whether to set up criteria for posting and commenting.
The author of th post is against defining criteria for weblog writing – but in my opinion he confuses teaching writing in a broad perspective and teaching writing in relation to weblogs. To me, it all depends on the intention of using weblogs as a teaching tool is; what students learn from using weblogs surely can be affected by defining criteria in regard to the actual weblog.

CultureCat.net

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…is a weblog written by a ph.d. in rhetorics in Minnesota – see her CV with interresting publications. Culturecat.net carries the subtitle ‘rhetoric&feminism’ but I landed on a nice little text on weblogs in teaching. Thus I realized that the subtitle might otherwise have scared me off – and that made me aware of one of my prejudices – feminist studies. Out of ignorance I approach the field cautiously, but until now, my encounters with feminist approaches have not yet given me any reason to voluntarily seek more knowledge from that particular field of theory.
Feel free to enlighten me!

repost: Vitia weblog

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Yet another repost from my old blog – one day I’ll hopefully have the lot of my thoughts in the same place.

Now here is a weblog on rhetoric and commuication that takes the verbose potential that I see i weblogs to the fullest extent I have seen this far. The blogger, a PhD researcher, has quite a theoretically solid interrest in teaching composition with commuication technology, it seems. The considerations here are combined with a sociological/socio-political view on teaching and education.
I found his site searching for thouhts on ownership of texts published digitally in a writing pedagogy framework.
This post has some good views and thoughts on that. But man, the verbosity…

Originally posted 25.11.2003

Repost: Living Writing

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Mark Bernstein internet writer, storyteller and probably a lot more has some good pointers for writing to the web.
I guess the general message is to express all facets of the perosn you are when writing to the living web. I am trying to get that idea aligned/combined with writing in academia. Here your personality is made out of the assignments you turn in, and even if you turn very personal papers in all the time, the identity that most people convey through writing is limited to their professional or educational contexts. Yes, the increase in text communication generally may result in an increase of expressing yourself through writing, but that writing is not public in the same way as academic writing. So what I am pithcing at here and in my thesis is that teaching writing could benefit from using web logs as a way to get students to explore their writing identities to a fuller extent, merging the identities of different writing contexts.

Originally posted 8.12.2003